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.
Since then, law enforcement put out several alerts for Butterfield, saying the teen’s safety is at risk.
Per the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, Butterfield, who uses they/them pronouns, was last seen by their mother, Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake, at home on Sunday evening.
Butterfield left a note, the sheriff’s office said, and took a suitcase with them. They didn’t have a phone or a car, per a press release.
The press release said that Butterfield may have gone to San Francisco, where they and Fake have a second home.
According to the press release, Fake believes Butterfield could have headed for San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, an area known for homelessness, crime, and drugs.
The sheriff’s office said it considers Butterfield’s safety to be at risk because of a previous threat of suicide.
Its detectives, as well as the San Francisco Police Department, had searched for them in the city, but without success, the release said.
Butterfield’s father is Stewart Butterfield, who cofounded Flickr in 2004 with Fake and went on to cofound the workplace-messaging service Slack. He and Fake are divorced.
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Representatives for the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, Stewart Butterfield, and Fake did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Butterfield was deemed a “voluntary missing person” in the press release, which said there is no evidence to suggest the teen “was taken against their will.”
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 press release said that some media outlets had published false information, but didn’t give specifics.
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.
Adam Schermerhorn, a public information officer with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, told People on Thursday that authorities were “still actively investigating leads” and working with Fake to acquire digital devices and other items belonging to Butterfield “that could have information.”
Schermerhorn said they “do not have any reason to believe there is foul play” or “anything criminal” related to Butterfield’s disappearance.
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.
Correction: April 26, 2024 — An earlier version of this story described Mint Butterfield as the child of “tech billionaires.” Only her father, Stewart Butterfield, is known to be a billionaire.
