Tumblr Founder David Karp Talks About The Real Reasons He Dropped Out Of High School

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Karp opened up more about why he dropped out of high school to pursue his passion.

"I have a hard time taking too much credit for it," he told Rose. "I had a lot of dumb luck along the way and some incredibly enabling parents."

Karp continued, "Parents who supported me along the way and really pushed me ... [they] either pushed me or set me up to find my way."

Karp told Rose that his supportive parents would get him music lessons if he wanted to play an instrument and take him to Boston to see an MIT robot competition if he wanted to build robots.

The summer he turned 11 years old, Karp discovered his passion for code writing when he "found AOL — the Internet."

"The Internet was an incredible place back then," he told Rose. "It was raw. It was the Wild West, but it was starting to be able to do some incredible stuff."

Karp saw his "little glimmer of a vision," but there wasn't a computer science education in New York school system at the time, so he decided to drop out.

"And that was the real reason I dropped out of school. It wasn't 'screw this.' It wasn't that I was bored. It wasn't that my friends are so lame. I was actually really enjoying school."

He said in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week that he does not recommend young people leave high school because of his success: “That is not a path that I would haphazardly recommend to kids out there. I was in a very unique position of knowing exactly what I wanted to do at a time when computer science education certainly wasn’t that good in high school in New York City.”