“Europe Bought the Lie That It Lost the Tech War” | Tariq Krim, Netvibes

Tariq KRIM: I got an email the second day I launched the the product from Marc Andreessen and said, I'm I'm in whatever you do we met with Steve Jobs because you know was Google was so concerned with our products, they literally acquired all the chipsets. I mean, the first time I met with Zuckerberg I was at his office and the first thing he shows me is his net vibes page. You cannot compete when before you do anything, you have to give 30% to Apple. Can you imagine a business that you give 30% to someone before you operate? I believe that the role of the government, but the role also of of each of us is to slow down time. you know, technology has to be invisible, has to be trustful, has to be around us.

Vit Horky: My guest tonight built a product used by 10 million people. He then sold it. He built another one, and later our governments asked him to help them fix the problem he was warning them about. Today, he'll tell you bluntly that Europe has already lost. He's been called a French tech pioneer, and most of you know him for one company. He would tell you that's not even the most interesting story. Tonight, Tariq Krim NetVibes, Joli Cloud, and Cybernetica, and the fight he's picked with the entire continent. Let's get into it. Tariq, forget all the titles and everything that's been said about you in in the media. How do you describe yourself today?

Tariq KRIM: I think I'm someone who's always been nostalgic of a future that we could always build. by that that when I was a kid, I looked at all the sci-fi movies, I look at a lot of the interesting ideas around technology. And at the end, this is not what we had. We have now technology that are abusing us, our privacy, technology that is not designed with humans at the center. And I really believe that we can change that. And I actually also believe that Europe can be a key player in that space, maybe even the only player in that ability to to change the future.

Vit Horky: And we're gonna talk about that later today, but that's Tariq today. How did you describe yourself when you were twenty, thirty and you were starting with your first businesses? What what was your world view back then?

Tariq KRIM: It's very interesting because things started really early for me, more like when I was eight and ten years old, and I understood that I could use computers and I could actually this was this was going to be the thing. and if I knew how to use computers, I would have no problem finding a job. So for a long time I really enjoyed the idea of of you know doing anything that is related to technology and then the internet came in and then I was the only thing I was interested in. I was also writing for a La Tribune of French daily newspaper, so I spent quite a of time interviewing pretty much all the entrepreneurs from Jeff Bezos to to the founder of Oracle etc etcetera. And one day I was in I was in doing an interview in South of Market in San Francisco. It was like a a company doing radio online and I had this kind of absolutely weird experience where I kind of saw myself From the outside. And I was just thinking, I wanna be that guy. I wanna be the guy on the other side. And basically quit my job and starting doing my first company was all about blogs and technology. I was always interested in in, you know, building product for consumers. So when I started n NetVibes, it was my first international startup, it it kind of I can't say it was very weird because I got an email the second day I launched the the product from Marc Andreessen and said, I'm I'm in whatever you do and then I got TechCrunch to call me and then I got a bunch of people from all around and we ended up meeting with a lot of VCs. And I I kind of never thought about okay I'm in Europe. I was just like I want to be part of this. So I started hiring people, raising money with VCs. That was kind of I was weird 2005 and 2005 is literally like nobody's really doing that. Or if you raise money in Europe, it's to do a B2B startup or a technology company that is going to raise a few hundreds of thousands and you have to promote your business plan, five years, ten years. And me I was like, I'm just gonna do a product and see if it works. and then you could see on Google and Yahoo, the big competitors of time or Microsoft, they were copying our ideas. but something has happened. social media came in and and suddenly the question for us was how do we use social media? And the other thing that came out, of course, is mobile. And suddenly you have a new platform that is not using the web, that became the new player. When it came out, it was supposed to use the web. You know, remember the first year Steve Jobs said we won't do external apps. One year later he said, Drop this. We're gonna have apps and we're gonna sell them and we take 30%. And I think I had a little struggle with some of my VCs to make them understand that we have to constantly change. And we had to adapt. I call it the disruption within the disruption. So you're disrupting one market and then a second disruption comes in. And you can decide to either go for it or you or you just wait. So I decided to leave the company, refocus on B2B, that was not my my choice. eventually we sold it to Dassault Systèmes who actually loved the idea of all the platform, everything we built at a time and the brand actually became the asset the company they acquired. And I started with Romain Huet, who's now at OpenAI, another company, Jolicloud, with an idea of disrupting the cloud. And going with the same idea that you know you live in a world where you have large players, there's a new technology. Is this technology gonna be available for you or is it gonna be used by other people and they impose on you what you want? So my vision has always been the same is how do we create a user-centered experience and how we open this technology and make it simple for everyone to use. but then there was a new disruption that came out in the form of the iPad. And the question was, do people want Cheap computers with Linux access to the cloud? The answer was probably yes. We eventually discussed with several companies to for an acquisition, and and one of the big players who was interested dropped. So this one I decided to fold it. But it was a fantastic experience. The the main thing I discovered later is that Google was so concerned with our products, built lit they literally acquired all the chipsets. on the market so we had a hard time to actually build and and ship our computers I basically have the experience of working twice against large company like Google. and it's very funny if you want we can talk about it.

