If you enjoy taking pictures to any degree, then you most likely heard of a little website called Flickr. What has quickly become a household name now stands as the most popular place to store and share your pictures with family and friends. Flickr not only provides a place for sharing photos, but it continues to create a growing community of active users around those photos. This week in the spotlight we take a look at entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield, who founded the popular photo sharing & social networking platform and just how he did it.
Summary:
Name: Stewart Butterfield
Age: 36
Location: Canada
Claim to fame: Flickr (photo sharing & social networking website)
Initial cost: < $1000
How He Did It:
Stewart Butterfield was born and raised in the beautiful country of Canada, where he obtained a B.A. and a Masters of Philosophy. He later developed the photo sharing web community known as Flickr with his wife. Working with a few selected web developers, Stewart and his wife developed Flickr as we all know it today. It was released to the public in February of 2004 where it received quick success. Yahoo! quickly acquired the company from Stewart in late 2005 where Stewart remained as a General Manager for the site. He resigned from the company in July of 2008. Since its creation, Flickr has seen massive success claiming to hold over 3.6 billion images as of June, 2009.
Lessons Learned:
- Don’t let your college degree or level of education box you in. (Stewart’s education was far outside the realm of technology, but he was able to find success outside of that.)
- You can hire developers and others to fill in the gaps in order to develop your idea. You don’t have to have or do all the pieces yourself. Get help where needed.
- You never know how people will respond until you try. You might be surprised. (A simple photo sharing site quickly became much more)
- Focus on the idea and success will find you.
Did you miss last weeks spotlight? Check it out here: The Entrepreneur Spotlight: Evan Williams
Be on the lookout for our next entrepreneur spotlight article in this ongoing series. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the success of this week’s entrepreneur. Did you like this post? Useful example? User of the product or service? Thoughts? Take a minute and let us know!
Sources:
Flickr Co-founders Join Exodus
Stewart’s Resign Letter
Future of Open Source
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