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David Karp : The Young Entrepreneur Who Founded the Biggest Microblogging Website Tumblr

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Experience matters, and when it is earned since childhood, it can help you achieve many things. As a kid, humans are sharper than adults and capable of learning even the toughest of things. These days we see many little kids coming up and showing off their skills and knowledge, whereas many are already launching their startups in the various fields. Thanks to the evolving technology. Though David Karp is not a teenage entrepreneur, he had achieved a lot before he passed his teens. David Karp is the founder of Tumblr, the microblogging website, and has an interesting success story to follow.

Early Life

Karp was born to a science teacher and a film and television composer, on 6 July 1986, in New York City. He was a bright student and got his primary as well as middle school education from Calhoun School, at the same place where his mother worked. Karp, at the age of 11, started learning HTML and was soon developing websites for businesses.

Karp always wanted to join MIT for his graduation, so, he after studying for one year at The Bronx High School of Science, dropped out and opted for homeschooling, to make his resume interesting for admissions in the university.

Career

David Karp
Image Source: charitybuzz.com

Things to go according to one’s will is not always possible. Karp wanted to add more to his resume, so he was doing many things alongside his homeschooling. He started working at the Frederator Studios as an intern when he was 14. At that time, he was also learning Japanese and had joined maths classes. Along with his maths tutor, he learned some of the programming skills. At the Frederator Studios, he got to work on various software products, and he even developed studio’s first blogging platform and its first internet video network, named Channel Frederator.

Later, he got to work with UrbanBaby. One day, at the firm, he solved a glitch in the software successfully in a comparatively lesser amount of time. The incident helped him to win the attention of John Maloney the founder of UrbanBaby.

Maloney appointed Karp as the head of product at UrbanBaby. Karp continued to work with the company for four more years and left it in 2006 after the company was acquired by CNET. Four years spent in a company made him leave the dream of joining MIT behind, as he had also not received a high school degree yet and he was doing great as a programmer.

Entrepreneurial Journey towards Tumblr

Karp work and experience opened new doors for him, and he went on to start his own development consulting company named Davidville. He hired a programmer named Marco Arment, through Craigslist, with the help of whom, Karp started to work on a new project. Karp had grown an interest in microblogging and was looking forward to developing a platform based-on microblogging. It took him a year and a half on deciding to finally work on his interest, and he launched Tumblr in February 2007.

David Karp was aware of the scope of a microblogging website, but he did not know that his website will gain 75000 users just within two weeks of its launch. In six months, he realised that Tumblr has got huge potential, so to focus on it, entirely, Karp shut down his consulting business and rebranded his company as Tumblr, Inc.

The Rise of the Company

In 2009, the company launched an iOS app for Tumblr, and in 2010, another app was launched for Blackberry phones. In 2011, the company valued at $800 million, and in the same year, raised a funding of $85 million. In October 2011, Tumblr became the first blogging website that hosted American President Barak Obama’s blog.

The 3.0 version of Tumblr launched in 2012, which also included support for Spotify. This way, the users could now post HD pictures on the platform and also use it at offline mode. In August 2012, the company monetized the platform through advertisements.

Major investors including Union Square Ventures, Fred Seibert, John Borthwick, and Sequoia Capital, etc. were the major investor in the company at that time. Karp sold 25% of the company share to few of its investors.

On May 20, 2013, Yahoo! announced that it will be acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Karp remaining the CEO of the company. After working together with Yahoo! for four years, Karp resigned from his post.

David Karp was named Best Young Tech Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek in August 2009. He was also named in the list of MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil : The Tech Visionary who Invented the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technology

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The world is filled with possibilities and opportunities to build a better future. Once in a while, there comes a genius or two, who turn tap into these right set of circumstances and changes the face of the planet as we know. Raymond a.k.a. Ray Kurzweil is one such eminent personality with a flair for creativity and erudition. Ray can be reflected as one of the brightest minds of our generation, who has given major contributions to the field of Artificial intelligence. He has written several books and published papers on the same. One of the most remarkable of his contributions is the invention of OCR (Optical Character Recognition). The journey of this astounding visionary has a lot of interesting aspects and a fair share of ups and downs. Then again, what value does success have unless it is achieved after a little bit of toil and grinds?

