Flickr Founders Leave Yahoo
Flickr, one of the few acquisitions that Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has not messed up, at least on the product side, is now seeing the two co-founders leave: the husband-and-wife team of Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake are leaving the company, joining the mass exec exodus happening at the beleaguered company, reports TC. Fake left last Friday, while Butterfield will leave on July 12. Kakul Srivastava, the director of product management for Flickr, will take over Stewart’s role as GM of Flickr. The two were driving a lot of product innovation within the company and Fake was leading the community/social tools development at Yahoo…then again, they lasted much longer that many other founders brought in by Yahoo, or even Google.
Posted In: Industry Moves, Companies, Yahoo, caterina fake, flickr, stewart butterfield
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Comments (5)
Jun 17, 2008 8:50 PM
That is certainly a big loss… shame!
Jun 17, 2008 8:54 PM
stewart and caterina are great people, awesome innovators, salts of the earth, and so on, but where did you get the idea that they were “driving a lot of product innovation” within the company? Did you actually do any reporting? Did Stewart ever touch any other part of Yahoo? Has Caterina been anywhere near Brickhouse for over a year?
Plus, whoever told you “Fake was leading the community/social tools development at Yahoo” is smoking crack. If only she were!
Jun 18, 2008 12:40 AM
When Stewart and Caterina sold their company to Yahoo! three years ago the stock price was 40% higher than it is today—hopefully they took more cash than stock. If your three year lock up was over, wouldn’t you now jump the sinking ship?
Jun 18, 2008 9:45 AM
What Yahoo social tools? Yahoo360? Did Fake have any input on that?
Jun 18, 2008 1:00 PM
The real question is what is in store for Flickr? Will their departure make an impact? Flickr has been one of the few shining lights of Yahoo….