Vit Horky: That's that's a fascinating story, both of them actually describing how you were very soon, very early on on something that became a mega trend. And how and how did you find out how hard it is to compete with you know, already established b huge companies with with almost unlimited capital and budgets that can compete with you. And we're gonna talk about that later today. I would like to go back to to the NetVibes times and the time time the magazine named NetVibes one of its fifty best inventions. what was your honest reaction back then?

Tariq KRIM: I think it was a crazy ride. I I didn't fully understand because I literally arrived in Valley and I was the only European speaking at the Web 2.0 conference with Niklas from Skype. And literally most people thought we were a company from the Valley. First time I I talked with Michael Arrington from TecCrunch. He was like, let's meet next week in a for the barbecue. I said, Hey Mike, I'm in Paris. I said, What the hell? Say so a lot of people actually didn't compute the idea that we we were doing something that was Silicon Valley like in Europe. But for me it never was a problem. I think the the if you ask me the question, I I think we we managed to to do really well with the press, mostly by the way, in America, less in France. that's an interesting thing. But also the vision of the product was for some reason quite loved. You know sometimes you have the problem is always to align the f the different palettes. You have to have the right product, the right team, and the right momentum. And I think NetVibes had all three. And I now with the looking back, you know, I was I you know we always talk about how in Europe We don't like to overstate, overmarket, doing too much when in America they actually do this. And I think there's a reason they do that is first it's so expensive to do anything in America. The idea that we could become the third start page just below Yahoo and Google, but above Microsoft and AOL, that was kind of a crazy thing for like a 30 plus, 40 plus company out of Paris. but also the thing is that if you market you have to be heard and seen. And at our in our time it was kind of easy to do with marketing, with some media. Today you have to spend a fortune in you know social media and you literally have to to reach out, create special events to get journalists to come in because nobody's now covered. You know, every journalist I know has like has so much things going on. So it's interesting how we managed to crack the you know the the this this thing, but also I think we should have been more ambitious in marketing. I was not fully aware of of marketing not as a way to address your existing customer, but to grow beyond and I think we were if we had I sometimes wonder like you know, a bit a bit more pushy on marketing, we probably would have cracked even a bigger f story.

Vit Horky: What was it actually intentional? did you want to have this media attention? when I when I was doing the research for for the show tonight, I you know, the Time magazine was only one of many. You know, I saw that the economist called you a paragon of Europe's new founders, MIT put you on the list with Mark Zuckerberg. there were so many of them. was it your intention to to be in the media, to be seen, to be heard, so it's gonna help your company, or how how did you kind of how how did you contemplate everything that was happening back then?

Tariq KRIM: No, I actually, the the interesting thing is that well this thing came organically. We had an incredible Vincent was my PR person in in San Francisco, was very good at getting things, but people love the product. I mean, the first time I met with Zuckerberg with Mark, I was at his office and the first thing he shows me is his web b web net vibes page. So they were not most of the people in the valley that's interesting, is the reason I got included was not because they I pitched something. They were using the product and they liked it and they That's another thing is I I I think we're a few of us, there was Last FM, there were also there was Daily Motion, but Daily Motion was probably a bit more European, but were a few of us from Europe who actually were part of the club of people who can build global products. And I think I didn't fully understand what we had achieved at the time. I I was just so into it, working really hard, trying to hire the right people, trying to grow. I now with the, you know, because it's always interesting to look back. I think I should I spend like I would say 70% of my time in Paris, mostly to work with the team and product, because most of the team was all scattered around Europe, but the main was in Paris. the question was that I should have spent a little bit more time and I should have actually probably moved in in the valley because relationships are so important. So I was lucky to know literally everyone that is personally from all the tech founders at the time, platforms, media. you you get a call on a mobile and it's the CEO of Disney or f or Murdoch's son, etc. So you you can create an incredible thing, and I I think I should have figure out maybe more how to partner with them. And you're also, you know, you have a dance, we had a conversation with now it's it's long time, so it's public, but you know, I I met with a couple of times with Larry Page. He wanted to acquire the company and I said, why do you want because you already have your product, but I'm interested in you and your ability to build something like a this for us in Europe. So I think what also NetVibes did was showing to a lot of people in the valley that actually incredible people were building stuff in Europe. And my friend Garrett, who's the the co-founder of Uber, told me many times, when he started Uber, some of his first engineers were all aro around Europe. He felt like they were more hard working, etc. So we had this thing, but I talk about, the the marketing and the media. That's w one thing. The other question is how do you establish yourself as an indestructible power because you things come and go. We can see that now in the AI space. You have companies in Europe trying to make it. The question is how do you be become part of the ecosystem? So you have to find in the way the product used is used and the partnerships you have something that make it harder for you to get rid of. And if you can achieve that in America, what is usually very expensive, it's it it's it's worth a lot because suddenly you you become part of the daily mix of US users. We were very close from that. I think marketing, more marketing that I didn't understand at the time would have helped us. And and suddenly you become the one of the default players. But remember everything got you know transformed when mobile came in. Suddenly a small app was doing called Pulse was doing an RSS reader, got acquired by LinkedIn for 50 million at the time, and suddenly anyone who was on mobile had a new spot to pick. Same is happening now, we know with AI verticals. Harvey said I'm gonna be on legal, some people say I'm gonna do this or do that. And when there's a new platform, there's actually space, specialized space that you can s take. Unfortunately I was never able to convince of my team. The only person that fully understood was Romain, that was actually at the time an intern at NetVibe and so that's why I decided to create Shirley Cloud with him. I said you get it, you you understand that the there's opportunities to build. But once again, things have changed today and I when you talk we talk about that era, people were really keen on you know product and they loved what we were doing. That's why MIT and all this incredible you know media talked about us. But today I think the platform and the way to access is is extremely hard. First, there's a lot of companies, so there's a lot of noise. And second, I think the market in the US post you know, zIRP, the zero interest rate when money was just flowing, made it so expensive. That's why I think people build their own. podcast and and a lot of founders are now trying to create their own media just to be able to attract, the users direct. You see that also with VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, who has his own media and the 'cause it becomes so hard to exist in in in the media. So we we witness a time where it was possible. I don't know if it would be as cheap and as easy to do today.

