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What Deepak Agarwal Learned and Accomplished in his First 90 Days at Pinterest

Monday, 08 February 2021 07:40 AM

ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / February 8, 2021 / Deepak Agarwal, current Head of Content and Discovery at Pinterest, found himself transitioning to his new role in the midst of the global pandemic. Pinterest, a platform designated as a virtual "scrapbook" of sorts, serves as a place for users to seek and share lifestyle inspiration. During a time when many are experiencing a sense of uncertainty or dissatisfaction with reality, Pinterest is an outlet for expression, setting goals, and manifesting a new (and a more ideal) reality. In fact, Pinterest's user base grew 26% in 2020, making the platform the third-largest social media platform in the U.S.

The weight of the impact of his role at Pinterest was not lost on Deepak Agarwal. To shed some light on his path and what prepared him to tackle a new and challenging role during a sensitive and uncertain time, Deepak Agarwal dives into his history as a business innovator over the course of decades, forging new solutions to industry problems.

His first pivotal role was serving as an individual contributor to Yahoo! At the time, the Yahoo! homepage was the most-visited page on the internet. Through his work in automation and integrating machine learning to improve efficiency, Deepak Agarwal made a massive impact on the growth of Yahoo! and various sub-pages like Yahoo!Finance and Sports. In his time with Yahoo!, Deepak Agarwal contributed to an impressive 200% increase in digital traffic.

After leaving Yahoo!, Deepak Agarwal sought to grow and enhance the success of fellow employees in his position at LinkedIn, where he served as Vice President of Engineering. His role was pivotal in catalyzing the development and growth of fellow LinkedIn employees while improving operations by infusing intelligence and data in each of the functions he touched.

"I was lucky to have the opportunity to develop great leaders and work with some of the brightest minds in the industry. Our team had a significant impact on LinkedIn's product and culture, and machine learning went from a nice-to-have to a must-have under my leadership. I am grateful for these experiences, and thrilled that they have led me to my current position at Pinterest."

It was Deepak Agarwal's proclivity for machine learning and cutting-edge content that led him to his current role at Pinterest.

"Content is the core of our product, and it would be impossible to surface the right content to the right Pinners without machine learning. Pinners love Pinterest because we have built sophisticated models that recommend the right idea at the right time, then curate additional cross-vertical ideas from that point," says Deepak Agarwal. "We are using innovative technologies every day: automated intelligence, computer vision, augmented reality, 3D animations, recommendation and search, and e-commerce, all in the service of building a great product for Pinners."

In his time with Pinterest, Deepak Agarwal has identified challenges and opportunities for further innovation. "Our challenges, and therefore our opportunities, are fundamentally about the psychology of our Pinners. Because our product was created to ‘bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love,' in order to live our mission we must go far deeper than simple surface-level recommendations, and get to the fundamentals of our Pinners' tastes."

Beyond this, Deepak Agarwal identifies another major benefit of working at Pinterest is the data. User behavioral data fuels a refined and highly sophisticated recommendation and search system that leads to strong engagement and conversions.

So, what is next for Pinterest? Catalyzing confident action: "If a Pinner comes to Pinterest searching for home decor, we want to make it easy to purchase the products they discover, and guide their search to similar items across art, fashion, or architecture. Our teams are actively building the technology that powers this."

Deepak Agarwal is excited to continue building and enhancing great technology. "Leading Content & Discovery at Pinterest has been an inspiring opportunity for me. I am excited to continue building great tech in the service of enabling our Pinners to create lives they love."

Contact:

Andrew Mitchell
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 404-955-7133

SOURCE: Deepak Agarwal

Topic:
Company Update
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