Early Life and Career

Born in the favourable soil of US, Ray Kurzweil received normal education at a regular public school in New York City. Even though he had much humble upbringing, Ray did show an inclination towards the world of science. He belonged to a musical family, but at a tender age of 5 years, Kurzweil decided to become a scientist. This was fueled by his increased penchant for electronic gadgets that he assembled now and then. At the age of 15, Ray wrote his very own computer programme, with the assistance of his uncle, who was a computer science engineer at Bell Labs.

Quite predictably, keeping up his momentum, the young genius got into the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he built software that helped students find appropriate colleges according to their academic credentials. The application was welcomed with great spirit, which was later, launched commercially in the name Select College Consulting Programme. This was soon bought by an educational publishing firm called Harcourt, Brace and World. The most fascinating part of the story is that Ray was just 20 when he first built a firm and sold it for a huge profit.

Journey as an Entrepreneur and Inventing OCR

Ray Kurzweil
Image Source: pinterest.com

Raymond graduated from MIT in lightning speed with dual degrees in Computer Science and English literature. Later on, Ray started his very own company named Kurzweil Computer Products, where he built something that changed how we read faces. The firm developed an Optical Character Reader, which was one of a kind idea. This led to the invention of the flatbed scanners, which also shook the technology industry like a whirlwind.

The Kurzweil Reading Machine was the name of his series of inventions and was successfully launched in collaboration with Bell Labs. The man was not just an inventor or a scientist, but also a great visionary with a big dream about the future. Ray was selling the OCR like hot pancakes, and eventually, sold his Kurzweil Products Company in the year of 1980. It went on to be renamed as ScanSoft and was later taken over by Xerox Corporation.

After Kurzweil Products Company

Ray went on to invent a couple of other remarkable products and services that managed to make the lives better for every user across the globe. One such invention was a programmable synthesizer that could correctly reproduce the sounds of musical instruments such as a piano, drums and many others. Ray even started a company named Kurzweil Music System to pursue this line of ideas. This could be attributed to the fact that he hails from a family full of musicians. Its first product was the Kurzweil 250, which was quickly approved by musicians all over the world.

Ray Kurzweil also developed speech recognition software alongside, which was also a huge success. Later on, he started focusing on Artificial Intelligence, and its future, and interestingly enough, authored books such as Robots and Beyond, Fantastic Voyage, etc.

Currently, Ray works for Google, at the request of the company co-founder Larry Page. Such an awe-spiring story, isn’t it? Once in a while, the earth is graced by super-intelligent beings such as Raymond Kurzweil. We can consider it a privilege to have born in this millennia and have a piece of his wisdom. Science makes earth easier to live in, while people like Ray, make it a better place to live in.

4chan

Christopher Poole : The Founder of 4Chan Who Tasted Success Without Being Known

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The rise of computers and programming languages has brought a revolution in the world. The programming languages have become the biggest contribution to the world and the growth of the economy. That is why most of the people are not hesitant about taking a step in the same field. Little kids and teenagers are the ones who are more curious about them, and there is another reason behind it. The magic a person feels behind building things only by coding makes it interesting enough for the kids and the adults. Also, it has helped many people to grow financially as well.

One such teenage coder was Christopher Poole, who was only fifteen when he founded one of the biggest forum-based social network 4chan. An American enthusiast, Chris was always into programming and loved what he could do with it. Without letting people know, he used to code almost every night.

Chris Poole was born in 1988 in New York City. He lived with his mom and wanted to build a platform that would help him earn some extra money. While in school, he used to create comedy content and post it on ‘Something Awful’, a comedy website.

chris poole 4Chan
Image Source: cdn.vox-cdn.com

Chris was inspired by Japan’s famous imageboard of ‘Futaba Channel’ (2Chan) and wanted to create something similar for America as well. When he was still in school, he started working on a new project and developed 4Chan, the American version of the Japanese imageboard. He went on to follow the source code of Futaba Channel and took the help of AltaVista’s Babel Fish online translator to translate the code.

