The View from the Office.

I met up with John Maloney for lunch at Zero Bond with another friend, Richard Caccappolo, the CEO and Vice Chairman of DMG Media, and my son, Hayden Merz. 

John, the co-founder of Urban Baby and former President of Tumblr, splits his time between Bushwick and a former Texas ghost town 30 miles from Marfa.

John bought the property in Valentine, Texas, a hamlet of 73 residents, with the idea of developing a wellness retreat for startups and creatives that could help revitalize the town. 

Valentine is a 12 minute walk from the famous Prada “store” outside Marfa, a town put on the map by Donald Judd. The late artist started buying land there in 1973 and his art installations have become a cultural mecca.

John wants to tap into the vibe of the rugged landscape of West Texas and the cultural scene near Marfa and Terlingua, another ghost town south of Big Bend Ranch State Park. 

The region’s growth has also been driven by the decision of Jeff Bezos to base his Blue Origin rocket project in Van Horn, which is thirty miles north of Valentine. Bezos started buying property in 2004 and now owns 400,00 acres.  

John arrived in Valentine after a career as an entrepreneur, tech operator and active venture capital angel and seed stage investor.

He co-founded Urban Baby in 1999. It was a Web community and discussion forum for mothers that with no advertising rocketed onto the cultural scene. The company was featured on the covers of NY Magazine and the New York Times Sunday Style section. 

In 2003, he and his co-founder had the idea of opening movie theaters for moms and babies during the day. He needed a website built fast and was referred to David Karp, a 15-year-old dropout from the prestigious high school Bronx Science. 

Karp worked for John for several years until he was 19 when he decided to launch Tumblr.  David was later brought on as president. John put Karp in contact with venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who became an early investor, along with Bijan Sabet.

Within four years, Tumblr became one of the top 10 websites in the world as the team grew from 12 to 110. Tumblr was eventually sold to Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion. 

Reminiscing about that time, John said: “We got so much right in those early days. We had the right investors who left us alone. We understood our young user base. We fostered creativity and positivity through product choices like not having comments. The world still needs something like Tumblr today.”

John said that in many ways the current frenzy surrounding tech investments in AI reminds him of that earlier dot-com era, when so much got built so fast. 

He expects Texas, where Bezos and Musk have relocated, to play a big part in that story. 

You can reach John via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.