Pinterest raises $27 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz

I have not seen my wife so engaged with a site or mobile app since Facebook and possibly Angry Birds. That's when I knew Pinterest was going to be huge. Good for them on raising this round.<p>I think the path to monetization will be a no-brainer as well.<p>Contrast that with the folks as Svpply (I heard hopes for them for early on) who sit around saying "They’ve (pinterest) locked themselves into a niche community of 22-35yr old women" while Pinterest is absolutely blowing up and eating their lunch. Very stupid and short-sighted view IMO. <a href="http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/10452105095/who-svpply-is-competing-with-sort-of" rel="nofollow">http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/10452105095/who-svpply-is-com...</a><p>Take note on what your spouse/kids/SO spend their time engaged in.

I always find it incredibly amazing to wander in to a wildly popular site that no one I know uses. It's a sad testament to how incredibly isolated hackers can be.

"The start-up, which has no revenue to speak of yet"<p>This is the aspect of the site that always made me scratch my head and say "huh?"<p>It is no doubt a well designed site that engages women. Despite being in beta and invite only I know a bunch of women who are really into it. I don't think being engaging is enough though - where do they go from here? How do they actually justify the valuation? Are they going to have "paid" posts for advertising? Are they going to some how sell the data mined from their users? Paid accounts?<p>This site seems like it is going to be even harder to monetize than reddit.

I am their target demo and have been completely sucked in to it. Pinterest is addictive and engaging and completely enjoyable. It's the first place I go when I am having a bad day. This is one of the most exciting sites I have seen in a long time. My friends and I can't keep off of it.<p>Monetization will be a breeze. This demo doesn't get upset about ads, especially if they're relevant. And ads are just the LCD, no-brainer way to monetize. There is huge potential here.<p>I just don't understand why they need <i>so</i> much money. Jeeez, what are they spending it on?

If they raised $25 million while valued at $200 million, and earlier raised $10 million, presumably at a much lower valuation...<p>That doesn't leave the company a huge amount of equity and control, does it?

One of my female friends is <i>obsessed</i> with this site. I don't get it, but then I'm not their demographic.

I remember meeting Ben in Palo Alto last year when he was still figuring things out and trying to raise money. Sounds like it's been amazing year since then. Congrats guys. :-)

Congrats to the team who built such an addicting product to users. Here's hoping that you won't get comfortable with that money now and keep innovating! :)

It's great to see all this action in the social commerce space. With Pinterest, Polyvore, Svpply, Fancy, Weheartit, Wookmark, Wanelo, Sumally, et al it will be interesting to see if there will be a big winner, or if we will end up with several players for different demographics and more targeted products.

Pinterest has existed for many years as a sub-product of a website called Lime Life called MySnaps (<a href="http://www.limelife.com/bookmarklet.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.limelife.com/bookmarklet.html</a>). It is essentially the exact same thing as Pinterest except that MySnaps but is not a standalone product, nor is not as "clean" as Pinterest's implementation.<p>I only know about MySnaps as I once got a freelance e-mail about a two years ago from someone asking me to recreate MySnaps for them but I shrugged it off. Makes me wonder if it was the Pinterest guys ;)<p>It's really interesting how marketing, and presentation can make a product more popular than your competitors. Other companies with success like this include Quizlet, and Facebook.<p>EDIT: But now thinking about it, isn't this essentially Delicious all over again as a different mutation?

So it's a photo sharing site?

Are we really congratulating a "company" that makes no revenue on raising money again?<p>When will it stop?

Looks like less engaging 4chan that just happens to have a female demographic.

Congrats to the pinterest team, perhaps they can invest in more servers now ;P

They're killing it. Glad to have helped found it.