Caterina Fake, the serial entrepreneur who cofounded Flickr and Hunch, launched her newest social app, Findery, on Thursday. The launch comes almost exactly two years after Fake unveiled the project under a different name.
But the timing is notable for another reason: It comes just one day before SXSWi kicks off in earnest. Some founders think of SXSW as a chance to get attention from early adopters, investors and the press for their young startups. Fake thinks that is no longer really the case.
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"I'm not sure how effective it is," she told Mashable in an interview Thursday. "It's actually gotten to CES scale. It's like the social media and software version of CES. There's just so much noise around that event."
Fake recalls going to her first SXSW event 14 years ago when it was still a "very small" event focused more on music than on tech. She credits Twitter's tremendous success at SXSW in 2007 with "triggering the app launch mania" that we see at the event today.
"It's better to launch before or after than during South By in my opinion," Fake says. "It's kind of like a buzz fest."
Findery will have one rep on hand at the event, but Fake will be elsewhere.
"When we were launching flickr, the big conference was PC Forum," she says with a laugh. "Conferences rise and fall."
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