Digital pinboard site Pinterest is closing a round led by Andreessen Horowitz after a frenzy of interest.
Andreessen Horowitz's Jeff Jordan tells us the check was cut for $27 million, and that the round came together over two to three weeks. He did not comment on the valuation, although we hear from another source that it's ~$200 million.
We originally reported the round was massive, at least a $75 million+ valuation.
Our valley source says there was a "frenzy" to get into the round, as the company has become, "the toast of the town."
Jordan says user growth and engagement numbers are incredlbe, and that he hasn't seen adoption numbers like Pinterest's since Facebook's early days. Pageviews are up 50% month over month and are now about one billion per month, says one source.
Pinterest provides pages that users can turn into inspiration boards. They can drag, drop and upload images from all over the web and keep them on their pages. The pages becomes collections of things people like and want. Other users can follow people's pages to derive inspiration, and swap ideas with each other.
Andreessen Horowitz was intrigued by the commercial intent of the things people post. Many pictures are taken directly from ecommerce sites -- some still have price tags on them. Jordan says many merchants have already received a great deal of traffic from Pinterest.
Pinterest is also a social site. People follow other people's Pinterset pages, make friends with other users that have similar taste,
Interestingly, Pinterest started off as a company that was popular with mainstream people, and has been gradually moving its way to the tech community.
