Tumblr’s boy genius CEO David Karp stopped by The Colbert Report last night, and in true CEO style expertly batted away Colbert’s questions about porn and the NSA while still selling his company’s services.
Colbert introduced him by saying, “My guest tonight is a high school dropout who sold his internet startup for $1.1 billion. Just imagine how much he could have made if he had dropped out of grade school.”
Karp was humble about Tumblr’s massive windfall after being sold to Yahoo, saying the company wasn’t quite successful yet. “Not yet, we’ve got lots to prove,” he said. “We’ve got to get this thing to profitability, that’s a pretty big milestone.”
Colbert then talked tried to probe Karp about all the porn on Tumblr, with Karp insisting that the platform had much more than porn and that he wasn’t going to do anything about it anytime soon, citing free speech advocacy and a non-policing attitude towards Tumblr’s users. He also tried to dodge Colbert’s question about what he would do if the NSA started demanding user info from him.
Its not often that a CEO of a startup gets to go on The Colbert Report and by doing that, Karp really reinforced the image of his company, as a humble, staunch defender of free speech with a site that’s got huge numbers. If you’ve got a relaxed, plain speaking CEO who can handle any type of question about the company across the table from Stephen Colbert, it’s a huge boost for the startup’s image. It was also a great way for Karp to address all the people grumbling that Yahoo over paid for Tumblr. Maybe, but at least it’s working hard to justify the price tag.
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