Ben Silbermann

Ben Silbermann (born July 14, 1982) is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and executive chairman of Pinterest, a visual discovery engine which lets users organize images, links, recipes and other things. He was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, and is of Chinese and German descent. His parents, Jane Wang and Neil Silbermann, are ophthalmologists. In 1998, Silbermann attended the Research Science Institute at MIT. He graduated from Des Moines Central Academy and Des Moines Roosevelt with the class of 1999. He then graduated from Yale University in the spring of 2003 with a degree in Political Science.

Career Before Pinterest (which launched in March 2010), Silbermann worked at Google in the online advertising group. he teamed up with Evan Sharp to create a pinboard product that would eventually be named Pinterest. Raising capital to start Pinterest was a hurdle that Silbermann thought laterally about. Silbermann entered the NYU Stern Business Plan Competition. "The prize was meeting with venture capitalists First Mark Capital in New York, which gave us half our money." A little over nine years after starting Pinterest, the company held its IPO in April 2019 which valued the company around 12 billion dollars.

On June 28, 2022, it was announced Silberman would step down as Chief Executive Officer and transition to the role of Executive Chairman. His wife graduated from Clark University in 2004 with a degree in Psychology. The couple resides in San Francisco, California.