Vit Horky: The time times has certainly changed. but when you were starting NetVibes and you started to spend more time in in Silicon Valley, how how old were you?

Tariq KRIM: two thousand it was twenty years ago I was in my f early thirties.

Vit Horky: Early thirties. Well, many people are fresh from university and perhaps you know the first five years of their professional careers. Yet, if I'm not mistaken, you were in tech and you were an entrepreneur in some sense for over 20 years already. you you wanted to be a pianist when you were very young. and then in nineteen eighty two, when you were age nine, you actually built a first server. Actually a Minitel server. What did it do and how did you get to, you know, being online when you were nine in nineteen eighty two, when most of the people out there they didn't have any access to internet back then?

Tariq KRIM: Yeah, that's interesting. So my dad was in a a very liberal university, Paris 8, very famous, because you have some of the the biggest thinkers from Foucault, Lacan, you know, who teach there. Actually some of them were his his friends. And there was an AI lab who's kind of very visionary, and because he was an economist, and he basically had access to one of the very early online services called the Source. It was in Arlington in Virginia. And that was the same time of CompuServe and other things. And nineteen eighty-two f France decided to give to create the Minitel. It was a free modem and terminal that looks really nice. It actually is an inspiration to the Macintosh because they had a a holder and Steve Jobs was in love with the Minitel, the quality of the build. By the way, the Minitel was one hundred percent built in France. And the the routers, every technology from end to end was actually built in France because at the time France was badass in telecoms. and they gave that to us and I was talking to someone actually who had a Commodore and we discovered that certain type of Minitel you could actually use the connection to a computer and turn them into a modem. So instead of connecting to the online services, you could actually call someone and access to the computer. So This this guy I met at school who was actually an action student from Eastern Europe, I think Romania, had a Commodore, he was pretty into computers, and he said, Call me tonight, and I did, and I discovered I could connect to his computer. The day af I couldn't sleep overnight, of course, but the day after I came, I had tons of paper. I said, So we have to redo the entire interface. We have to do it like this. We're gonna do a messaging system. for all the the cool kids in the school, et cetera. So I discovered my vocation that is literally you know, interaction, human interaction design. And I I love the idea of you know interacting. Then eventually that brought me to like all the, you know, the early hacking and you know phone phreaking, you know, how to not pay for telephone by using frequencies, et cetera. So I was kind of pretty much into the underground, but I and and if I may say Sorry about that. And the one other interesting thing is that for us, computers and including startups were a counterculture. I mean, Steve Jobs and Wozniak were the absolute heroes of our time. first they kind of funded Apple by selling blue boxes, you know, so pirate boxes. But also they they were going against the corporate, the IBM, you know, the conformity. And a lot of these companies at the time, they were basically giving giving us access not only to a new tool, but a new culture. And I think some of that got lost. When I was at Sun, Sun was a pioneer in you know, micro station, they had their own, they were doing everything from the chips, they were they basically invented the cloud. And they still had a little bit of that kind of vision. If you remember Apple in the very early days, they had a pirate flag. They were like the literally pirates and and then everything got sanitized and corporate and now a hacker is someone who who who earned a lot of money at Facebook or Google, but they're not really a hacker anymore, but just it's just a gimmick. And I always fell in love with the idea of that startups were one of the only way to change the world because you can actually introduce a product. That will change behaviors and people can do things differently. and I sometimes think that we forgot that. It was I I think in in Europe it's got a little bit institutionalized, you know. It was you know, you you you find the right niche, you find the right fit, you find the right people. Everything on paper looks great. But in fact, Is the product something you love or not? And that's what I think the reason the US is so good is that you still have people, even if you have all the corporate, all the you know, all the studies and all the stuff. Same in the movie industry, by the way. You we can still manage to pull out things that you fall in love with, and you're like, okay, this is what I want. And that's what I've always tried as an entrepreneur to actually do, is to find the reason why. people would change what is the power you give to people. For example, NetVibe is a very simple thing. We were about to enter a world with so much content. How do I have the power to control that and set up my own personal space in this, you know, universe of so much stuff? And that was basically the reason. For the cloud was the same thing. It's like if anyone can have a $300 computer And use the cloud as the software. You don't need an expensive computer. You can actually need a very basic computer with a browser, and then the compute is in the cloud. So suddenly disrupt the dynamics. You have a little bit of that with AI today, where one person out of the world with his phone can access a super intelligence to solve a problem. So you always have to think about it in these kinds of things. What are the powers you give to the user? How do you emancipate people from, the average life or the average experience that they have. And I think we a little bit you know, forgot about that.