On 1 October 2003, when he was just 15, he finally launched 4Chan by pseudonym ‘Moot’. He used the name Moot as he did not want to mix his private and professional life. That is why there is not much information about Chris’s early life. His real identity was only revealed on 9 July 2008, after five years he launched 4Chan, that too, by The Wall Street Journal.

After launching 4Chan and completing his school education, Chris joined the Virginia Commonwealth University. But eventually, he had to quit college only after a few semesters, such that he could focus on his startup.

Soon, 4Chan emerged as a place where people could create and share meme and animes. They had the facility to share the content anonymously as well as non-anonymously. The platform was a great success, and even before revealing his real identity, he got the chance to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University as Moot. He had become an influencer in no time.

In 2008, Leopoldo Godoy of Brazilian TV Globo called the site as “the ground zero of Western web culture”. He was named as the world’s most influential person of 2008 by the ‘Time’ magazine after it conducted an open internet poll.

In February 2010, Chris spoke at the ‘TED2010’ conference held at Long Beach, California. In the same year, he also raised a $625,000 for his next startup ‘Canvas Networks’, which he launched in January 2011. But unfortunately, he had to shut the platform due to the security breaches the site was facing.

Though he was running 4Chan with the name of Moot, he always conducted Q&As for the users and answered their questions. Chris worked for 4Chan as the administrator and had already left the job of programming at his company. He, after working for more than 10 years for the company, decided to step down from his post of administrator in 2015. During his career with 4Chan, he achieved a maximum user engagement, i.e. over 20 million monthly visitors to the site.

He announced the news on 21 January 2015 and on 23rd January conducted another Q&A on the platform and a live stream on YouTube.

In September 2015, 4Chan was acquired by Japanese internet entrepreneur Hiroyuki Nishimura for an undisclosed amount. In March next year, Chris revealed through a blog post that he will be joining Google. He joined the company and is still working as an employee.

Though Chris has been secretive about his life, one thing he has always been clear at the right to anonymity. The success he received at such an early age never put a bad influence on him. In fact, he always stayed away from the limelight.

sharechat

ShareChat Raises a $100 Mn in a Twitter Led Funding Round

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After a long struggle, India has also become home to many creative and useful startups, and even the global tech companies agree with that. Following that very fact, Twitter, one of the biggest technology company, just closed the D series funding as the lead for a four years old Indian company ShareChat.

Where Twitter led the funding, major investment brands including TrustBridge Partners, Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital took part in the investments, among which a few are the company’s existing investors. With the latest round of funding, the company was able to raise a $100 million, and with that, the company now values at about $650 million. Till now, the company has raised around $224 million.

ShareChat is an Indian social network that allows people to chat in the regional languages. This is the reason why despite tens of popular chat apps, ShareChat has grown to tens of million users in just four years. Twitter also sees the potential in the startup that is why it took the privilege to lead the funding for the company.

sharechat
Image Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

There has been no statement from Sharechat on the matter. But the managing director of Twitter India, Manish Maheshwari said in a statement, “Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges. This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company’s management team access to Twitter’s executives as thought partners.”

Twitter just appointed Manish Maheshwari in April 2019 for its India office after it started facing a decline in its growth in India. After his appointment in Twitter, Maheshwari has said in a statement, “With premium Indian content on the rise in multiple regions across the country, I believe we are scratching the surface of what’s possible with Twitter in India.”

ShareChat supports almost every regional language except English, which has been the unique feature to attract its 60 million users to the platform. And, the company has no plans to change that in the coming future. So investing in ShareChat can be a step forward for the company to expand its limits to different regions, regional languages and people from different background.

skype

Skype : A Communication App that Won the World

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In the last few decades, the world has changed a lot. What seemed to be impossible a few years ago, is being executed with zero effort today. With the boom in entrepreneurship and startups getting the hang of the wave, human life is at its technological best. Our generation has witnessed a large number of success stories, but not every one of it has managed to stay with us for so long. The inventions that change the world are the ones that feed the depriving hearts of society. The success story of Skype is one such idea that changed the very nature of web business by revolutionizing the chat connectivity of the virtual world.

