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Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

independent.co.uk

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Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#11

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #5
atonse wrote: post #2

Paradoxically, while Trump has accomplished very little but make speeches, the damage his presidency has done to our image, and perception of how welcoming America is, will be felt for years. It's bringing back memories of our dismal global perception around 2006-2008. (Although this wasn't for "America is unwelcoming" reasons)

It's going to be devastating over the long term. Those of us even in Australia are wary now of travelling to the US because of (a) fear they maybe mistakenly detained, (b) having to turn over social media information and (c) visa problems at the arrival gate. Places like Berlin, Amsterdam etc are looking far more interesting for startups because of the access to the European market and the sensible policies that seem…

[deleted]

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#12

Post by atonse »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8
atonse wrote: post #2

Paradoxically, while Trump has accomplished very little but make speeches, the damage his presidency has done to our image, and perception of how welcoming America is, will be felt for years. It's bringing back memories of our dismal global perception around 2006-2008. (Although this wasn't for "America is unwelcoming" reasons)

Nah, people have short attention spans. You cite the dismal perception from 2006-2008, but what changed? In 2008 Obama was elected and everything is new again and he won the Nobel. Did the country completely change in 2 years? Has it changed that much in 8? Not really, that's why getting so riled up over singular negative events isn't worth your time. Things change fast, and countries have long histories. Germany and…

Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long.

And you're right, in the grand scheme of things, it may not matter. But four years is a pretty long time in tech-timelines for other countries to start catching up to Silicon Valley's vibrancy.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#13

Post by vmarsy »

allan_s wrote: post #10
vmarsy wrote: post #7

I can see those cuts in corporate tax being good to increase startup competition. Some of the other big remaining issues to see highly successful startups are salaries and lack of tech talent. We could argue that startup salaries aren't the highest anyways, so if salary isn't too big of an issue if French startup can provide equity easily. It seems that when you exercise stock options in France, you don't need to pay…

I agree with you on most parts. However I come from a private "engineering" school focused on computer sciences (named Supinfo) and there's some others (Epitech / Epita ) that though they don't deliver a engineer diploma (as per the law-regulated definition of engineer) but rather a master diploma (but that you can name "engineer in computer science" or somekind of trick like that and the schools play on that to attr…

> But I also learned management (how to hold a meeting, how to manage conflict) and project management (Gantt-diagram, Agile and Scrum) and some basis of ITIL

> And even more related to the entrepreneur-ship world I had lessons about copyrights law, labor laws, patent laws , as well as finance course (what is an asset active/passive, what is the difference between giving yourself a salary and giving you shares etc.)

Oh interesting, I thought this was specific to the "Grandes Écoles". For entrepreneurship, this is good. Accounting basics also comes in handy.

But yeah, I make a difference between learning C, SQL, PHP and let's say taking a compiler class, OS class , programming language design, distributed systems, and a database class where you learn the intrinsic of a database.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when such school 'teach you SQL', they teach you about how to operate a SQL database, and do efficient indexing/joins. That itself is very important, but the school makes no effort to demystify a database. Similar to how you demystified processor by building it from scratch (Electrical Engineering is another "old-school" discipline one I think French engineers are good at), I feel learning to demystify many key computer science concepts makes you a better software engineer. And while learning a new language is something you can do on your own time easily, going deep into a compiler creation isn't something easy to do on your own, especially after being out of school.

Some people would argue that lot of this is useless, but to me: Like a civil engineer, where doing matrices operations and second order derivatives by hand at school is never going to be useful later on the job, having the core skills gives you a better intuition on the job.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#14

Post by bsaul »

allan_s wrote: post #10
vmarsy wrote: post #7

I can see those cuts in corporate tax being good to increase startup competition. Some of the other big remaining issues to see highly successful startups are salaries and lack of tech talent. We could argue that startup salaries aren't the highest anyways, so if salary isn't too big of an issue if French startup can provide equity easily. It seems that when you exercise stock options in France, you don't need to pay…

I agree with you on most parts. However I come from a private "engineering" school focused on computer sciences (named Supinfo) and there's some others (Epitech / Epita ) that though they don't deliver a engineer diploma (as per the law-regulated definition of engineer) but rather a master diploma (but that you can name "engineer in computer science" or somekind of trick like that and the schools play on that to attr…

Imho , schools like those don't do enough "hard" science, like math, to prepare you for the future.

