Shares of image sharing and social media service company Pinterest were up over 5 percent in Tuesday’s after-hours trading after the company announced that its CEO Ben Silbermann will be stepping down.
The outgoing CEO will be succeeded by Bill Ready who was previously in charge of Google’s commerce business, effective Wednesday. The new CEO has a track record working for global companies. While he spent about three years at Google, Bill Ready once held the roles of executive vice president and chief operating officer at PayPal.
Pinterest which had a huge focus on its advertising business has shifted its focus and made e-commerce its major priority. The change in CEO might be to reflect that and to bring in the expertise of someone like Bill Ready who has experience working in the commerce space, to lead the company.
Pinterest currently has over 400 million monthly active users and recently announced that it was acquiring The Yes, an AI-powered shopping platform for fashion brands.
In a statement outgoing CEO Ben Silbermann said that “In our next chapter, we are focused on helping Pinners buy, try and act on all the great ideas they see. Bill is a great leader for this transition. He is a builder who deeply understands commerce and payments.”
Ben Silbermann isn’t leaving Pinterest, the co-founder and former CEO will be transitioning into a new role – he will become the company’s first Executive Chairman.
The former CEO who co-founded Pinterest in 2010 has been at the epicenter of quite a handful of challenges including complaints from employees, complaints of discrimination, missed quarterly earnings, etc. It might just be best that he stepped down and gave the reins of the company to another capable person.
In a LinkedIn post Bill Ready shared, he wrote that “As someone who has spent most of my career in commerce and payments, it’s so clear to me that Pinterest has the opportunity to build something unique—something special.”
Google is yet to announce who would take over Bill Ready’s role. Pinterest shares are down 45.8% year to date and are almost 76% off of 52-week highs.
