David Karp Net Worth

$200 Million

rumors swirled across the Web that the 26-year-old entrepreneur had become a billionaire, joining the likes of Facebook FB -0.76%cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz as the youngest members of the 10-figure fortune club. The Tumblr founder, however, is not a billionaire. But he is still very wealthy.

FORBES estimated that Karp, after taxes, would be about a fifth of the way to the $1 billion threshold with Yahoo’s $1.1 billion deal for Tumblr back in 2013.

Prior to negotiations, the Tumblr CEO held about a 25% stake in the New York City-based blogging platform he created.

Born on July 6, 1986 in New York, David grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He attended the Calhoun School at three until the eighth grade. At the age of 11, he already began learning HTML and has designed websites for local businesses. He then went to Bronx High School of Science for a year then dropped out of school to start homeschooling for three years while working on other projects.

At fourteen, Karp began his career as an intern under Fred Seibert at the animation company, Frederator Studios. He was responsible in building the first blogging platform in the studio. He also conceived, wrote, and edited their first internet video network called Channel Frederator. He continued his work online for parenting forum UrbanBaby until it was sold to CNET in 2006.

David Karp soon launched his own company called Davidville while working along with computer engineer Marco Arment on projects for clients. In 2006, they began working on a micro blogging website which was launched in February 2007 as Tumblr. As of June 11, 2013, it already hosts more than 114 million blogs.

In August 2009, Mr. Karp was named Best Young Entrepreneur 2009 by BusinessWeek. In 2010, he was named the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.