Tumblr's David Karp

In honor of Tumblr's visit to the SRG offices next week, I wanted to take a moment to highlight an article I read in the most recent Inc. issue. (Side note: I don't read many print mags anymore but if there are two you should read that are not sports-related, make them Inc and Fast Company... and GOOD. Fine. Three. And all founded in the same-ish family!)

David Karp is kind of a rad guy. He taught himself how to code at a time when most people like me would have that "coding" was of the Morse variety, and started a little company called Tumblr. Just today, Mashable reported that Tumblr had in fact surpassed Word Press as the number one blog site, hosting almost 21 million blogs currently.

Karp, in his "The way I work" feature, comes off as a super likable guy. He likes his Vespa, he drinks tea. He wants his employees to be on the same page. He prefers email because it doesn't interrupt people. And he likes his girlfriends cooking.

Best of all, he seems to care deeply about the useabily of his product. In his words, "Twitter started as a beautifully simple product, but its now going to the same route as Facebook. The drive to innovate can overencomber and destroy a product. My goal is to keep Tumblr very focused."

YES.

Y.E.S.

yes!

In a world of monetization, millions of apps for "thats" and a constant tech push to be the next Facebook, Karp is looking at things a little differently. He knows that people love his product for its simple user experience and lack of boundaries for content. He listens to people, spends time on their blogs, and watches how people have taken what he built and made it their own.

This can be a tricky fork in the road for many start-ups (go big or keep going). Sometimes its OK to look at what you have and want to make it work even better, but not necessarily differently. Karp, despite his youth, has the foresight to see this right today but of course who knows where Tumblr's tomorrow will take him. If I ever find myself running a company, I hope to be able to employ Karp's brand of foresight as well: Tumblr is good at a lot of things but doesn't need to be everything to everyone right now. Focus on what you are best at. Rinse and repeat.

Thanks Mashable for the top picture and Inc for the Vespas!