Vit Horky: Do do you see at least a resemblance of the counterculture tech movement happening in Europe or around you?

Tariq KRIM: for me the the underground culture was the the the Chaos Computer Club and the underground hackers in Europe but also Linux was invented in Europe, IRC was invented in Europe, MySQL was invented in Europe and Python was invented in Europe, et cetera. So and we gave it away. So I always felt like the infrastructure is free and on that we we build businesses. That was the idea I I believe in Europe. So I always honestly believe like I'm using an open web and I'm building my own business and I'll figure out a way to to grow by doing the best product. But in in the US, I think something changed, especially with the Apple and and when Google started acquiring YouTube and the consolidation happened in twenty six, twenty two thousand six, sorry, 2008, 2010, let's say. suddenly you don't want to have an open platform. You own the platform. And people rent it from you. And the funny thing is a lot of the tech you know, in the US is actually built on on bricks that are actually sometime were actually built in Europe, like Linux or and suddenly we moved from we have a level playing field that everybody can actually operate and try things into something where you enter a private zone, you know. there's a difference on when you're in a public space, you can do whatever you want. if you're in a supermarket, suddenly the rules of the supermarkets operate and they can put cameras everywhere, they can do when if whatever they want. I mean, and that's what happened. suddenly we allowed ourselves to roam between closed platform instead of being in the open web. And the reason I'm really sometimes pissed at the early, you know, because I try to push that. Question in Europe, in France, is that the the goal of Europe was to allow us to compete. You cannot compete when the platform is closed. You cannot compete when before you do anything, you have to give 30% to Apple. Can you imagine a business that you give 30% to someone before you operate? So you have to operate your margin and everything with basically 70% of the real revenue that you're making? That makes no sense. And the fact that you have to ask permission, the fact that the the mobile was closed, the fact that the cloud the cloud, you put all your data in one cloud, and then you have to pay an an insane amount of money to pay the egress fee to to leave to something else. So we move from the web being open where you and I can have the same chains as some kid in Minn Minnesota or some kid in Shanghai to Do you know this guy at at Google can fix you up so you can grow? Or do you have a friend at Instagram so they can actually get you a better promo? Or do you know someone at the App store so they can fix your problem if you have an issue? So suddenly it became some kind of a rigged game. And so the beauty of you know building and being successful, because at the end of the day, you have two types of products. You have things you buy because, well, you have to, you're not very excited, your cable, your electricity. A lot of things that you have to buy because that's how life is. And then this product you buy them because you love them, you want them. That's what the app iPhone was. That's what a lot of the things we bought in the early days of technology was. Now we bl buy replacements, we think the iPhone is too expensive. They always tell you the camera is great and now all the camera and all the photo looks, you know, dumb. I discovered that's because now we focus mostly on the video because they want to target the influencers. So suddenly the product we have are not only very unsatisfying, but also very corporate. You know Apple is the new Microsoft. You just go to the settings and you're like Apple used to be like very simple, minimalistic, now you have more. It's kind of a it looks like an operator, you know, a console for for for flights, flight management or whatever. And and they started like, you know The moment they they tell you we're not gonna chip chip like the the cables in the phones because for like you know ecological reason, you just know that they are all full of shit. And the problem is that suddenly this these the software becomes bad, the design it becomes not what you want. And and we suddenly and that's the reason I'm also explaining why I I fell out of love with technology that suddenly The products were no different from all the crap you buy in a generic store and there's no love, there's no interest, it's iteration. or even sometimes it's for forced, you know, you we have a USB on the phone because the Europe said you have to put a USB and then instead of like doing it right away, they kind of, you know, iterated with different versions. It's it it feels like we are, you know, in a world that could have been terribly unsatisfying except that something new happened and changed our life that is of course AI and in a way give me some hope because I with AI kind of felt the same kind of love and and options that we had with early computers but the question is always the same is are we gonna be in operating in an open environment where our creativity is is fully maximized or are we gonna work in like in a very you know secluded and and regulated and not very creative, not very exciting world. This is gonna be the the challenge of the coming years, right?

Vit Horky: You you mentioned that the game is rigged. Like who rigged it? Alright, let me tell you something. my wife and my my friends keep bugging me about why am I spending so much time producing the United Founders Show during weekends and during nights, and having so few followers and subscribers. I don't have a good answer for them, to be honest, other than I really love it. If you wanna help me though, please do subscribe. It's gonna help me. To actually Show them that I'm doing something worthwhile. So there is a button. I'm sure that you know it underneath the video that you're now watching or underneath in in the podcast console or platform or app that you're using right now for listening to this podcast, please do hit the subscribe button. Thank you so much. You you mentioned that the game is rigged. Like who rigged it?

