Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There? • Hacker News Board

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#71

Post by oh_sigh » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:20 AM UTC

jbronn wrote: post #49

keyle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep you've highlighted the main issues here. Kidnapping a CEO because the company isn't making any money and shutting its doors is the culmination of an ultra-unionised population. Don't get me wrong, unions were vital in the 40-70's as there was a clear abuse of the workforce. But today, the workforce can't wrap their heads around how a balance sheet works. And all those social laws make hiring and firing very hard,…

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g. , the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

On an unrelated note, can we talk about why aviation has moved away from the biplane? Biplanes gave us the first heavier than air flight. Therefore we should keep flying biplanes forever, because they gave us these great gains in our lives.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#72

Post by marticode » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:29 AM UTC

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #11

Hiring and firing people in France is particularly hard. Most companies do not scale beyond 10 employees as after this threshold the regulatory burden increases dramatically. Taxes on small to medium businesses are downright confiscatory. Most French people still see business owners as exploiters of their workers.

Corporate tax rate is at 33% and 16% for small business, that doesn't strike me as particularly high, especially considered what it used to be in the US. There are many taxes on employee's but they fund their benefits, so that's something you don't have to provide separately to your employees and you can basically see it as part of the salary.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#73

Post by psergeant » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:29 AM UTC

kworker wrote: post #70

Rjevski wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No change - if anything, it's even worse, as the education requirement now means everyone has a degree (even though they might not have the passion nor the actual skill for it), and since the requirement no longer works as a filter for good candidates (I'd argue it never really worked, but now it's even worse) they are now requiring education and experience (for the same pay an intern would get in the UK). Even assum…

It can be an issue everywhere, not just in France.

I make a decent business bringing European developers — especially Germans — without degrees into the UK where nobody gives a shit.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#74

Post by jowiar » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:31 AM UTC

keyle wrote: post #59

jbronn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g. , the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

Sorry I wasn't trying to undermine the power of unions and what it did for the population in the last decades. I grew up in Europe. But also grew frustrated by the impossible situation it puts startups in, to achieve anything and remain viable.

That unions make startups unviable says something about the startup industry...

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#75

Post by psergeant » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

benwilber0 wrote: post #7

I don't know much about the startup landscape in France (or anywhere in the EU), but I've always heard that it is difficult to incorporate a small company and hire employees due to large regulatory/bureaucracy hurdles. The "move fast, break things" pattern of setting up a Delaware LLC and getting an angel seed in a matter of days/weeks really just doesn't work. Can anyone comment on this? Is this way off base?

Recently helped a friend launch a French subsidiary. It is a pain. First, you must pay a lawyer or formation agent to write and register your by-laws. Next, you must seek an introduction to a bank manager. With that secured, you get to draft a book report of a business plan. This is tedious and pointless. Once completed, the bank manager reviews it. (They will also ask for lots of personal documents, each requiring e…

> Meanwhile, in Delaware

More worryingly for the French, it’s as easy as it is in Delaware in other nearby EU countries, and cross-border EU commerce is easier than cross-state commerce in the US

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#76

Post by cocacola1 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #71

jbronn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g. , the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

On an unrelated note, can we talk about why aviation has moved away from the biplane? Biplanes gave us the first heavier than air flight. Therefore we should keep flying biplanes forever, because they gave us these great gains in our lives.

The comparison doesn't really make sense.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#77

Post by richardknop » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

jbronn wrote: post #49

keyle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep you've highlighted the main issues here. Kidnapping a CEO because the company isn't making any money and shutting its doors is the culmination of an ultra-unionised population. Don't get me wrong, unions were vital in the 40-70's as there was a clear abuse of the workforce. But today, the workforce can't wrap their heads around how a balance sheet works. And all those social laws make hiring and firing very hard,…

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g. , the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

The 40 hour week is still not guaranteed. Especially in startup environment overtimes are quite common. In US more so than in Europe, you can easily be pulling 50h+ in a startup with all that overtime not paid for. So it's not like we don't need unions anymore.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#78

Post by lurena » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted.

There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Not everyone among these 65 million is fit to 'move fast and break things'. Not everyone wants to be flexible, adaptable or able to sell themselves in a world of fast hires and firings. Not everyone is a young and dynamic entrepreneur full of 'innovative' ideas (whatever that means). In short, not everyone is a twenty-to-thirty- something with a moderately high level of education and relative affinity with the tech world.

On the other hand, everyone needs a steady job to make a living. Everyone needs the healthcare, retirement plans and other benefits our current labor laws entail with that steady job. In short, everyone is a human being with basic human needs.

Startups have one thing in common - they tend to fail. Maybe your average HN reader will be able to endure the typical working conditions with no guarantee of a stable income in the future, but they are the exception, not the rule. It is preposterous to imagine that an entire country's labor laws and regulation should align with the needs of such a narrow demographic so that foreign investors will maybe deign to notice it and shower said demographic with money.

Yes, there are many things wrong with our current labor laws. Yes, maybe some regulations are needlessly tight and stifle the growth of blooming startups full of bright people. No, that does not mean the US as a 'startup nation' is an example to follow. And if that means the next Facebook or Instagram won't come from here, so be it. Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#79

Post by adventured » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #12

tradedash wrote: post #2

what does "startup nation" even mean?

Israel is an example of a “startup nation”. Edit: Downvotes!? Israel has the most startups per capita of any nation. Look it up, not doing homework for you.

Israel has so many start-ups and so much VC, solely because of the vast capital investment flows from the US. That's hardly a reasonable example for a large nation like France to work from.

It'd be like pretending Ireland's $70,000 GDP per capita is organic, rather than the result of US corporate giants using it as a tax device.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#80

Post by desu_ » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:38 AM UTC

zenovision wrote: post #17

I doubt that France will be able to do this - they have many disadvantages comparing to USA: - high taxes - a lot of buerocracy - language burden to attract high qualified foreign employees - lower salaries - fragmented political system in the EU - much lower population in France comparing to USA and if you want to cover the entire EU, you have to support many different languages, currencies, etc...

As a French, it saddens me a bit to say that but you also missed one point: culture. My background includes some grad school experience at a top French university and then at a top US university. One big difference, which became even more obvious to me after I crossed the Atlantic, is that there is (almost) no hustle culture in France.

Make fun of the stupid apps and the copycats but so many undergrads at my American alma mater were trying something, and that is already so much more than what I saw in France. I have seen some undergrads in America make serious money through their side projects and big companies are more often seen as a stepping stone towards something else. In France, the holy grail is to get a CDI (permanent employee contract) at a big company and that’s often pretty much it. They can be great employees but making money within a structure simply does not require the same resourcefulness. I don't know if the culture is contagious once you arrive in a country, or if universities attract different profiles (probably both), but I thought it was also interesting to note that the immigrants were often resembling the locals in both countries.

In my opinion, even the best version of Macron’s plan is bound to produce underwhelming results. While French taxes and bureaucracy might not help entrepreneurship, I do not think that’s why France isn’t a startup nation. Rather, it’s the fact that France isn’t a startup nation that explains why bad policies and bureaucracy have been tolerated for so long. Understand me well: my comment is the opposite of an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of French entrepreneurs, who exist and face higher administrative hurdles than their American counterparts, but is simply written to share some observations on campus culture and entrepreneurship at two top schools.