Ben Silbermann is stepping down from his role as Chief Executive Officer of Pinterest, a company he co-founded 12 years ago. Google commerce executive Bill Ready will henceforth be responsible for running the social media platform.<\/p>\n
Ready’s appointment ends Silbermann’s 12-year tenure as CEO. Ready will receive an annual salary of $400,000 and be eligible for a stock option award to buy about 8.6 million Class A shares.<\/p>\n
Capacity-wise, Ready is an executive who has led Google’s trading and payments business for the past two years and has also held senior leadership roles at PayPal.<\/p>\n
“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,” Silbermann said.<\/p>\n
Silbermann will now assume the newly created position of the company’s executive chairman. He will retain his board seat while Ready will also join the board.<\/p>\n
Founded in January 2010, Pinterest is a social media sharing service that enables users to store and find information on the internet using images and on a smaller scale through animated GIFs and bulletin board videos. It now has 436.8 million monthly active users.<\/p>\n