Pinterest’s founders are smart guys, but they’re not prodigies. The product is huge now, but no one liked it when it launched. They weren’t well funded and for a very long time.

After a consulting gig in Washington DC, he headed to Silicon Valley in 2006 to join Google working in customer support and sales.

Four months after launching, Pinterest only had 200 users.

It didn’t pop in California for the first year and a half.

“The site grew by the same percentage (40%-50%) every single month. It’s just that the number started so low that it took a while to get going.”

Remarkably the Pinterest team maintained their original vision despite the Valley’s pressure to be successful quickly or pivot (aka: admit failure).

While feeling the pressures of possible embarrassment if he had to go to Google to ask for his old job back, Ben never seriously considered giving up.

“We were obsessive about the product. We were obsessive about all the writing and how it was described. We were obsessive about the community. I personally wrote to the first 5,000-7,000 people that joined the site.”