David Karp is the young millennial who founded the popular microblogging and social networking website Tumblr in 2007. Growing up in New York City, he started learning HTML and designing websites for businesses at the young age of 11 years old. Karp never earned a high school diploma, and worried that this fact and his young age would hinder his career and people would not view him as legitimate. As August 2017 records report, Tumblr hosts over 360 million blogs, and has approximately 555 million visitors each month.
Karp began his career as an intern under Fred Seibert at his company, where he built its first blogging platform and was in charge of editing their internet video network. He later started working for a company called UrbanBaby, an online parenting forum up until 2006. Shortly after, Karp jumpstarted his very own software consulting company, Davidville. A year later, Karp and his partner Marco Arment began working on the microblogging website known as Tumblr. Right away Tumblr raised $750,000, and by 2011 had raised about $80 million. In 2011, Tumblr received about $125 million from investors and the money was used to begin advertising and promotion.
In 2009, Karp was named Best Young Tech Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek and in 2010 was reffered as, “one of the top 35 innovators in the world before the age of 35” by the MIT Technology Review TR35. Also in 2010, Tumblr was named as a finalist in Lead411’s New York City Hot 125. Tumblr is now used by several celebrities and was the first blogging post to host former President Obama’s blog.
There is so much we can learn from Karp’s story and success, one being that you should NEVER step down and let your young age discourage you!
Karp’s story is an inspirational one. He did not allow his lack of education to handicap him, rather he pursued the career he wanted. He eventually started his own consulting company and then went on to create his own idea for a blogging website. Considering that he raised $80 million in in the first four years of its creation, it is fair to say that Karp is a brilliant person who knows how to create and do business.
Personally I am a huge fan of Tumbler. Seeing that he first started to learn HTML at the young ago of 11 does not surprise. I feel as I read this many of the accomplished entrepreneurs have similar stories David. David Karp’s story should inspire anyone who has doubts about whether or not to “take a leap of faith.”
I think it is amazing how quickly Tumblr got going for him. What is even crazier then that is that he never earned a high school diploma. It shows us that to an extent innovation cannot be taught in the in classroom, but is something that we just have!
I think it’s really cool that he did all of this with a lack of a high school degree. It seems today that the mindset is without a high school and college degree you will get nowhere in life and he defied all of that. Very cool to see how creative he was and how quick his idea got off the ground!
I have never used Tumblr, but I think it’s crazy that despite not receiving a high school diploma, this guy worked his way to creating a massively popular website.
David Karp is a young genius. He has given birth to one of the newest forms of marketing, internet content marketing. With this he is able to sell content. With tumblr, blogs began to explode in popularity and this has given rise of the first plans of internet content marketing. Search Engine Optimization has become a fresh strategy of the online marketing community. David Karp’s story is encouraging and inspiring.
Interesting to see someone who didn’t initially succeed by the world’s standards become so amazingly successful and innovative at such a young age. It seems that this is a reoccurring theme throughout history.