David Karp is a Hero

Why this is a great deal for all of us

It was late 2007, and I was learning Farsi at the U.S. Army John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), having just completed my training to become a Psychological Operations Sergeant.

In a few months, I’d receive my orders of assignment and sent to a unit in the 8th Psyop Batallion (Airborne), where I’d likely wait until it was my time to deploy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Yet despite my current status as a soldier in training, and my future tenure in Afghanistan where I’d grow a killer beard and ride around in civilian clothes and up-armored SUV’s, there was something else eating away at the back of my mind.

It was a few years late, but I’d finally heard that MySpace had been acquired by News Corp for more than a half-billion dollars.

At the time, I was only mildly interested in computer science. I’d lost interest after High School. But, being a man that loves to speak the language of money, my interest was once again piqued.

During this time at USAJFKSWCS, one of my greatest friends was a fellow Soldier named Gabe, who happened share my interests in money, and like me, was obsessed with working out and staying in shape.

He was always a better runner than I, but we often ran and hit the gym together, be it during military training or on the weekends.

It was during one of these training sessions when we began discussing the MySpace acquisition, and our intense desires to achieve vast sums of money to set us up for life outside of the Army.

Conversations like these (I’ve had many) rarely lead to action, but it just so happened that this time was different, and as a result of this perfect storm, we started building what we believed to be the next big thing in tech.

We called it Fury Fitness, and it was a lame 2007 version of what later became Run Keeper or Mighty Bell (before the pivot). I didn’t have any website building experience, but I learned Joomla over the course of a few weeks and began building our 1.0.

I spent every single off-hour I had building this site, enabling local running groups, tracking runs, and organizing local race listings. We even bought T-Shirts on Zazzle and wore them to local road races.

And while my partner eventually lost interest (to his credit, SEAR training will forever change a man’s perspective), I continued on, even working on the product from our team house in Afghanistan.

After over a year of work, my hard work payed off, and I found a buyer for our product. I sold Fury Fitness for $100, before Paypal Fees, and gratefully handed over the reigns to begin work on my next project.

Massive score!

It wasn’t much, but I was just happy to let Fury Fitness go to someone that would appreciate it. I didn’t realize they’d turn it into an AdSense farm, but hey, you live and learn.

As I moved from one adventure to the next, I found myself getting better and better at this tech stuff. Despite the fact that my 500+ million dollar exit had yet to come, I remained inspired and kept working on products and ideas.

Over time, my motivations also began to change, and while I’d still welcome a massive exit with open arms, I’m much more interested in building to build…because it makes me feel good.

When I left the Army in 2010, I kept doing exactly that. In 2012, I was a co-founder and lead developer for a six-figure technology business, and in 2013, I’ve already built and shipped more product than I have in my entire life combined.

And this brings us back to Tumblr.

Despite the fact that they may or may not be worth 1.1 billion dollars, and regardless of your feelings surrounding the Yahoo/Tumblr deal or David Karp, one thing is certain - this deal will bring more people like me into this business. Yes, they’ll arrive with aspirations of massive wealth and success, but if we’re lucky, they’ll evolve into upstanding technology citizens destined to add great things to our world.

We won’t all have billion dollar exits, but that’s not really what matters. The important thing is that we dreamers and entrepreneurs have fuel for the rocket ships of our minds.

If you ask me, that’s exactly what this deal is.

David Karp may not be a hero to you, but wait three years and ask the kid that got started because of him. Because of that, I say thank you MySpace Tom, and thank you David Karp. You showed us that there really is a pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.