Caterina Fake is best known for being the co-founder of Flickr, which pioneered a ton of the things that we now take for granted on the internet: social networking, tagging, and content surfacing algorithms to name just a few.
But like many of us, her career path has been – to say the least – unpredictable. On the way to becoming the co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake explored everything from banking to graphic design to writing novels, and she’s now the Chairman of the Board for Etsy, a board member at Creative Commons, and on the board of advisors for the Berkeley School of Information. And while there’s a narrative in our culture that this sort of winding path indicates that something went wrong, I believe the opposite – I believe that it creates the sort of eclectic, versatile people who will (like Caterina) thrive in the new “skill economy.”
Today on the podcast,
- How Caterina ended up co-founding Flickr and ultimately selling it to Yahoo even though she grew up as a self-described “artsy girl” – a far cry from what many would expect of a tech founder
- Some great advice for writers, specifically around how to create the kind of habits that will get you into the groove of relentless daily productivity, and keep you there
- Why she calls herself a “reclusive extrovert” and why online communities are an ideal fit for reclusive extroverts
Enjoy!
Stop chasing prizes that you don’t want.
FOLLOW CATERINA:
website | twitter | flickr
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Caterina’s episode was featured in the 30 Days of Genius series of Chase Jarvis Live on CreativeLive. If you like this, join 50,000+ people who are receiving one of these videos everyday.
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Some Questions I Ask:
- How do you get the honor of being named one of Time Magazine’s Top Influential People and who else was at the party? [1:35]
- What’s the path to becoming named one of the most influential people in the world? [2:30]
- What was the sequence of steps that you went through to get where you are? [6:30]
- After handbags, how did you get back into the internet game? [14:04]
- How were you trying to build community through sharing photos on Flickr? [14:47]
- What angle did you come at your quest for sharing and building community with photography from? [16:38]
- What did you do after Flickr sold to Yahoo? [19:07]
- What kind of advice do you have about following your intuition? [22:05]
- How do people take the steps to reconcile their inner voice with the sunk costs of choosing the wrong path? [26:13]
- Is there a message you can give to the people who don’t think they have the time to pursue their calling? [28:33]
- What kinds of things do you do every day? [34:13]
- What does your schedule look like these days? [38:12]
- How are you spending your Jelly Beans right now? [42:00]
- As a parent, how do you think about encouraging your kids? [44:23]
- What is something about yourself that other people would be surprised to learn? [49:40]
- What did you learn yesterday? [52:08]
- Where do you find inspiration? [54:08]
- Do you have more book recommendations? [56:10]
- Why is it so hard to listen to your own voice? [1:01:27]
- So if chasing success is leading us astray, what should we chase? [1:02:58]
- Anything you want to leave us with? [1:07:31]
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
- Why “doing what you care about” is actually good advice, even if it takes a long time to see signs of success. [3:02]
- How Caterina used her own sense of self to drive her conviction and success. [4:04]
- Caterina’s system of working odd jobs (like working in a dive shop in Arkansas) to fund backpacking trips. [7:04]
- How Caterina trusted her instincts, fibbed a little and learned HTML over the weekend to land her first job at a web design agency. [9:23]
- How Caterina used the dot com bomb to revisit her artistic roots and get crafty learning a new trade. [11:47]
- The simple system for learning whatever it is that you need to know for your industry; have the initiative, figure out who know’s what you need to know, and then offer them something in return. [13:27]
- The small handful of big technological breakthroughs that guided Flickr’s early success. [17:38]
- The thread that connects Caterina’s successful endeavors- Flickr, Etsy, Kickstarter- is about helping get people’s work out there. [21:10]
- How our educational system is set up to reward conformists. [22:50]
- Why you need to listen to your inner voice. [26:20]
- All it takes to be prolific is a half hour a day. Every day. Your Google calendar can help! [28:58]
- Advice to aspiring writers: move somewhere cheap. [31:38]
- Taking one step towards your goals is the most important thing. Caterina’s first step; writing enough to fill an index card. [33:27]
- Why you should only check your email twice a day and might consider going on an internet diet. [36:05]
- This video, starring Jelly Beans, might inspire you to stop wasting your free time. [39:30]
- Why the traditional route is actually risky. [47:20]
- Why you might want to read James Hillman if you’re seeking your vocation. [57:08]
- How the drive to success may be killing you and leading you astray. [1:02:00]
- The thing that everybody knows but we all need to hear anyways; love is the most important thing. [1:06:38]
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