Caterina Fake | Early Life | Education | Family | Business | Wealth
There is no fake about Caterina Fake. Caterina Fake is an American businesswoman and entrepreneur. She is a well-known personality in the business industry. She was co-founder of the website Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. In this article, we will talk about Caterina Fake, her early life, education, family, and, most importantly, her business journey.
Who is Caterina Fake?
Caterina Fake was born in 1969 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. She worked as an angel investor, and later she was recognized within Silicon Valley. Fake was also in Time magazine and listed in Time 100. She first came to the spotlight when she was the chairwoman of Etsy.
And she is well-known for co-founding Flickr and Hunch.
Caterina Fake: Early Life
Caterina Fake was born in Pennsylvania. But later, her parents took her to New Jersey and raised her in northern New Jersey. Her father was American, and her mother was Filipino. She was raised in a very strict family where she had to focus on her studies and career. There was no way that she could watch television, play classical music, or read poetry.
Caterina Fake: Education
First, she was in a prestigious college named Choate Rosemary Hall in 1986. Then she went to study English at Smith College in 1989. Later she was transferred to Vassar College, where she completed her graduation. Fake has mentioned many times that Vassar College had an impact on her career.
The college had an intranet, and students could easily connect to the intranet from their dorm rooms. This was the first when Fake found out about web design, and she always gives credit to it. Later, she worked for several companies and worked various jobs such as investment banker, painter’s assistant, and dive shop.
She said about the time when she used to work for different companies, “post-college, what do I want to do period.”
Then, she went to San Francisco, where her sister lived. She started learning about the internet and web design, and this made her what she is right now. While living in San Francisco, she used to create CD-ROMs and websites.
Caterina Fake: Family
There is not enough information about her mother and father. But after becoming famous, we could find some of her information. Stewart Butterfield was the other co-founder of Flickr, who co-founded Flickr alongside Caterina Fake. And they married in 2001, but later, in 2007, they divorced. Fake had a daughter with Steward in 2007. In 2015, she confirmed that she was in a relationship with Jyri Engestrom, who was the co-founder of Jaiku. The couple has not married yet and is together. They have a total of three children between them.
Caterina Fake: Career
After doing a couple of different jobs, Fake took a job in Netscape in 1997, where she had to manage the community forum. First of all, the experience of managing forums, online communities, and blogging led her to co-found her first company in 2002. The name of the company was Ludico. The other two co-founders were Jason Classon and Stewart Butterfield. The company made a multiplayer online role-playing game which was called Game Neverending. But the tragedy was that the game never launched.
Though the game did not launch, this made her do something different. And with all the experience, she and her husband, Stewart, started Flickr in 2004. After launching the product, the platform became one of the world’s number-one photo-sharing websites. In 2005, Yahoo! acquired Flickr with a price of around $30 million. And then, the website became a part of Web 2.0 sites. And there were such integrating features like community open APIs, social networking, tagging, and others.
When Yahoo! acquired Flickr, Fake accepted an offer from Yahoo!, where she had to run the Technology Development group. The program was well-known as the name of the Hack Yahoo program. After working for a couple of years, she reigned on June 13, 2008.
While working at Yahoo! Fake was also the art director for Salon. This was a news and opinion website. In 2007, Fake founded another website with entrepreneur Chris Dixon, and the name of the website was Hunch. In 2011, eBay acquired the website at a price of $80 million. There was another project that she was working on, and the name was Findery. The product’s original name was Pinwheel. Fake was ly able to launch the beta version. But later, in 2012, the company changed its name to Findery again. The headquarter of Findery is in San Francisco.
In 2008, she joined Creative Commons. And in 2015, she joined the board of trustees of Sundance Institute. Before joining, she resigned from Etsy, where she was on the board of directors. When she resigned, she was the chairwoman. She had been working for Etsy for almost eight years.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
Here are some interesting questions and answers that most people ask.
Ans. Catherina Fake won a couple of awards, which are,
a. Best Leaders (2005, Bloomberg Businessweek)
b. Fast Company’s Fast 50 (2005, Forbes)
c. 20 Entrepreneurs under 35 (Red Herring)
d. Time 100 (2006, Time Magazine)
Ans. The name of the podcast that Fake used to host is “Should This Exist?” The Podcast was all about technology, potential business, and what are the scopes.
Ans. Yes, Caterina Fake has an honorary doctorate. She received her doctorate in 2009 from the Rhode Island School of Design.
To Conclude
Other than working for Etsy and co-founding Flickr and Hunch, she got other rewards for her excellent lifelong journey. She earned a doctorate from The New School in 2013 and from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009. There used to be a column of “Builders and Titans,” and she was listed for co-founding Flickr. She also received Visionary Award in 2018 from Silicon valley. Caterina Fake net worth is around $25 million.
I hope you find this article interesting.
Thank You.
Read Also: