Flickr became a modest success and was acquired by Yahoo for $35 million in 2005, making Butterfield a Super Founder who, like many other Super Founders, went on to start a multibillion-dollar company next.

I think Yahoo is smarter now about dealing with startups than they were then. We were one of the first companies they bought, and I think the idea was, back then, that what you should do with an acquisition is "integrate" it, in the same way that a sugar cube becomes integrated with your tea. We basically got dissolved within Yahoo, and all the