Bill Ready

Chief Executive Officer Pinterest

Last Reviewed: September 29, 2026

Executive Summary

Bill Ready has been Chief Executive Officer and a director of Pinterest since 2022, the first person other than a co-founder to run the company. He came from payments and commerce rather than social media. He ran Braintree and Venmo as CEO, was chief operating officer of PayPal, and led commerce, payments and the “next billion users” effort at Google. At Pinterest he has argued that a more positive, purposeful internet is also a better business, pairing a commerce-led product strategy with safety measures aimed at younger users. He also sits on the boards of Visa and Williams-Sonoma.

Career Highlights

• Chief Executive Officer and director of Pinterest since 2022; a Form 4 for 20 September 2026 still reports him as CEO.
• President of commerce, payments and next billion users at Google (Alphabet) from January 2020 to June 2022.
• Executive vice president and chief operating officer of PayPal from October 2016 through July 2019, after serving as senior vice president and global head of product and engineering.
• CEO of Braintree from August 2011 to December 2013, and CEO of Venmo as well once Braintree had acquired it, until PayPal acquired Braintree in December 2013.
• President of iPay Technologies from 2008 to 2011.
• Director of Visa Inc. and Williams-Sonoma, Inc.; formerly a director of Automatic Data Processing, Inc.

Professional Journey

Ready describes himself as a first-generation college graduate from rural Kentucky. He studied information systems and finance at the University of Louisville and later earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. His early career included strategy consulting at McKinsey & Company, where he advised financial technology companies, and a spell as executive in residence at the venture firm Accel Partners.

From 2008 to 2011 he was president of iPay Technologies. In August 2011 he became chief executive of Braintree, a mobile and web payment systems company. Braintree then bought Venmo, and Ready ran both companies at the same time. PayPal acquired Braintree, with Venmo, in December 2013. Ready kept running Braintree’s operations inside PayPal, and in July 2015 he became senior vice president and global head of product and engineering. From October 2016 through July 2019 he was PayPal’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, and he stayed on as an executive vice president through a transition that ended in December 2019.

In January 2020 he joined Google as president of commerce, payments and next billion users. He left in June 2022 to become Pinterest’s chief executive. Co-founder Ben Silbermann, CEO since 2008, stayed on and is now non-executive chair.

At Pinterest, the company’s own account of his mission is to prove that a more positive, purposeful internet “isn’t just possible”, and that it is better for users. Under him Pinterest has made accounts belonging to users under 16 private and has supported phone-free schools. He sits on the boards of Visa and Williams-Sonoma, and he is a senior advisor and limited partner of Silversmith Capital Partners.

Education

Harvard Business School

Master of Business Administration

University of Louisville

Bachelor of Science, Information Systems and Finance