David Karp

David Karp (born July 6, 1986

Karp began his career, without receiving a high school diploma, as an intern under Fred Seibert at the animation company Frederator Studios, where he built the studio's first blogging platform and conceived, wrote, and edited their first internet video network, Channel Frederator. Karp went on to work for the online parenting forum UrbanBaby until it was sold to CNET in 2006. Karp then started his own software consulting company, Davidville, where he worked with software engineer Marco Arment on projects for clients. During a gap between contracts in 2006, the two began work on a microblogging website, which was launched as Tumblr in February 2007. As of November 1, 2017, Tumblr hosts over 375.4 million blogs. and in 2010, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

On May 20, 2013, it was announced that Yahoo! and Tumblr had reached an agreement for Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Karp remained CEO of the company. Karp announced in November 2017 that he would be leaving Tumblr by the end of the year.

Early life Born in New York City, Karp grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His parents are Barbara Ackerman, a science teacher from San Anselmo, California, and Michael D. Karp, a film and television composer. He has a younger brother named Kevin. His parents separated when he was 17. At the time, Karp had aspirations of attending college in New York, or going to MIT and saw homeschooling and doing other projects on the side as a way to impress the colleges. Karp never returned to high school or earned his high school diploma. Karp was fascinated with the work of Frederator's computer engineers and his visits became regular. After he started homeschooling, Karp also began taking Japanese classes at the Japan Society and saw a math tutor, with whom he worked on writing software for winning at blackjack and poker. Tumblr was launched in February 2007 and within two weeks, the service had gained 75,000 users. Davidville was renamed Tumblr, Inc. and 25 percent of the company was sold to a small group of investors. As of November 1, 2017, Tumblr hosts over 375.4 million blogs. Karp announced in November 2017 that he would be leaving Tumblr by the end of the year.

Karp has made personal investments into several companies including Superpedestrian, Inc., Sherpaa, Inc., and Splash.

Personal life Karp joined the Planned Parenthood Board of Directors in 2014. In March 2017, Tumblr and Planned Parenthood launched an initiative calling on the tech industry to support Planned Parenthood.

Karp endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in the lead-up to the 2016 United States election. He also donated $11,200,000 to Mark Kelly in his 2020 special election campaign for U.S. Senate, making him the campaign's top individual donor.