Tariq KRIM: I think the the App Store model who is basically derived from so I know that for a fact, it's never been public, but everybody knows that when Apple said we're gonna do thirty percent for the music, they said, Okay, we'll do the same for for software, but the economy of software is is not the same, you know. the app store is basically run like a video club where you take a fee on a on a product but it's the same, but you can actually spend a hundred euros to build your app or you can you can spend a lot of money. And suddenly it doesn't make the same impact on you in term of of revenues. I think the mobile has closed. The web was closed because the browser in the phone was not allowing certain protocols. You know, you have web RTC things that allows you to now it's called I think they call it I used to call it HTML5, but they they call it like you know op open web applications where you can suddenly Basically, you could do exactly the same thing with a web app as a mobile app. The only difference would be that with a mobile app, Apple gets money. So they would cripple the web. I think we we saw said the same thing with the cloud, where suddenly that I think it's is a different story because in the mid-2000, OVH online that now became Scaleway. 1 & 1 and a few others they they were the leaders of the you know dedicated servers so they were selling servers and anyone who wants to play or use a server could and they could have moved to the cloud they should have moved to the cloud but they never made this decision because they were they first they didn't see it and and so when amazon started with the cloud and then Microsoft come to the cloud in Europe They're already believers in this technology. And we basically have all the bricks. I mean, everything exists, it's open source, or you can take some time to build, but it's not that bad. But there was a big backlash against that. So at some point, mobile platform took over, cloud platform took over, and then the entire economy of digital started working in gated environment that are basically designed for us to pay 30%, 15%, this amount. And I don't think the EU understood that the tech ecosystem and the technology was actually life. It was not just like, you know, there's not like an industry called tech and then everything else. Suddenly if your a car industry is tech, you know, food industry is tech. Media industry is tech. Now everybody understand that that now they have no leverage against Netflix or Amazon Prime or Apple. But and we didn't see that, or maybe we wanted to look elsewhere. I I always give this example, you know, in 93, Clinton and Gore talk about the information highway, superhighway. In 93, the number one question about Europe was clean diesel. We know that's what w it brought all the CEOs now in jail for tempering the result. But we didn't have that vision. And one of the reasons it's very easy to understand is that at the time the big players of technology were telecom operators and they didn't understand anything about the internet, they didn't want to do anything with the internet, and they didn't understand anything about startups. they had the money, they had everything, they could have literally taken over the world and they didn't. And now companies like Google that used to be just someone who was knocking at the door at Orange or Deutsche Telecom or or a Vodafone say, Can I come to your thing? Now they are like worth hundreds times the the the telcos. So we completely missed that, but also we completely missed the opportunity for people like us. To be entrepreneurs in an open ecosystem. Because before the iPhone, the internet was open. Anybody can do things. We just need to invest money. We not we need to trust people that they will figure out. You know, it's like it's like a race. if you do a car race, if you don't trust the driver, you don't believe it's the best one you can have. You shouldn't be in that game. Say for startups, we had a lot of people who tried. Not everyone was actually good at marketing, not everyone was always good at promoting themselves or some of the product was a little bit rough on the age. But at the end, we had incredible software that came out of Europe. We but Europe never saw that as a strategic asset. It just you know, just like child play or you know something that is not that important. But we also didn't understand what I discovered when I arrived the first time in Silicon Valley is that a computer engineer, a designer is a talent. And if you take a movie made by, let's say, Steven Spielberg or a movie made by Christopher Nolan, you take the same scenario. It will never be the same movie. They will take a different director of photography, they will take a different editor, they will take a different sound designer, maybe Hans Zimmer will do the the Nolan and the John Williams will do, the the Steven Spielberg. Same in technology. When you say there's two companies, they have 50 people, they're working on the same thing. No, no, it doesn't work like that. This this guy used to be a superstar, he built that technology, he's gonna work with his old team as this. This is what the US has been so good. They're assembling teams of talent. You go at OpenAI where Romain is now at the Codex team, and he tells me, there's a lot of people from Stripe. not individual teams that used to work well together. Say, let's let's do the move and and they moved before there some of them were at a Dropbox and some of them at at at Facebook and before some of them at a Google. And suddenly you have great talent. But the good news is now we have great talent. We know them. We know all of them. We adore that they are building stuff. You're excited when they say I'm gonna start a new project. But at EU level and political level We do not understand that. They barely understand the movies and and music. So can you imagine the idea telling them that we have talent that are superstar and they need to have the money so they can have the discipline to do the best of their art. This is the new for me it's the new thing and that we kind of miss that. And if you ask me back in NetVibes, when I was in the US, people were seeing me as a talent. You had like the CEO of this company come to me and say, I see what you do. Can I ask you a question about my business suddenly because they were interested in 'cause they if you are really good at what you do in technical first most people in Europe do not fully understand why it's incredible.

Vit Horky: You've been obviously very vocal for a long time about this phenomena of European tech founders and hackers being great in building up essentially free distribution and and and you know the basics of of new technologies, infrastructure technologies, and then the Americans being great at productizing it and commercializing it and essentially building trillion dollar companies. And funnily enough, today we're having European savers buying ETFs of these trillion dollar companies and being happy about, you know, saving up for for their life and being happy with with this kind of like a state of state of things. you you clearly see the the missed opportunity. Was it the reason was this the reason why did you decide to to advise the French government and to kind of like being vocal on in on the political level? about these issues.

