Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp On International Ambitions, The Apple Watch, The SF Housing Crisis And More
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
This May 2015 interview lands mid-arc for Pinterest: weeks after it started putting ads directly into users' home feeds, co-founder Evan Sharp is out framing what comes next — international markets, wearable surfaces like the Apple Watch, and the Bay Area conditions that shape whether its team can stay assembled. It also sits inside a quiet pattern of Apple-design DNA flowing into Pinterest, which had already pulled former Apple and Facebook engineer Scott Goodson onto mobile platform work and would soon add early Mac icon designer Susan Kare to the creative team (Scott Goodson hire, Susan Kare joining).
Sharp's international ambitions here read as the setup for what followed: by April 2016, Pinterest execs were publicly discussing an overhaul of its underlying software and new iOS app explicitly aimed at capturing audiences outside the U.S. (the software overhaul and international push).
First-order effects
- Sharp's comments put Pinterest on record as treating non-U.S. markets and watchable form factors like the Apple Watch as near-term product questions, not distant ones — direction-setting straight from a founder while the home-feed ad business was still fresh.
Second-order effects
- The Apple connection compounds: hires like Goodson and Kare deepen a design pipeline between the two companies, and Pinterest's stated international ambitions force the engineering rebuild that execs detailed in 2016.
Third-order effects
- The pull of Apple's design orbit proves durable enough to eventually take a founder back — Sharp left his chief design and creative officer role at Pinterest in 2021 to join Jony Ive's LoveFrom (his LoveFrom move), closing the loop this interview hints at.
The trend: Design-led consumer platforms of the 2010s kept recruiting from — and ultimately returning talent to — Apple's design culture while chasing international scale.