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Chapter 9 - Flickr
www.flickr.com
Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing
application in the world. We spoke to Caterina Fake to
find out more.
Your name: Caterina Fake
Company name: Flickr
Website URL:
www.flickr.com
Your company / website vision statement / goal:
To kick ass. This is actually on our company description page.
What you sell / services you offer (brief description of your company):
Flickr is almost certainly the best photo sharing and management
application in the world!
Have you got any qualifications? Please tell us about yourself
academically?
I am completely unqualified to be doing what I’m doing. Don’t
tell anyone please. I
studied poetry in school.
If you could give readers of this book one piece of advice what would it
be?
Startups are not for everyone. Do you have nerves of steel?
Here’s an example of the kind of thing you will need to do.
Imagine you have an employee who has put her heart and soul
into her work because she believed in you and your idea, and
she worked for you 12-14 hours a day for three years earning
far below what she could be earning elsewhere, and who is a
single mom with three kids and the sole wage-earner in her
family, and imagine asking her if she will work without pay for
the next three months to finish the product, with no promise of
ever getting paid again in the future.
What do you look for in an employee?
That they’re smarter than I am and don’t know it. I’ll also hire someone
who is smarter than I am and knows it, but they’re sometimes harder to
work with. :-)
What kind of culture exists at your company? How did you
establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of
culture?
I think that the personality of a company really derives from the
personality of the founders. To give you an idea of what it was
like at Flickr, the parent company was called “Ludicorp” and all
our job descriptions had under “Required”: “Tolerance for office
tomfoolery, acting like a monkey, etc.”
How many hours do you work a day on average?
10 or 12, with gusts of 14-16. I like working. When you’re
doing something that you love, and that you really believe in, it
isn’t hard.
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