Tariq KRIM: A little bit. I the first reason that I started become I worked with Sarkozy on the G 8 It was the first G 8 tech and my role was to push so we can have some European founders and only the not only the big tech. My mission was also to get Mark Zuckerberg to to come to Paris at the time. And he finally accepted even didn't want to go. but I think I both time I was asked to To join so I had this mission on talent. I've tried to push really hard the agenda because I also believe that startups are the next phase of our economy. We we will have large companies, we will have mid-sized companies, and then we need to have a new wave of talent because I also felt that the late 90s, the early 2000s, a lot of people in Europe. went to Silicon Valley because that was the only way they would value their talent. And I was hoping that we figure out a way. So to be honest, a lot has been done in France. I've been also pushing for a tech visa that actually is now implemented, a little different from what I wanted, but it actually works. We have reduced the stock option fees, we're just completely misguided. I I know other countries are not there yet, but we we kind of pushed. We have a lot of money poured in the tech ecosystem, but that is not enough because we also need a regulation. You know, there's two kinds of regulation. You have regulation on on how tech platforms should behave. And I truly believe that the same way that you know in Europe is the one place in the world where I can go in a supermarket and I buy something and I know that there's not like, you know, some illicit components that are giving you cancer. when you're in the US and you actually buy meat and stuff, you actually have to look if it's organic, if it has, the chlorine because they they wash the, you know, the the the chicken with chlorine because of I don't know. It it's a different world. But I well f I was thinking that probably tech should be as safe. So that's the regulation, you know the GDPR, the privacy. This is actually good. when it's implemented, because we implement a lot of things and we don't use them. For example, one of the interesting things about the AI Act is that you you've heard of all the you know the agent going rogue and like hacking all over. in the US, we're still looking how to operate, but under the AI Act in Europe, actually you can charge people and you can you you can actually investigate. So it's an interesting thing. But That's one part. The second part that I think we didn't do enough is the role of Europe was to level the playing field and making sure that we as European can play with the same rules. And when I started discussing with politicians, mostly in France but also in in the EU, I don't think they truly understood that. Because in my opinion, what was the most damaging to us was that. They actually believe this lie that Europe has lost the war of technology, that we are not able to compete. you you hear that all the time. because they mostly spend time with lobbyists from the big tech who tell them how great the companies are, and they have zero understanding of the history of technology. No, none of them knows that the web was built in Europe. It's funny because I was invited to a dinner with Ursula von der Leyen and I at some point said that. the web, linux, and most of the components of the modern internet were actually built in europe and she was like yes and you have to she knew that but you had you have to remind them that we actually build meaningful stuff and I think on that part helping us level the playing field so at least we can play with you know similar strength they haven't done their job properly they and So it's good to say you are the best when the best of the other camp is not allowed to play properly. I think that's what has happened. And the good news is that we now see in AI, we see that also in deep tech, we see that in quantum, we see that in in solar technology, where we have a pipeline of incredible engineers in Europe is because Europe maybe not be as big as China as it is today, but we ship every year. thousands and tens of thousands of really gifted and skilled engineers. And these engineers who basically we mostly paid with our money because a lot of the universities are public, especially in France and I'm sure all around Europe, they our job is to make sure they have a meaningful place to work and do something that is actually doing good for the world. And actually also create value to our economy. You mentioned the ETF, the fact that most of our you know savings is funding the US economy. And but also when we spend money in startups from public money, I mean private people can do whatever they do, but to you European money or the BPI, an amount of that money is gonna be spent back in, you know, Google ads and Facebook ads and Instagram and cloud and stuff. So we haven't figured out to, you know, reduced our financial dependency. And now I think people are listening for a few reasons. First of all is that the war in Ukraine has kind of reminded people that it's going to be a tech war and if it's a tech war you can only rely on technology that you own. I think AI and what happened with Mythos has also been a big you know the fact that you you're not we're not allowed anymore to have access to the best models. The the White House is selecting if you are allowed to watch it. And also, of course, what happened with VMware where suddenly the price goes up. And most of the largest company in Europe that we know of, you talk to them privately and they say, you know what, I don't have enough budget now, IT budget to pay VMware of this or that because products are going up. Add to that the fact that there's no RAM anymore because OpenAI and Anthropic bought all the chips in the world for the next three years. You you you suddenly understand that there's a lot of planning that we should have done that we haven't. So yeah.

Vit Horky: Yeah. I I on that topic I heard you speaking about Europe becoming a digital colony. are we digital colony? Is Europe digital colony and w what does it mean?