Founded in the year 2003 by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, Skype turned out to be the biggest surprise that changed the face of online communication for the years to come. One can say that Skype lessened the distance between people, or in other words, started bringing people together. It gained almost 6000 subscribers within just one week of its launch, and this is when the duo realized that they are in for something huge. This realization proved to be true as we look at the trail they have left behind.

Janus and Niklas developed the application with the help of a group of highly skilled individuals, namely Ahti Heinia, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn. The most attractive aspect of Skype is that it is free. During a time when the telecom industry charged a fortune for international calls, Skype provided free video calls through the usage of P2P connectivity. It was an actual boon to the people who were separated from their loved ones through distance. It also mitigated the location issues for major business meetings and other official programs.

skype founders
Image Source: taliawebs.com

Like every huge success story, Skype, too, has a humble beginning. Zennstrom was collecting the telephone bills of his friend in Europe when he realized how huge the telecom companies charge for long-distance phone calls. This is what led to the invention of Skype, as simple as that. They wanted to avert the escalating telephone bills and wanted to make communications across the globe more cheap and efficient.

Within just two years of its inception, Skype already had 20 million active users and was growing at an exponential rate of 5 new users per second. This growth soon attracted a lot of attention from huge names such as eBay and Microsoft. eBay later in 2005, acquired Skype for a whopping sum of 3.5 billion USD. The most successful project of the internet industry, Skype, again get attracted the interest of other tech giants. And, this time, Microsoft acquired Skype for 8.5 billion USD.

The innovation by a team of young minds changed the way people talk across the globe. It was an extravagant success, as there is no greater deed than filling the deficiency of society.

Back in 2003, it was the need for a more efficient and low-cost communication system. The founders say that they were very naïve and highly optimistic in their journey throughout Skype. But it was this same spirit that led them to launch the service. They did not dive into the what-ifs and other nitty-gritty of all the things that could go wrong. The other main highlight of the concept was that there was nothing much complicated about functioning. There were no complicated procedures or troubling interface. Everything was simple and clear. This also was a contributing factor to the immense success of the idea.

Every big change starts from a small spark. This spark comes to every one of us. The ones who can latch on to the spark and ignite a fire become successful. These build unicorn companies, multi-million dollar empires and some even end up becoming legends. Skype provides the biggest example of how small ideas can revolutionize the world. It started a chain of changes that still ripples across the surface of the virtual world and how people communicate with each other.

twitter new feature

Twitter Wants You Follow Your Interest With its New Feature

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The tech industry is evolving every day, and every big tech company, as well as the startups, are coming up with new service, products and updates every sing day. So there has to be something that the other existing companies have to do to sustain through the increased competition. Despite being one of the biggest social media networks, Twitter also knows that it has to experiment with new things so that it can maintain its position in the market.

Taking a step in the same direction, Twitter announced that is working on a new feature to be included into the platform, that would allow the users to see tweets based on their chosen interest on their timeline. For now, the company is still testing the feature and will be launching soon after the successful tests take place.

With the new feature, the users will be able to follow their interests as they do for any individual’s account, and this way, Twitter will curate a relevant feed for the users. The platform is going to take the help of machine learning to bring the tweets based on the user’s interest together and show it up in their feed.

twitter new feature
Image Source: sciencemag.org

The company is calling the new feature “dedicated interest experiences”, which it has already talked about in recent years and finally it is conducting tests with them. The topic of interest for the users can be any of the sports teams, celebrities, or the television shows, but according to the product manager at Twitter, Rob Bishop, for now, the interest will only be based on sports. The initial tests are being carried out on the android devices only.

With the feature, Twitter will also bring up topic suggestions for the users, so that they can find their interest among the suggestions and follow them. Also, there will be an option to mute a particular topic you do not want to see the tweets about.

Twitter is also testing another feature, through which the users will make a list of their interests they follow and want to follow. The company even demonstrated the feature, where a product manager mixed hashtags and a few individual accounts to make a list. The list was accessed by swiping the app’s home screen.

The company is also looking forward to testing the other features like search option in DM, reordering a certain photo in a posted tweet, customizable timeline and support for Apple’s Live Photos.