Pinterest recently agreed to pay $34.7 million to settle the lawsuit from an early advisor who allegedly co-created the platform without compensation.
Christine Martinez, 44, a friend of Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra, two of the three co-founders of Pinterest, sued the company in 2021 for implicit contracts, theft of ideas, unfair concentration and violations of unfair business practices. She said she came up with many ideas for the app, including organizing images on a “board,” but despite her promises, she was never paid for her contributions.
Pinterest, a virtual pinboarding company with many female users, announced a settlement with Martinez in a financial application in November 2024.
“No one wants to find themselves in the litigation process. I'm really, really excited and frankly, I've been relieved after that,” Martinez said in an interview Friday.
“Mr. Martinez provided useful marketing and community growth inputs and strategies during the early stages of Pinterest's founding,” according to a statement that was part of the settlement provided by Martinez. “The parties are pleased to be able to resolve this legacy issue in a friendly way.”
Pinterest declined to comment.
The settlement follows a series of complaints and legal disputes against Pinterest by some female employees and executives.
In 2020, Pinterest said he paid $22.5 million to resolve a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by former Chief Operating Officer Françoise Brougher and was fired after experiencing sexist treatment at the company. That same year, more than 200 employees signed a petition requesting the company to change its policies after three former workers denounced Pinterest for race, sexism and retaliation.
Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, left the role in 2022.
Martinez, who has a background in e-commerce and interior design, claimed in the lawsuit that Silverman and Siarra sought advice from a company that became Pinterest a year before it was founded in 2010.
She said she came up with the idea of photo boards and the platform's signature “Pin IT” phrase, which also helped top design and lifestyle bloggers to use the site to promote. According to the lawsuit, some of the programming code on Pinterest was named after her homage.
She never signed a formal agreement with Pinterest, but it was implied that she would ultimately compensate. Pinterest was released in 2019 and has a market capitalization of over $18 billion.
Martinez is currently an executive and strategic advisor for Jingo, an online AI shopping platform that caters to women.