Tariq KRIM: I think the I think we were. We're I believe we're less now because I think also that we we have a lot of technology that is being built but also yeah I I think we there's there's a colonial mindset and and you know one of the things that for me was the most I I I just said one of the most interesting thing is that the leaders business leaders and political leaders of every country in Europe I've been actually believed in their heart that Europe was not up to the task. And for me, when the leaders believe that we have a problem, that's exactly the definition of a colony where you actually put puppet, you know, governments and you decide and I think that has to go with the culture, because I think technology is a cultural fight, it's not a technological fight. What kind of vision of the world in which world do I want to live in? Do I want to live in a world where every app is designed to exhaust me before I even start doing anything? I've lived in both in the US and in Europe and in the US, you live to work. You're you're leaving your company and do you go to a first drink, a second drink? You spend so much time. In France and I'm sure in other countries, but I talk about France, people are really hard working during their working hours and then they wanna spend time and live their life with their friends because that's part of the life. It's it's a very different approach. And I think the software has been designed in Silicon Valley is always focused on super productivity. you know one of the biggest complaints psychologists have about social media is now they say the kids are not bored anymore but it's when you're bored when you're wondering with no you know specific goal but you have your best ideas you enjoy the best moments someone was telling me that when you do exactly the same thing every day it gives you the impression because it's the same thing you your brain compressed that and it feels that time is going faster and when you spend time Out of the traditional routine, and and you do great drinks with your friends, three years later, you remember because it you feel like time is expanded. It's it's not that time is expended, time is the same at at every given time of our lives. But suddenly your attention to that was full, and you record this as a meaningful event, and I think technology that compress our lives and makes most of our day unmeaningful because suddenly you don't operate and do things is a wrong technology. And that's a cultural fight. I think a lot of people now are talking about, how AI is ruining kids or social media. No, it's not the technology itself. It's the way we've implemented it. I use AI to do, and I'm actually I I think I told you I'm I'm working on a new project called Human Intention, but the vision I have is that Each of us have a certain way of working, quality of work. I know for a fact that you would never send anything to someone that bears your name without taking the time to look at it and verifying it. Same with AI. AI is just a tool for us to do our best work. And there's two visions at the moment. Is it are we going to capture that technology to do something meaningful and work better under our supervision? under our will of doing quality things and spending so after we can spend time to do other things. Or are we gonna dumb down and become dependent on something and we have this constant feeling of not fulfilling? Because the crazy thing is we have technology that is supposed to reduce our time. In fact, we always feel unfulfilled because the the time we spend with these tools is generic. The experience is average. So Our brain remembers just that, okay, there was eight hours this day of none nonsense. Let me put it outside. So that what's every product I've been trying to build and everything that I enjoy about technology, so it's the same thing about a great movie. a great movie is a movie, you leave the the movie and you're thinking about it for days, sometimes like, wow, some you you feel enjoyed, happy, replenished. There's movies, you just go and you completely forgot the script thereafter. And that's what you know. So that's the cultural fight. And if you put it into just technology and money, etc., and entrepreneurs, that's not the real the real thinking. The real thinking is how do we build an environment? Technology is part of an environment of our daily environment where we become more replenished with. the things we have, we have access to better things, better experience. We feel happy. It helps us reconnect in real, give us the ability to compress the the tasks that we don't need so we can spend time with people. Because right now every technology that promised me to do this, look at online dating. It's designed for you to never find a person. It suddenly become like a a a set of options. There was a incredible article about how it ruined the the life of people because they don't see someone and and fully commit. They have a list of possibilities. But in work it's the same thing. Now you have a list of tasks of possi you never fully, and I think that's the software we use. And it's been designed like that. That's why we also have to get out of it. We have to get out of it for economical reasons, but also just to have a life, the proper life we want. And I think entrepreneurs, European entrepreneurs, are the leaders of this new wave and that's what they need to, when I see someone doing an open source version of this, or if even when I see people saying we're gonna do a local AI or we're gonna do I'm very excited because suddenly I I see people who have great talents that will give us the bricks to to make our life different from the one that is teleoperated by Silicon Valley.

Vit Horky: To to build on on top of what you were just saying about the relationship between technology and humans, I'd like to talk shortly about something that it's perhaps very personal and even sensitive to you. On on November thirteenth, twenty fifteen, coordinated attacks across Paris killed hundred and thirty people. And you were inside the French government at the time, and you later wrote that it left you drifting. what happened actually happened to you and what were you going through?

