“Be optimistic and innovate”
— The legacy of Cowboy eBikes pioneer Karim Slaoui, who has passed away

Cowboy, the ebike startup that creates innovative electric bikes for city riders, has announced that Karim Slaoui, Co-Founder, (pictured above, right) has passed away. Karim stepped down from the board and the day-to-day running of Cowboy last year. 

His co-founders Adrien Roose and Tanguy Goretti issued the following joint statement:

“It is with deep sadness that we announce our cofounder Karim has died at the age of 36. He was a gifted engineer, a tenacious entrepreneur, and a visionary in every sense of the word. Without Karim there would be no Cowboy. We have lost a close friend and partner and the world has lost a genius mind, instrumental not only in the development of Cowboy, but in making the world a better place to live.”

It’s understood that Karim died on Friday last week of a rare form of cancer, a synovial sarcoma, after being initially diagnosed in 2019. 
Karim spoke to Startup Vie about his cancer diagnosis last year.

A hardware specialist, Karim received his PhD as a Civil Engineer in Applied Mathematics from Université Catholique de Louvain in 2014. He co-founded Cowboy with Roose and Goretti in 2017.


A spokesperson for Cowboy said that Karim’s wife Aurore shared that the things he “truly cared about” were to “Be optimistic and innovate.”


Slaoui co-founded one of Belgium’s most successful tech startups, which has innovated in the booming ebike space and contributed to the global fight of reducing carbon emissions and pollution, especially in cities. It’s sold well over 55,000 ebikes.

At the beginning of 2022 Cowboy raised $80 million, and its understood the company raised at least another €15 million only this year.