Maria Lourdes C. Capilitan

SysAnal (O0A)

July 8, 2008

Case Study

Caterina Fake

Founder, Flickr

            Caterina Fake started Ludicorp in the summer of 2002 with Stewart Butterfield and Jason Classon. The first company product is an online game with real interaction through instant messages. In 2004, they added chat environment with photo sharing. I learned that having backgrounds to what you are doing means a lot. The less money you have the fewer and resources the more creative a person become.

            The Flickr is an example of Web 2.0 companies. After the wedding of Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield they started Ludicorp. They were building a multiplayer online game. It is inspired by NEOPETS, an online game from CBC.

            It was three of them working which each of them have their jobs which they are expert with. Like other new start-ups their funding are from their family and friends. They added Eric Costello to their group. He is a web developer. Soon they started hiring back-end developer.

            Flickr it is a side project that they build as a feature. They built it eight weeks. It was being presented to O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference in February. Photo sharing is one of their feature, they created it because they want something new. Social networking services are growing, example of it was Friendster, MySpace, and Tribes. The special feature of flickr that differences to other social network is their idea of publicness.

            July 2004 they stop the development of neverending game because of Flickr. They receive calls three to four VC’s a week. they have to prioritize only one. They did not take VC because they have other investors but not VC. Tagging revolutionized the product behavior. Many people was affected by it. People started to create groups.

            The success of Flickr has been a huge surprise for their employees. The challenge as female founder in Fake is when there are institution against women in business. Many says that the advantage of women in doing a start up is that women are more passionate in business.