Pinterest CEO: We're not really worth $3.8 billion (at least not yet)

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann isn't letting a sky-high valuation go to his head. After raising a $225 million round in November, the social scrapbooking site's value was pegged at $3.8 billion, but Silbermann tells the Wall Street Journal this week that his team takes that number with a grain of salt.

Here's a little of what Silbermann had to say (emphasis added):

Zach Braff sold his movie, so what does that mean to Kickstarter backers?

Zach Braff's Kickstarter gamble has paid off in a big way.

The actor and director took to the crowdfunding site last year to raise money to make his follow-up film to indie darling Garden State. He wound up bringing in $3.1 million from 46,520 backers for that movie, Wish I Was Here. He also caught grief because some folks thought a celebrity should be able to raise money without turning to the  ...

Warren Buffett’s billion-dollar NCAA prize part of a long tradition

Passion goes a long way in the world of innovation. But sometimes cold, hard cash goes further. Something Warren Buffet’s Bershire Hathaway apparently knows all too well, based on yesterday’s announcement that they would offer $1 billion dollars to the person or people who 100 percent accurately predict the NCAA college basketball bracket.

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Will Jeff Bezos start using Amazon’s crystal ball?

Jeff Bezos has managed to get his hands on a near-equivalent of a crystal ball into the minds of his customers.

Amazon reportedly obtained as of December 24, 2013, a patent for something called the "method and system for anticipatory package shipping,” an algorithm-based system that could potentially ship products before consumers place an order for them. That was just a few weeks after his  ...

Marc Andreessen makes the case for Bitcoin

Last week, it was Chris Dixon predicting that a single Bitcoin could be worth as much as $100,000. This week, it's his colleague at Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, out with a long essay in the New York Times' Dealbook making the case for the crypto-currency's usefulness.

Andreessen writes:

Sheryl Sandberg joins the billionaire club

Sheryl Sandberg just became one of the youngest women billionaires in the world.

According to Bloomberg, the 44-year-old Facebook COO's fortune passed the lofty mark yesterday evening after Facebook shares closed at a record high $58.51 (she owns about 12.3 million shares of the company). Sandberg joins the small, but growing list of women billionaires. The 2013 Forbes billionaire list counted  ...

Back 9 Links: Do founders need to be jerks?

Upstarts, newsmakers and influencers who caught our attention on Tuesday, January 21.

1. Why are so many crazy successful founders total jerks?
2. Black Twitter finally gets its due.
3. Pope Francis to Davos: "I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it."
4. How an intern made one of the New York Times most popular features.
5. Google’s Webspam head: knock it off with the guest  ...
   17 hours ago