A native Kentuckian is the new top executive at Pinterest.
Bill Ready, 42, is replacing longtime Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann on Wednesday, June 29, according to a news release from the company.
Silbermann co-founded the San Francisco-based company (NYSE:PINS) in 2010, the same year he began serving as CEO. He is moving to the newly created role of executive chairman at the image-sharing social media company, which has more than 400 million active monthly users.
Ready, who grew up in the Fort Knox area, is a University of Louisville graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems and Finance. He comes to Pinterest from Alphabet-owned Google, where he had served as president of commerce, payments and next billion users since January 2020.
“There’s no better time to join Pinterest,” Ready said in the release. "I have long admired the brand and platform that Ben and the Pinterest team have created and everything the company stands for.
"I am excited to build on that foundation to further scale the Company’s ecosystem and drive increased value for shareholders. Having built multiple businesses from zero and operated at the scale of billions of users, I have a deep appreciation for what it takes to scale a business like this to the next level."
Ready will earn $400,000 in the new role and will also take a board seat.
Prior to his time at Google, Ready was executive vice president and COO of PayPal and CEO of Braintree and Venmo. He joined PayPal in 2013 after its acquisition of Braintree, which developed industry-leading payment solutions that power many of the world’s most disruptive businesses, such as Uber and Airbnb.
Ready is an investor and advisor at Venminder, an Elizabethtown, Kentucky-based third-party risk-management solutions company. Ready previously served as the president of Elizabethtown-based iPay Technologies, founded by Venminder founder Dana Bowers, which was acquired for $300 million in 2010.
Pinterest had a revenue of $2.5 billion in 2021, according to its year-end earnings report. It shares were down nearly 5% Tuesday, but jumped almost 10% after hours on news of Silbermann's departure. The stock is trading just under $20 a share as of noon Wednesday.
The transition into a payments-focused CEO could signal a move by Pinterest to further monetize its platform beyond advertising with e-commerce and direct payments between Pinterest users, according to a report by the San Fransisco Business Times.
