Tumblr: David Karp's $800 Million Art Project

David Karp is in the midst of a rite of passage that seems universal for the young tycoons of the Internet’s social era: He’s buying himself a proper swank pad. And like Mark Zuckerberg‘s luxe but dowdy $6 million manse in Palo Alto and Sean Parker‘s Greenwich Village carriage house-cum-party palace, Karp’s choice says a lot about him–and Tumblr, the blogging platform he founded nearly six years ago. The 1,700-square-foot, $1.6 million loft, which he’s currently remodeling, is quite modest for a 26-year-old whose net worth, on paper, exceeds $200 million. That’s in part because it’s located in the world’s hipster capital, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where irony trumps showiness–he’s quite possibly the richest person in the neighborhood. But the most telling feature is on the inside, which contains … virtually nothing. A spartan bedroom with a half-empty closet. A living room area with nothing but a sofa and a TV. (One concession to opulence: a restaurant-grade kitchen for his girlfriend, Rachel Eakley, a trained chef.) “I don’t have any books. I don’t have many clothes,” Karp shrugs. “I’m always so surprised when people fill their homes up with stuff.”read more

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