Confirmed: Pinterest Raises $27 Million Round Led By Andreessen Horowitz

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (he has other addresses too, so don’t worry if you have a different one). ? Learn More

Hot online pinboard site Pinterest has closed a $27 million round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, we’ve confirmed. As part of the financing, general partner Jeff Jordan will be joining Pinterest’s Board of Directors.

AllThingsD first reported that Andreessen Horowitz was leading a round of over $25 million that values the young startup at up to $200 million (the firm declined to confirm the valuation).

This new funding round comes just a few months after a $10 million round the company closed this past spring, led by Bessemer.

Pinterest is still invite-only, but it has garnered plenty of attention around Silicon Valley. And, notably, the site is getting a lot of traction outside of the tech bubble. The site’s popularity stems in part from its simplicity – at its core, it’s all about ‘pinning’ things you find interesting across the web, and saving them in whatever ‘Board’ you’d like (so, for example, you could make a ‘board’ of things you’d like to learn how to cook, showcasing tantalizing photos of steaks and ribs).

The site is very visually oriented, with photos everywhere — which is what makes it fun to browse through the pinboards of other users. When you spot something you like on someone else’s board, you can re-pin it onto yours (sort of like a Tumblr reblog). And it’s open-ended, so people wind up using their pinboards to showcase a variety of different things.

In an interview, Jordan said that Andreessen Horowitz is excited about Pinterest for three main reasons: first, the site is showing very strong growth metrics, despite the fact that it’s still in a semi-private beta. Second, the service has very strong user engagement — Jordan says the users who are registered often wind up using it “fairly voraciously”.

And finally, the site has a clear path to revenue —  a lot of the use-cases Pinterest users are coming up with have potential commercial intent (say, a list of things they want for their wedding). And there will certainly be business models that can be built around them.

Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann says that the company is setting out to “connect people all over the world through common interest”, and notes that people often use their pinboards to show off things that interest them offline (in other words, it’s sort of like an online bridge between the web and the real world).

Pinterest currently has a team of eight people, including Silbermann and fellow cofounders Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra. They intend to use the funding to grow the team (by a lot, presumably).

Pinterest is a social catalog service. Think of it as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can post collections of things you love, and “follow” collections created by people with great taste.

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Confirmed: Fred Wilson And Bijan Sabet To Leave Twitter’s Board

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to... ? Learn More

Two of Twitter’s earliest investors, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, are leaving its board of directors, Twitter has just confirmed with me. Peter Kafka reported news this morning and we independently heard the same thing from sources last night. Nobody will be replacing their seats on the board. (The remaining board members are Jack Dorsey, Dick Costolo, Evan Williams, Peter Fenton, Mike McCue, David Rosenblatt, and Peter Currie).

The changing of the guard comes just as Twitter recently closed another $800 million in funding, in which preferred shareholders including Union Square and Spark are believed to have sold some shares to new investors in that transaction. As early investors, it is prudent for both to take some money off the table, but it also signals that their commitment to the company (at least financial) has also shrunk.

A Twitter spokesperson provided the following statement: “Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson both played important and greatly appreciated roles in our success. Both saw what Twitter could become before most anyone else. We look forward to their continued input as both investors in the company and passionate users of the product.”

Wilson, in particular, has always been a key board member guiding the company from its very earliest days. This is also not the first time he’s sold shares. Last May at Disrupt NYC, when I asked him whether he had sold any of his Twitter shares, he responded that in general he likes to align himself with company founders and feels comfortable selling shares when they do. Even now, Union Square still owns shares in Twitter.

The departures come at a time when there is a general changing of the guard at Twitter (for instance, chief scientist Abdur Chowdury is also leaving, and, of course, founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone are already gone.

Twitter’s $800 million funding is very much like a mini-IPO within the company in the sense that early employees and shareholders are able to cash out. When people cash out, they leave. It’s just as true for shareholders as for employees. Whenever you infuse that much cash into the system, things are going to change.

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for...

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Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years…In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems. (Source : Union Square Ventures)

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Bijan Sabet is a General Partner at Spark Capital. Bijan led Spark’s investments in Twitter, thePlatform (acquired by Comcast), Boxee, OMGPOP, Ex.fm and Tumblr. Prior to joining Spark, Bijan was Senior Vice President, Corporate Development of GameLogic after serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Charles River Ventures (CRV). Before his work at CRV, Bijan was Vice President, Business Development and Product Management at Moxi Digital where he was responsible for establishing and managing strategic relationships with cable and satellite operators as...

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