At the age of 20, when most people are struggling to forge a career path for themselves, a high school dropout from New York, David Karp, launched one of the biggest micro-blogging platforms, Tumblr. Today, with a net worth of over $200 million, David Karp is one of the finest young technology entrepreneurs of the world, not just the USA.
Born on 6th July, 1986, David is the elder of the two sons of Michael D. Karp, a film and television composer and Barbara Ackerman, a science teacher. A bright student, at the mere age of 11, Karp took an interest in learning HTML and started designing websites for businesses. At 14, Karp attended The Bronx High School of Science for one year and then decided to drop out for homeschooling, never to finish his high-school diploma. With hopes to get admitted into MIT, Karp decided to make his resume impressive with other projects along side homeschooling.
As part of the resume-building process, Karp joined an internship with Frederator Studios. He was credited with developing the studio's first blogging platform as well as its first internet video network, named Channel Frederator aside from taking Japanese and maths classes regularly. On the recommendation of a Frederator employee, UrbanBaby, an online parenting forum, hired Karp and after a while of working there, one day, as he was able to complete a job worth of two days, in just four hours, John Maloney, founder of UrbanBaby, appointed him head of product at the forum.
After working at UrbanBaby for four years, he left the forum in 2006 to pursue his own development consulting company named Davidville. With his interest in microblogging, after a year of extensive work and research, he developed and officially launched Tumblr in February, 2007.
Unexpectedly, David's new platform gained 75,000 users only within two weeks of its launch and as he realised the potential of this venture, he shut down his consulting business within six months and rebranded his company as Tumblr Inc. The company started growing leaps and bounds, launching an iOS app for Tumblr in 2009 and coming up with another app for Blackberry phones in 2010. In October 2011, Tumblr became the first blogging website that hosted American President Barack Obama’s blog. Bagging shares from major investors and even monetizing the app through advertisements, eventually, on May 20, 2013, it was announced that Yahoo! was set to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion based on an agreement between the two.
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By the end of 2017, David stepped down as CEO of Tumblr leaving a company made by himself from scratch.
A New York city-bred kid, who was enthusiastic for technology and micro-blogging, led his dreams to reality by sheer dedication. David Karp's success story also provides an invaluable lesson of not always sticking to societal norms and definitions of being successful only based on a college degree, it's just about pursuing your passion with diligence, however way possible.
