Caterina Fake is an American businesswoman and internet entrepreneur.
Fake was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, attended Smith College, and graduated from Vassar College in 1991.
Fake is the co-founder of Hunch, a site that is building the "taste graph" of the internet, mapping every user on the internet to every entity, and their affinity for that entity. It launched in June 2009[1][2] and was acquired by eBay for a reported $80 million in November 2011. [3]
Prior to Hunch, Fake co-founded Flickr, the popular photo-sharing service developed by Ludicorp in Vancouver, with partner and then-husband Stewart Butterfield. Flickr was later acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. Flickr ushered in the so-called Web 2.0 integrating features such as social networking, community open APIs, tagging, and algorithms that surfaced the best, or more interesting content. At Yahoo! she ran the Technology Development group, known for its Hack Yahoo! program, a stimulus to innovation and creativity, and Brickhouse, a rapid development environment for new products. Fake resigned from Yahoo on June 13, 2008.[4]
Prior to Flickr, she was Art Director at Salon.com and heavily involved in the development of online community, social software and personal publishing.
She joined the board of directors of Creative Commons in August 2008,[5] is Chairman of the Board of Etsy and in May 2009 received an Honorary Doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design.[6]
Fake has won many awards, including BusinessWeek's Best Leaders of 2005,[7] Forbes 2005 eGang, Fast Company's Fast 50, and Red Herring's 20 Entrepreneurs under 35. In 2006, she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, appearing on the cover of Newsweek that same year. She is a Founder Partner at Founder Collective, and advises many startups and new businesses.
Fake currently lives in San Francisco, California and New York. She is of German and Filipino descent.[8][9]