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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.