After five years of leading the sales, marketing, and advertising efforts at Pinterest, President Tim Kendall is leaving the discovery site to focus on his new health care startup, one that will focus on fighting electronic device addictions and curbing their mental health consequences. Before building up Pinterest’s advertising empire and overseeing the company’s entire business operations, Tim Kendall worked for Facebook as the Director of Monetization. Since joining the Pinterest team, Kendall has played a huge role in bringing up their revenue from just 25 million in 2014 to a targeted 500 million + in 2017. Not only is Kendall and his team known for spearheading Pinterest’s most successful marketing campaigns and generating all of their ad products including the Promoted Pin, he is also known for his eccentric work habits, such as taking morning ice baths and refusing to use his phone or laptop at meetings. Kendall’s strong interest in mental health and rejuvenative work practices and his method of using paper printouts versus electronic ones at meetings gives further reason to his departure.
In 2012 Kendall started out as the head of Pinterest’s product department and by 2015 he climbed his way up the ranks and was promoted to President. The future of Pinterest’s massively successful advertising empire is still up in the air but his replacement, former 13 year Google exec Jon Alferness, will surely build upon Kendall’s legacy as the company begins the IPO process in 2018. Jon Alferness has had major successes as Google’s VP of product management of their shopping and travel products and he has been Pinterest’s Senior VP for Ads and Products since July. Even though Kendall will remain an advisor to Pinterest, his loss will weigh heavily on their prospective advertising campaigns. Pinterest will need all of Alferness’ experience and dedication to lead the company’s marketing and ad efforts post IPO.
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