A teen whose dad cofounded Slack and mom cofounded Flickr is missing somewhere around San Francisco
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, Marin County Sheriff's Office, Andrew Toth/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
- Mint Butterfield, the teen child of two tech founders, has gone missing in California.
- Butterfield, 16, is believed to have run away, local authorities say — perhaps to San Francisco.
- Authorities are appealing for help finding Butterfield.
Mint Butterfield, the teen child of tech founders who set up Slack and Flickr, went missing over the weekend.
The 16-year-old was last seen Sunday evening in Bolinas, California, north of San Francisco.
The local sheriff's office put out a missing-juvenile alert Tuesday seeking information about them.
The alert, described in a Nextdoor post by K. Walther, a deputy in the Marin County Sheriff's Office, said Butterfield was last seen Sunday at 10 p.m.
The following morning, Walther said, Butterfield was gone. She asked for anybody with information to contact the sheriff's office.
The San Francisco Standard wrote that Butterfield was reported missing Monday by their mother, the Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake.
Their father is Stewart Butterfield, who cofounded Flickr in 2004 with Fake and went on to cofound the workplace-messaging service Slack.
Representatives for the Marin County Sheriff's Office, Stewart Butterfield, and Fake did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Walther's Nextdoor post said Butterfield likely took a suitcase and may have headed for San Francisco.
In the past, Butterfield often visited San Francisco's Tenderloin district, an area known for homelessness, crime, and drugs, officials told the Standard.
DailyMail.com reported that Butterfield may be somewhere else, citing a social-media post by a family friend.
The friend, per the report, said Butterfield was seen in Larkspur Landing, north of San Francisco and about a 50-minute drive from Bolinas.
Business Insider was unable to verify the report.
The Marin County Sheriff's Office described Butterfield as being 5 feet tall with "brown/reddish curly hair" and pierced eyebrows. They were last seen wearing a black sweatshirt, flannel pajama pants, and black boots.
Stewart Butterfield and Fake were married from 2001 until 2007, the New York Post reported, and sold Flickr to Yahoo in 2005 for an estimated $30 million.
Their divorce was finalized in 2007, the same year Butterfield was born, according to the Post.
Stewart Butterfield cofounded Slack in 2013 with Cal Henderson. He left the company in December 2022.
He's worth $1.6 billion, according to an estimate by Forbes.