Six years after its founding, Pinterest was at a crossroads. While the platform was still steadily growing with female hobbyists aged 35 and up, no one else really had heard of us. The challenge was to break Pinterest free from being typecast and bring in fresh, new audiences to grow the business.

After months of whiteboarding and soul-searching with co-founder Evan Sharp, we came up with a new, broader mission statement: Pinterest was “a place to discover and do the things you love.” Our goal was to prove that Pinterest was a place for anyone, not just arts and crafts. It became our directive for building features and designing brand campaigns; it helped focus and rally the teams. It became the 10-word mantra that led an 18-month strategy for all functions of the company.

We focused the next 18-months on three verticals: food, style, and home. Pop-ups in New York City, influencer engagements, and an awareness campaign in the UK helped transform the brand into a younger, fresher, happier place, and laid the foundation for what it’s become today.

Revenue growth nearly doubled in the year concluding these initiatives. Monthly active users also doubled in that same year, and has increased year over year since. To this day, Pinterest follows the same branding strategy and visual language that we helped shape during my time there. They enjoy steady growth in both revenue and user base, even achieving record high user engagement and significant revenue increases over the last ten years.