Pinterest setting up Chicago sales office

Digital bulletin-board site Pinterest is creating a sales force here as it figures out how to make money.

“We started our first monetization experiment last year, and we’re opening an office in Chicago to get people on the ground working with advertisers,” company spokeswoman Annie Ta said told chicagogrid.com.

Like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest sells promoted pins in users’ feeds.

Pinterest, which employs about 140 people, is looking to fill account and partner manager positions in Chicago. The San Francisco-based company declined to say how many people it plans to hire. Employees will be based out of unspecified co-working spaces in River North.

Four-year-old Pinterest has raised $565 million in funding and is valued at nearly $4 billion.

In an interview with Businessweek, chief executive Ben Silbermann said “the big-picture assumption of the company is that there is a direct link between the things you pin and the things that you eventually spend money on.”