Pinterest CEO recruited some early employees at weekly barbecues

Pinterest cofounder and
CEO Ben Silbermann.
Hollis
Johnson/Business Insider

• In the early days of Pinterest, cofounder and CEO
  Ben Silbermann would
  recruit employees at weekly barbecues.
• One of his biggest challenges was finding the right people to
  work for Pinterest.
• When recruiting, Silbermann was extremely transparent about
  the challenges of working at a startup and looked for people who
  were eager to take on those challenges.  

In the early days of Pinterest, an image-browsing site
with 250 million active users, employees worked out of a
two-bedroom apartment and attended Friday night neighborhood
barbecues hosted by cofounder and CEO Ben Silbermann. 

“We ended up actually recruiting a lot of people from those
barbecues,” Silbermann said on an episode of Business Insider’s
podcast “This Is Success.”

“They’d come three, or four, or five weeks in a row. They’d
say, ‘It looks like all of you are having a really good time. We
love the product. Let us know when you have any openings,'” he
said.

Several early employees were hired from attending
Silbermann’s barbecues. But as Pinterest grew in scale,
Silbermann stopped recruiting people through weekly
outings.

“I remember when we were recruiting early on. There were
these people that were at great jobs, and I would almost feel
guilty pulling them out of this great job,” Silbermann said. “We
didn’t have a cool office. It was bring your own computer. They
were going to take these massive salary cuts. I would almost feel
guilty about saying you should leave this amazing job at a
Google or a Facebook and come work for
us.”

Read more: 

Pinterest
CEO Ben Silbermann explains how he’s built a multibillion-dollar
company that reaches 250 million people

In time, Silbermann realized early Pinterest recruits were
“really great people” and felt motivated by the challenges a
startup brings.

“If you just embrace that, if you don’t try to cover up all
of the company’s warts and challenges and say, ‘Here are the big
challenges we have. It’s going to be risky, but it’s going to be
a big adventure.’ The best people will self-select into that,” he
said. 

Once Silbermann understood that, he felt he could recruit
honestly and with extreme transparency. He was looking for that
“special breed of person” that wants adventure in a career and
the chance to make an impact. 

“I think the biggest challenge I’ve overcome is being able
to recruit people to come and work with me that have very, very
different skillsets,” he said. 

Silbermann compared finding the right people for Pinterest
to a superpower. It took him a while to figure out how to do it
well, but said it is one of the most rewarding parts of building
a company and team.

Listen to
the full episode and subscribe to “This Is Success” on

Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.