Pinterest President Tim Kendall is leaving at the end of 2017 to work on his own healthcare startup; Jon Alferness to take over his responsibilities
Kurt Wagner / Recode :
Context & Ripple Effects
Tim Kendall has been Pinterest's consolidation point for business-side leadership since Joanne Bradford's 2015 departure, when her partnership duties folded into his portfolio. His exit hands that accumulated scope to Jon Alferness, who only joined from Google last summer as VP of advertising products — an unusually fast elevation for a recent hire.
The move matters because Pinterest's monetization engine is exactly where its leadership churn has concentrated: the CFO seat was filled just last year with Twitter alum Todd Morgenfeld, and now both the presidency and the ads organization change shape at once.
First-order effects
- Kendall leaves at the end of 2017 to found his own healthcare startup, and Alferness absorbs his responsibilities immediately — meaning Pinterest's ads and partnerships agenda now runs through an executive with barely a year of tenure at the company.
Second-order effects
- The promotion puts more weight on a hire Pinterest poached from Google, deepening its reliance on Google-trained operators for revenue leadership — and if Alferness's own subsequent departure within months of this handoff is any guide, the role carries retention risk that forces yet another reorganization.
Third-order effects
- The pattern here — non-founder executives cycling through quickly while founders retain control — points toward the structural endpoint Pinterest itself reached when Ben Silbermann stepped aside in 2022 for Google commerce executive Bill Ready, completing the shift from founder-run operations to externally sourced leadership.
The trend: Consumer internet companies are increasingly filling senior operating roles with Google alumni, but short tenures keep forcing repeated leadership reorganizations before founders themselves eventually cede control.