go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

Co-Founder Paul Sciarra Says Why He’s Leaving Pinterest

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-sciarra-sleaving-pinterest-2012-4

Late last night, Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra wrote a blog post confirming he would be leaving his day-to-day role at Pinterest. He’ll remain an advisor to the company.

His post reads a lot like Naveen Selvadari’s, when he unhappily departed Foursquare a few weeks ago.

“After lots of reflection and plenty of discussion with Ben and others, I’ve decided that now is a good time for me to step down formally from day-to-day involvement,” Sciarra writes. “Of course, I’ll continue to be there for the company:  now, as an advisor, an owner, and — as always — a dedicated pinner.”

Sciarra says he’ll be joining Andreessen Horowitz, the lead investor in Pinterest’s $27 million round last fall, as an entrepreneur in residence.

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The big news today from PayPal was a tiny credit-card reader called PayPal Here. It lets any small business owner with an iPhone or Android phone take credit card payments.

But there was actually a far more interesting technology shown today.

It lets you walk into a store and buy a product without touching your phone, money, or a credit card — or even taking your wallet out.

Like the credit card reader, it’s pretty obviously inspired by Square, whose Card Case app was introduced about six months ago. But I never actually got how revolutionary the concept of touchless retail payment was until I saw it in action today.

Here’s how it works.

You need a PayPal account and the PayPal mobile app on your phone. You use the app to look up nearby retailers that accept PayPal. If you find one that you want to shop at, you check in — just like you’d do on Foursquare or any other check-in service.

When you walk into the retailer, their PayPal app (used with the PayPal Here reader) will automatically recognize you. If you want, you can pay with a credit card or cash.

But if you want to use your PayPal account, you simply tell the person behind the counter and the amount will automatically be debited.

You don’t have to do anything else.

I didn’t get what a big deal this was until I tested it out after the event at a nearby cupcake store that had signed up for PayPal Here.

It’s like walking into your local bar and saying “put it on my tab.”

It’s so much smoother than the clunky NFC-based system that Google is using in Google Wallet, where you have to take out your cell phone and tap it against a reader.

In fact, this feature isn’t new at all. It’s called PayPal Local, and it’s been around since late 2010 in San Francisco. But I’ve never seen it in use, anywhere. That’s probably because most merchants aren’t interested in setting up this system JUST to take PayPal payments in the real world.

Either way, if PayPal or Square doesn’t do it, some other company will. Maybe Amazon or Google, maybe Foursquare or another check-in company, maybe a credit card company or bank. Or maybe some startup.

But the idea — walking into a store, being recognized, and being able to buy something without having to use any physical object to complete the transaction — is too great to pass up.

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See Also:

• How PayPal Royally Screwed This Company And All The Kids It Was Trying To Help
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SendGrid has sent 30 billion e-mails in the three years it’s been in business — and none of them are spam.

SendGrid is an e-mail cloud service hired by Pinterest, Foursquare, Hootsuite, Spotify, job sites, daily deal sites and many other companies.

About 40,000 Web applications use SendGrid, says its CEO  — and Boulder startup icon — Jim Franklin. And none of it is spam because users sign up these e-mails, such as job openings, friend requests and the like.

Franklin says it even coaches its customers on how to do e-mail so people don’t report it as spam.

“One person sending e-mail to another is easy. But an app sending out e-mail is hard. E-mail is a problem for developers,” explains Franklin.

So it’s no surprise that SendGrid is growing at 10% annually — it now sends out more than 3 billion emails per month – and it recently landed Microsoft Azure as a partner. SendGrid will now be the default e-mail service for any app using Microsoft’s cloud, Franklin says. New Azure developers qualify for 25,000 free e-mails a month.

The company is one of the shining stars of the blossoming Boulder startup scene. It began in Boulder’s TechStars accelerator program in 2009 and has boomed from there. It recently landed raised $21 million in Series B funding in January — for a total of $27 million raised so far

As SendGrid uses Rackspace, Web apps that also use Rackspace qualify for 40,000 free e-mails per month.

All who know SendGrid are expecting an IPO in as little three years. One of its VCs, Bessemer Venture Partners, has done over 100 IPOs, notes Franklin. That’s if the company doesn’t accept an acquisition offer before then, says Franklin. 

And if you’re interested in one of the 30 job openings at the company, you might also want to know that the company motto is the 4H’s: Honest, hungry, humble, happy.

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