Dive Brief:
- Leaked documents designed to attract investment reveal that Pinterest is targeting substantial growth in sales and users through 2018.
- Pinterest is forecasting $2.8 billion in revenue by 2018, up from $169 million this year; the social bulletin board expects to more than double its user base to 329 million in the same period.
- Half of American women aged 18–54 have Pinterest accounts, and international growth is supplying 60% of new users.
Dive Insight:
Documents published by TechCrunch indicate the Pinterest has big plans for e-commerce. Investment firm Andreessen Horowitz valued the online bulletin board at about $11 billion in February, and new documents leaked from the fund indicate that Pinterest is looking to scale up to compete with Facebook and Google.
While the company posted only about $25 million in sales in 2014, the documents indicate that Pinterest generates $1.44 per active user—and the network has plans to grow that figure to $9.34 by 2018. Pinterest expects to grow its user base from 151 million in 2015 to 329 million by 2018.
Pinterest has a retail partnership in place with Target, and is in talks with early adopters including Burberry and Nordstrom. The platform’s ad revenue streams may eventually include not only sales of Promoted and Buyable Pins, but fees based on user engagement such as re-pins.
