| Blog | decremental.com |
Bart Decrem is the CEO of Tapulous. Originally from Belgium, he now lives and works in Silicon Valley. His first entrepreneurial venture was at the age of 13, when he started a weekly magazine for Belgium’s leading (only, in fact) underground radio station while working as a DJ there. In 10th grade, he got kicked out of catholic school for being a troublemaker. His parents briefly considered sending him to a tradeschool, but thought better of it when they saw him handling a hammer and nail. Instead, he finished high school at an international school in Brussels, which is where he developed his flight-risk tendencies. Not ready to get a job, he moved to the US and got a law degree at Stanford. He never did practice law (the closest he got to the firm life was a summer stint at McKinsey).
After graduation, he stayed in East Palo Alto, a low-income community just a stonesthrow away from wealthy Palo Alto, and, with a fellowship from Echoing Green Foundation started Plugged In, one of the nation’s first digital divide programs. During a visit in 2000, President Clinton honored Plugged In as a model for programs around the world.
He left Plugged In in March of ‘99 to co-found Eazel, an open source Linux desktop start-up. Their software, Nautilus, continues to be used by millions of Linux users. Among other projects, he coordinated the creation of the GNOME Foundation.
In March 2001, after it became clear that it would take a few more years before Linux on the desktop would really take off (his current estimate, and he’s been saying this for years: next year is when the Linux desktop will reach the mainstream), Eazel shut down. He moved to Korea for a while and did business development for two local Linux startups.
Eventually he found his way back to the Valley and, from the creation of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 until the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November, 2004, he headed marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation. He coordinated Firefox marketing activities, including branding, the Firefox 1.0 launch and the creation of Spread Firefox, the community marketing effort for Firefox. He also headed up partnerships with Google, Yahoo and Amazon that have worked out quite nicely for Mozilla. His work for Mozilla was sponsored by Mitch Kapor’s Open Source Applications Foundation.
After leaving Mozilla, he founded Flock, which is building a web browser that lets users connect with their friends. Flock was started with the help of a great group of angel investors and advisors including Josh Kopelman, Gil Penchina, Joe Kraus, Scott Kurnit, Stratton Sclavos and others. VC investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures and Shasta Ventures. He was Flock’s CEO through its Series C, and moved on in the Summer of ‘06.
Like numerous wandering entrepreneurs who’ve come before him, he needed some time to figure out what’s next, and was offered a desk and other accoutrements at Doll Capital Management, where he was an Entrepreneur In Residence in ‘07. He’s now working on what he calls the Next Big Thing - Tapulous.
Bart Decrem tells Mike Arrington about Tapulous.
Added: 6/9/08
