$110m for Tumblr founder, David Karp to stay at Yahoo

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San Fracisco: Yahoo’s recently completed acquisition of Internet blogging service Tumblr includes a $110 million payment to Tumblr founder David Karp as long as he remains on the job for the next four years.
The retention payment disclosed in a regulatory filing Thursday is part of the windfall that Karp and Tumblr investors realized by agreeing to sell the service for $1.1 billion in May.
Mr Karp turned 27 last month. He started Tumblr in 2007, a few years after he dropped out of high school in New York to concentrate on computer programming.
Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer has pledged not to make any dramatic changes at Tumblr in hopes that the acquisition won’t alienate the blogging service’s existing users, which includes a substantial number of teenagers and young adults. As part of her promise “to not screw it up,” Ms Mayer is allowing Mr Karp to run Tumblr independently in New York. Yahoo is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Mr Karp is believed to own a 20 to 25 per cent stake in Tumblr, which means he has already received a windfall, whi-ch hasn’t been disclosed, from the sale to Yahoo. But he must stay at Tumblr until June 2017 under the provision disclosed Thursday to get the $110 million retention payment.