Have you done enough linear algebra to work on image processing, or with neural networks , and understand the various parameters to tweak the libraries ?

Done enough logic (the math branch) to understand the deep nature , or at least feel the taste of the type systems to come ( scala, haskell and now more and more swift kotlin and rust), or use formal program proofs toolings ?

Enough statistics, physics and algebra to get a hint of what's under the hood of Quantum computers, should they come one day ?

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#15

Post by GuiA »

A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting.

Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month) or Ciel Compta (9 euros/month). The keen observer will notice that they're produced by the same company, whose former CEO had a stint at Intuit - another software company that is very good at manipulating legislation to push its own interests.

If you get audited and are not in conformity, you get a 7500 euro fine and 60 days to correct your situation.

But what if you are serving foreign clients, and use foreign software to produce invoices that fulfill local regulation? Or if you developed in house software to meet your very particular needs? Heh, sucks to be you, go give money to Ciel.

That being said, the law says that if you do your accounting without software, you don't fall under the regulation. So can you just do your accounting in Excel, copy it by hand, and show that when you get inspected? Who knows.

There are many, many cases like this of useless bureaucracy and regulation in France that make it a nightmare for anyone to start and run their own business. My friends who have been "auto entrepreneur" in the past have hated every minute of it, and most of them have moved to other countries. I'm French, likely to start a company in the next 5 years, and would never go back to France to do it.

The government doesn't really want to create an environment where small businesses can flourish - no one has the proper background to really get what factors contribute to that. What they want is to get the big bucks from venture capital flowing into the country so that they can boast about having a French Google or Airbnb or whatever, which is purely a vanity metric and not particularly constructive for the economy.

[0]: http://www.codial.fr/wp-content/uploads/BOI-TVA-DECLA-30-10-...

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#16

Post by camus2 »

GuiA wrote: post #15

A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting. Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month)…

Absolutely outrageous, and there is no free open source alternative? how is this even possible.

> Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month) or Ciel Compta (9 euros/month). The keen observer will notice that they're produced by the same company, whose former CEO had a stint at Intuit - another software company that is very good at manipulating legislation to push its own interests.

Fucking "socialists". Macron need to struct down this law, this is straight out corruption, there is no other way to say it.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#17

Post by camus2 »

atonse wrote: post #12
aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, people have short attention spans. You cite the dismal perception from 2006-2008, but what changed? In 2008 Obama was elected and everything is new again and he won the Nobel. Did the country completely change in 2 years? Has it changed that much in 8? Not really, that's why getting so riled up over singular negative events isn't worth your time. Things change fast, and countries have long histories. Germany and…

Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long. And you're right, in the grand scheme of things, it may not matter. But four years is a pretty long time in tech-timelines for other countries to start catching up to Silicon Valley's vibrancy.

> Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long

Bush damaged US reputation way more than Trump, USA did recover. For entrepreneurs and talents, Canada, Germany or France just can't compete, especially France with a bureaucracy that will crush one's bones.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#18

Post by relyio »

GuiA wrote: post #15

A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting. Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month)…

>A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting.

Macron has been elected in 2017. Given this article is about how he is sparking a tech boom in the country, I hardly see how that's his fault, or even related.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#19

Post by camus2 »

French governments like to create all these grants and loopholes, but it doesn't mask the complexity and the hostility of french bureaucracy toward entrepreneurs. Don't be fooled by these PR stunts. If Macron really wants to change things he needs to start telling the tax office to stop treating every business owner as a de-facto fraudster and criminal.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#20

Post by nxtrafalgar »

threeseed wrote: post #5
atonse wrote: post #2

Paradoxically, while Trump has accomplished very little but make speeches, the damage his presidency has done to our image, and perception of how welcoming America is, will be felt for years. It's bringing back memories of our dismal global perception around 2006-2008. (Although this wasn't for "America is unwelcoming" reasons)

It's going to be devastating over the long term. Those of us even in Australia are wary now of travelling to the US because of (a) fear they maybe mistakenly detained, (b) having to turn over social media information and (c) visa problems at the arrival gate. Places like Berlin, Amsterdam etc are looking far more interesting for startups because of the access to the European market and the sensible policies that seem…

Exactly. Countries definitely lose out because of these policies.

I intended to visit China in the near future -- but I've booked a trip to Taiwan instead, almost entirely because Taiwan doesn't​ require me to get a visa.

Likewise, I can't see myself ever living in the US as long as I have access to free movement in Europe.

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