Tariq KRIM: Yeah, so just to to make it clear, I was part of a government body called the Conseil National Limited. It was an advisory body on technology. and yes, I was supposed to be at a a bar called La Belle Équipe. My mom called me, so I stayed on the phone with her and that's probably saved my life and a lot of my friends unfortunately, all of the friends I had there were were killed. And yeah I I I wrote extensively about it, it was ten years ago and Article called Driftling, Why We Need a Slow Web, because I was also reflecting on the fact that what I said earlier is social media has because of the scale, the idea we want to move from millions of users to billions of users and not being able to filter to organize and monitor things because we want to grow too fast without the proper regulation. We create an environment where you know a lot of dark force in the world. But you see that also in politics, in everything, in disinformation, have been taking advantage of this. And obviously this article was mostly about what we had lost. And I I remember that I I believe that the role of the government, but the role also of of each of us is to slow down time. As I said earlier. The best experience in our life is when we actually live them at the fullest, not when we're just, are doing one thing and another at the same time. But it's what we unfortunately mostly do. It's like when you have your phone, apparently, if you even see your phone on the table, your attention is always slightly going there. And I was thinking about how to live well in a world where technology has become toxic. And I think there's many reasons where technology has become toxic. It's not that People I I know a lot of people on Facebook, actually a lot of them left at the time, who build the f the basically all the tools that we think are addicting us. And I asked them and they said, just we were on a path of optimization, we were trying to to to figure out things of people's life, and at some point it became we figure out so many things that it became a prison and you can't escape. You you watch something that piss you off in the morning on Instagram and you're pissed off for the day. And sometimes you wonder if it's done on purpose because sudden advertising would work better if you're pissed off or suddenly if you're euphoric. So there's been always a question about the power that these things have on our lives. And I was kind of afraid that unfortunately, you know, you had the different elections, the Brexit and a lot of things that became even a proof of that that A lot of us became angry not because we are, but because we live in an environment that makes us angry. So I think there was a there's an importance, you know, when we talk about social media, first of all, before they were communication tools. I was connecting with my friends, I was happy, etc. Then it became competition tools, like, you know, you have to be the best. I wanna show my friends on Instagram I was the best party. And guess what? You think you see them on Instagram, they think you're you're the best party and you see them and you think they're the best party, and both of them had a wrong time because you were not really fully engaging, you were just on your phone trying to send photos. But I I I kind of imagine an a more appeased you know, technology has to be invisible, has to be trustful, has to be around us. I think AI can allow us to get there, but what kind of AI do we have to trust? Can we trust the current players? can we trust Facebook when they do Muse when they basically also did Cambridge Analytica? Can we trust Google when they say we want to make your life easier but in the same time they're destroying all the links to the media and making really hard to media to live? Can we trust OpenAI and Anthropic when they basically buy books to destroy them? Because that's the only way they can get away with scanning them. legally in America. It's a there's a lot of values. same thing with, you know, Elon Musk. I'm I'm a big sci fi person and I've I know that is basically radicalized with ideas of cosmism that is like a Russian vision, you know, from the twenties, telling that Earth is the cradle of of humanity and we just need to escape that. The reality that it's just you know, a r almost a religious view. There's no evidence between actually, you know. There's no evidence we can actually live on Mars unless we're staying really deep under. I believe in scientific exploration. I believe we should spend more time spending things on the moon, maybe automated things rather than just, you know, building building bombs. But I I I think that we we also have a tech environment that's has kind of eating too much of our own Kool-Aid, and we need a counter narrative. And unfortunately, The counter narrative is sometimes, but I'm not sure it's always for the good reason because China is has many issues. One of them is they have a population question, it's shrinking. AI will put a lot of pressure on smart people there who want to be scientists and end up being, you know, Uber drivers or building iPhones. if they do still build iPhones in in in in the US now they're moving to sorry in China they're moving to Vietnam and India. So there's a lot of question about the end of time because I think we've pushed too much the the tech narrative, the tech doomer narrative and everything's gonna replace us. But the reality is most when you ask most people when they're not under the influence of technology, they just want to to some tools around them sometime during the day. To do the the chores we don't want to do and and and live their life. And funnily, none of the companies today that we use have that as their main goal. Can you imagine how far we went from Steve Wozniak and Apple who want to change the world and give everyone a bicycle to the mind? And now we basically have fentanyl drip given to us or or products that are not even working properly. So it's a downgrade, I think.

Vit Horky: following and closing segment of our podcast is a rapid fire. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions and I will ask you to to respond very quickly, super shortly, alright?

Tariq KRIM: Yeah. Sure.

Vit Horky: can you think of one book every European founder should read?

Tariq KRIM: me there's was a co there is a book I read in the early days called Startup. It was the story of someone who was doing a tablet and back in the days. I can give you back the the proper and I liked it because it was the story of how he failed and How everything on paper was fantastic and had to work. And it didn't work. And I've I've always been interested because I think sometimes technology is unfair and you have the best ideas, an incredible team, and it's too early. In this case it was too early. And I always loved that book because it it it it gave me, you know, you enter in the The head of an entrepreneur. And if I may just switch to a movie, there's a movie that I love called August, with but it's the story about someone doing a tech startup one month before 9/11. And I just because David Bowie is a VC in the movie, I think it's Josh Hartnett playing in in the in there, it it's an incredible you know view of how technology was in just before the bubble and how close it is to what we can experience today as well.

Vit Horky: one French startup that's gonna become a trillion dollar company, the first Europe's trillion dollar company.

Tariq KRIM: I personally believe Arm, but it's not a French startup, is going to be the first European company. I I'm So I have a I there's a lot of companies I I I I like. I like ZML, I think they're doing a great technology layer. I like Alice & Bob in Quantum because they're focused on the on on a real issue. I I do like the companies but I don't see yet a company that has a platform play. Because to be a trillion dollar company you have to be a platform play. But you know what? I also think it's okay.

Vit Horky: I'm gonna ask you for one word reaction to follow inc initiatives, okay? EU Inc or 2 8th regime.

Tariq KRIM: Really good.

Vit Horky: Eurostack.

Tariq KRIM: Interesting.

Vit Horky: Single European stock exchange.

Tariq KRIM: Absolutely necessary.

Vit Horky: Perfect. Slow Web. Do you still live by it today?

Tariq KRIM: Yes, I do. I'll give you an

Vit Horky: How does it affect your day?

Tariq KRIM: I write everything on paper, ideas, every day. There's a few important things. Now we live in the world where you can draw, write things on paper, and then you do a photo, you send it to Claude or ChatGPT, and it turns it into I like the idea of cognitive bookmarks. I like the idea that I need to keep some ideas in a certain way, and the only way to do it is to write them by hand. And when I remove them by hand, I in my mind it feels like okay, it's gone because even if we if I delete a file or I I archive something, it's not the same process.

Vit Horky: Tariq Krim it was absolutely privilege to talk to you today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing and being so open and transparent to us. Thank you so much.

Tariq KRIM: Thank you so much for inviting me.