David Karp’s path toward becoming the founder and CEO of tumblr is not traditional in any way. He dropped out of highschool at the age of 15 and began homeschooling while doing other activities on the side in order to impress colleges. However, Karp never earned a high school diploma or entered college because he was busy with other things. When he was 14, he had started interning with an animation company called Frederator Studios. Another employee recommended him to help with a technical project at UrbanBaby, is an online parenting forum. Karp was able to complete the project within a matter of hours, and the company quickly hired him to be the head of product – all before Karp was 17!
On his own
When UrbanBaby was bought out, Karp decided to start his own software consulting agency, named Davidville. He began working on Tumblr during a two-week break between consulting contracts because he had been waiting for something like it for a while, and finally decided to invent it himself (with help from one of his engineers). Tumblr was launched in 2007, and today it is valued at 800 MILLION dollars and hosts over 139 million blogs. Recently Karp sold Tubmlr to Yahoo for 1.1 billion dollars, but he still acts as the CEO and his personal valuation is about 200 million. (Can you imagine?)
Where he is now
This story is not at all the traditional way to progress in business. Karp never earned his high school diploma, began working as a technical employee at the age of 14, lived alone in Tokyo when he was 17, and launched one of the world’s largest social blogging platforms when he was only 21. Is this luck? Or the result of a better plan than the traditional path?
Yay another great writeup on a talented programmer with a strong entrepreneurial streak! Karp’s talent is pretty self evident as you highlighted in the example of how he got himself appointed as head of product at UrbanBaby by quickly getting the job he was hired to do done. Great commentary on how, although without even a high school diploma, Karp was able to blaze his own path of success in the business world.
As an active Tumblr user I am impressed to hear about how the site was actually started. Karp is certainly a go-getter, and not afraid to stray from the norm. He must of had to sacrifice a lot of security and the typical teenage lifestyle to get where he is today. In no way has Tumblr fully evolved or reached its peak and since Karp is still in charge I’m sure he is not done innovating.
I have never used the site, but I have heard plenty about it and I know some of the details relative to it. It is really interesting to hear about how it started and more about the CEO. I think this is a great story because of how young and inexperienced the CEO was, but how he still pulled off something that amazing and is now worth that much money. It’s really cool.
Tumblr is a wonderful way to blog and the pictures you can find are so unique. They’re never generic like Google. I also love how nontraditional Karp is. It really shows that you don’t have to follow the normal route in order to be successful.