Slack founder's teen child reported missing, believed to be in San Francisco

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Update (April 28, 2024): Mint Butterfield has been found in San Francisco, according to police. A 26-year-old man has been charged with child abduction and other crimes in connection with her disappearance one week earlier.

Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield's 16-year-old child has been reported missing and is believed to be in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, according to police and local officials.

Mint Butterfield was reported missing by their mother, entrepreneur Caterina Fake, on Monday, Marin County Sheriff Sgt. Adam Schermerhorn confirmed to The Standard. They were last seen around 10 p.m. in Bolinas on Sunday and were reported missing the next morning.

Officials said the teen, who has a San Francisco address, has a history of substance abuse and is known to frequent the Tenderloin.

The Marin County Sheriff's Office posted a flyer with Mint Butterfield's picture to the social media platform Nextdoor on Tuesday. Supervisor Matt Dorsey reposted the flyer on X, saying Butterfield was now believed to be in or around the Tenderloin.

Influential writer and social media personality Yashar Ali also posted about the teenager's situation in a post seen over 400,000 times, according to X analytics.

🚨🚨🚨🚨

I don't ask for your help often, but I need it now…my friend's 16-year-old has gone missing.

Please spread this far and wide, and if you have any information about their whereabouts, call the number on this flyer. pic.twitter.com/CPIbwf2Ik4

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 23, 2024

The San Francisco Police Department referred all questions about the investigation to Marin County authorities. Dorsey did not return a voicemail.

In a statement Thursday evening, the Marin sheriff's office said authorities do not believe Butterfield was taken against their will. The office said Butterfield is considered an "at-risk" voluntary-missing juvenile due to a previous reported threat of suicide.

"In collaboration with San Francisco Police Department, detectives from both agencies have attempted to find Mint, but have been unable to locate them at the time of this release," the statement said.

Fake and Stewart Butterfield co-founded the image-hosting website Flickr in 2004 and sold it to Yahoo in 2005. They divorced in 2008. Butterfield went on to start the now-ubiquitous workplace chat tool Slack, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2021 for $28 billion. Butterfield left the company in 2022.

Fake and Butterfield did not respond to messages.

Marin officials ask that anyone with information about Mint Butterfield's whereabouts contact the sheriff's office at (415) 479-2311 or via email at tips@marinsheriff.org.

Jonah Owen Lamb can be reached at jonah@sfstandard.com

Stephanie K. Baer can be reached at sbaer@sfstandard.com