Pinterest started as Tote, a shopping app that failed — users preferred collecting

In 2009, Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra launched Tote, a mobile shopping app designed to replace paper catalogues. Users could browse products from retailers, save items they liked, and theoretically buy them through the app. The problem was that mobile payment technology in 2009 was not mature enough to support seamless transactions. Tote as a shopping app was a failure — users could not easily buy what they found.

But Silbermann noticed something unexpected. Tote users were spending significant time browsing and collecting items — saving things to virtual boards, organizing them by category, and sharing them with friends. They were treating the app like a digital scrapbook, not a store. The act of collecting was more popular than the act of buying.

Silbermann pivoted. In December 2009, he began building a new platform centered entirely on collecting and sharing visual bookmarks. Joined by co-founder Evan Sharp, they launched Pinterest in March 2010 as a closed beta. The site grew slowly at first — Silbermann personally emailed the first 5,000 users to keep them engaged — but by 2011 it was one of the fastest-growing social networks in history.

Pinterest reached 10 million monthly US users faster than any independent site before it. The company went public in 2019 at a $12 billion valuation. By 2024, Pinterest had 553 million monthly active users and $3.65 billion in annual revenue. The shopping app that failed because nobody could buy anything had become a platform built entirely on the act of collecting.