Tariq Krim

Tariq Krim (born October 25, 1972, in Paris) is a French digital entrepreneur, creator of Netvibes and currently the founder and CEO of Jolicloud, a personal cloud content computing platform and Joli OS a free operating system based on the jolicloud platform. In 2008, he was the first French national named by the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35, and was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Minister of Culture and Communication in 2011

Tariq Krim spent his childhood in the historic area of Paris, Le Marais, where his parents were economics and physical education teachers. Passionate about computers from an early age (he was given his first computer at 10, and created his first Minitel server at 12 years old), Krim went on to study physics at the University of Paris VII and obtained his post-graduate degree from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications (ENST).

In 1994, after meeting with Jean-Francois Bizot, Tariq Krim became a writer for Novamag, contributing articles regularly about cyberculture. He chose to continue his career in journalism for the financial daily newspaper, La Tribune. First based in Paris, then in California (he opened the newspapers’ Silicon Valley branch), Krim published numerous articles on the Internet industry, including a piece on digital music distribution - two years before Napster was founded.

In 1999, when the Internet was still in its infancy in France, Tariq Krim decided that he was done with writing about Internet Innovation and would just “go and do it”. That same year he founded what was to become L8Rmedia, a consulting & publishing company specializing in digital media (first branch in San Francisco, then in Paris). Its main online publication GenerationMP3 (first named MPTrois.com), attracts 1.5 millions readers per month. and pioneered the use of participatory journalism in France It is now a leading publication on mp3 technology.

In 2005, Tariq Krim created Netvibes, together with Florent Frémont - a developer friend. The personalized dashboard publishing platform claims over 10 million users worldwide, half of which in the United States.

In 2008, Krim left the head of the company to create Jolicloud in 2009, co-founded with Romain Huet (CTO). Their vision is to combine cloud technology with a simple user interface. Krim first developed Joli OS, a free operating system, which enabled users to optimise low cost devices or recycle older computers. In 2012, Jolicloud is launching an html5 based cloud platform. Jolicloud is backed by $4.2 million in venture capital funding from Atomico Ventures (formed by Kazaa and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis) and Mangrove Capital Partners.

In 2008, Tariq Krim co-founded ISAI, a Seed Capital Fund for web and mobile technology start-ups. ISAI’s cofounders are all members of France's digerati: Orianne Garcia, founder of Terrafemina.com, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, founder of PriceMinister, Ouriel Ohayon founder of TechCrunch France and AppsFire, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, CEO of Virgin Mobile and Stéphane Treppoz Chairman of the Executive Board of Sarenza.com. This combined effort has helped launch websites such as co-voiturage.fr, and InstantLuxe.com. Krim has been cited saying that he has a "passion for building highly disruptive new products".

As one of the first French journalists equipped to write about Industry conundrums such as Internet piracy or digital music, Tariq Krim became an expert on the Digital Rights of authors. He advised Adami, a French civil society that allocates the rights of performers, and, in 2004 published a study called "Peer-to-Peer, an New Business Model for Music", in which he cites another study by the French Directorate of Economic Forecasting and Analysis, which concludes that "no systematic correlation can be made between downloading and the state of the music industry".

Tariq Krim in 2007

Tariq Krim is a speaker at global technology and media conferences and summits. He also regularly appears on mainstream media, sometimes as an "expert on the Internet" but mostly as Netvibes charismatic founder. Krim is currently acknowledged as one of Europe's industry experts on cloud computing and the future of Internet Infrastructure. He was recently asked to join the New Media Advisory Board of the Centre for American Progress.

In 2008, he was awarded Information Technology for Business Creation Prize, by Telecom ParisTech and it’s engineering association (AIST). Tariq Krim is one of six French personalities to have been selected as a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum (WEF).