Pinterest is being sued by a woman who says she co-created the site

Christine Martinez, a designer who says she helped Pinterest’s founders conceive the concept of the site, is suing two of the platform’s three male co-founders for failing to credit or offset their contributions.

In Monday’s lawsuit, Martinez says co-founders Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra, close friends of his, made verbal agreements to compensate for the “basic” concepts, which included his ideas about the organization of the site, the appointment of their categories and the ability to shop online. But Silbermann and Sciarra never hired Martinez, offered him stock options, or asked him to sign a contract for his job. The lawsuit accuses the two co-founders of engaging in unfair business practices, breaching an implied contract, enriching themselves unfairly, and breaching an implied contract.

In an interview with the New York News, Martinez said, in retrospect, he feels naive to believe he would get his just cause. “I always hoped that when they could compensate me, they would,” Martinez told the dam. “There was never any doubt in my mind.” But still, “I couldn’t take this to my grave,” he said.

Martinez’s suit arrives just six months after the company resolved a lawsuit for gender discrimination, paying $ 22.5 million to former chief operating officer Françoise Brougher. Brougher accused Pinterest executives of retaliating against her after confronting taller people about what she called “unbridled discrimination, the hostile work environment and the misogyny that pervades Pinterest.” Silbermann was also among those who were explicitly named in Brougher’s suit; in court documents, he alleged that he had “uninvited” important meetings.

Brougher’s allegations revealed that Pinterest, an invented platform overwhelming women—You can necessarily be as kind to your female staff as you are to your female users. What Martinez alleges, if true, helps explain how a platform founded by three men could serve the interests of women so well. Monday’s lawsuit argues they wouldn’t have known how it wouldn’t be for Martinez.

“They had no marketing experience or experience in creating a product for women,” Martinez said Time of Silbermann and Sciarra. “My role was always to educate them.”