During his time in school, David Karp learned HTML and practiced designing websites for businesses. He also spent his time interning at an animation studio, beginning at a young age. Later, Karp got a position at the start-up company, UrbanBaby, where he continued to hone is designing and programming skills. After leaving UrbanBaby, Karp started his own software company and developed an interest in tumbleblogging. This interest prompted Karp and his friend to create what would eventually be called “Tumblr,” a platform featuring tumbleblogs.
Tumblr became popular very quickly, gaining 75,000 users within two weeks. Today, Tumblr is a very popular site and was sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion in April 2013. Karp is a great example of an entrepreneur who used skills he had previously acquired to create a fun, interactive service for people. He was able to use his expertise to create something he himself enjoyed. Not only that, he created something that was never before seen on the market. Now, Karp is extremely successful and involved in something he truly enjoys.
Awesome story that shows a lot of initiative on Karp’s part to chase his idea even though it meant quitting his current job!
Reading about all these entrepreneurs that are making so much money makes me want to make some cash money. Am I the only one? Also, this is a really inspiring story.
With numerous social media sites available, it speaks to Karp’s innovation skills that he was able to create a new idea for social media, and a successful one at that.
That is really cool that Karp was able to take something that he was really interested in doing and turn it into a billion dollar business.
I’m on the fence about Tumbler: its never really gained the same kind of traction as sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat… I don’t personally know anyone who uses it. But then it gets sold for over a billion $, so I guess it’s doing alright. But still, I wonder if it would have been as successful as it has been if it hadnt been one of the first social media sites: when it came out, its only real competition was Facebook and Twitter – but i guess that’s part of the entrepreneurial story – being the first to arrive at a market gives you a huge advantage.