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?

#101

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:04 AM UTC

JeanMarcS wrote: post #56

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...

To be fairly honest, sinc I start reading HN and some post about burocracy in the US, I started to think that France may not be THAT bad. It's bad, but perhaps not as bad as I thought it was (disclosure : I'm a French business owner)

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by jdminhbg » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:07 AM UTC

lurena wrote: post #78

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 A…

> 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.)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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

#103

Post by AmericanChopper » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

geezerjay wrote: post #97

AmericanChopper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. In developed economies they only serve as a levelling mechanism, which also make it impossible to fire anybody. The only people they serve are unproductive and incompetent employees.

> Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. You clealy have no idea about what you're saying. For your comment to make any sense you need to believe that any worker acting exclusively by himself has the resources to enforce those laws agains any company and suffer no repercussion during the process. This idea is utterly absurd. Meanwhile, unions do offer specialized legal…

>you need to believe that any worker acting exclusively by himself has the resources to enforce those laws

Yes because that’s how laws work, it’s up to the individual to enforce them...

Literally no laws work this way.

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

#104

Post by nopless » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:21 AM UTC

I am curious about the real number of founders in this thread? It seems that most of the replies are focused on system criticism… and it's a completely false statement. Creating a startup in France is really easy to do if you do it well. Take an accountant and he will handle almost everything for you, from the creation to the run. Man Power is cheap compare to the USA. The only limitation seems to be the motivation… and to become a founder you are going to need a lot of motivation !

So what are the difficulties: 1. Market 2. Money

The initial market is small. This means that you need to go directly to international business. We have Europe but the point is that Countries are a little bit too patriot. From this point, addressing the USA market is really difficult without having a headquarter there, even with fully digitalized services and English native commercials. Don't know why but you can read Criteo founder's feedback on this point. Addressing China is almost impossible. So here is the point: to address Europe and USA you need huge funds.

Money is easy to get at the beginning and you have a lot of public helps on this phase. Then it's more difficult (>2M€). VC market is clearly not as developed as in the USA. That where most of the startup ends… Best case, you will raise money in the USA and move there. Otherwise you are looking for an exit.

That will be my conclusion. France is a very cheap place to buy a startup ! (An no such bureaucratic barriers).

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

#105

Post by adventured » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:21 AM UTC

clon wrote: post #94

adventured wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was increasingly a problem for US competitiveness. The US was bleeding a lot of successful companies to other countries for tax purposes, and it was getting worse (Pfizer tried to flee to Ireland). The average national rate in Europe is around 18%, and 21% for the EU. France is competing with this: Austria 25%, Spain 25%, Netherlands 25%, Italy 24%, Norway 23%, Denmark 22%, Sweden 22%, Portugal 21%, Slovakia 21%,…

What is the source of this information? In Estonia corporate income tax is essentially 0% - all re-invested income is tax-free, you only pay taxes when you eventually decide to pay out dividends (or salary). Which can be years, decades or never.

It's derived from KPMG's global tax tables for 2018, and confirmed from:

https://investinestonia.com/business-in-estonia/taxation/

Estonia's corporate income tax rate is not essentially zero, unless you plan to never distribute any profit. Otherwise it's 14-20%. It would be unusual for most businesses to never distribute profit.

Last year Estonia collected something like €368m in corporate income taxes. Or €283 per capita. Equal to about 4% of their budget. Not a huge sum, also not anywhere close to zero. In the US for 2018, corporate income taxes will be about 5% to 6% of tax revenue (4% to 5% of the budget). The US corporate income taxes collected, broken down on a per capita basis, will be around $650 to $700 for 2018, for comparison.

You can plainly see that Estonia collects corporate income taxes:

https://www.stat.ee/53719

https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-estonia.pdf

The primary unusual thing Estonia does, is not tax profit until distribution.

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

#106

Post by altharaz » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:24 AM UTC

chillidoor wrote: post #31

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.

I wonder how big the contractor market is in France. I mean, contractors are easy to hire and fire so it could be a good compromise (at least in the short term).

Actually we have two common cases which make it harder to work with contractor.

1. If your contractor has just you as a client for a long time, if you stop the mission he can sue you for « economical dependance »

2. The real estate market does not let you rent without a solid employee contract, making it very hard to independent contractors to find a house.

The important market is not in contractors but rather in « contractors supporters », basically buying contractors time and selling it to big corporations.

These « middlemen » take the juridical risk, which make the big corporations accepting the contractors, and help the contractors finding missions.

These middlemen also take fees on missions.

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

#107

Post by AmericanChopper » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:24 AM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #93

AmericanChopper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. In developed economies they only serve as a levelling mechanism, which also make it impossible to fire anybody. The only people they serve are unproductive and incompetent employees.

> Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. I suppose no political organizations are necessary in places where there are decent and enforced laws, not even political parties, but that's not how humans work. Decent laws aren't the result of generosity from those in power - decent labor law isn't a result of corporate altruism - but of political struggles between different…

This comment sounds a lot like hyperbole to me. People have a seat at the table, that’s how democracy works. People also have an incredible amount of entitlements and protection in the labor market. The labor laws in the west are generally quite good, most of the reasonable criticism you could direct at them comes down to enforcement. If you have a problem with them, then participate in your democracy.

In economies where minimum entitlements are sufficient to protect workers from exploitation, unions serve no useful purpose at all, they are simply leveling mechanisms. Meaning the do not protect workers from getting less than their worth, they simply pull people down and prevent people from advancing themselves beyond the average. Worst of all they make it nearly impossible to fire the incompetent, which itself seems like exploitation to me, forcing the component to pick up the slack of those who aren’t.

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

#108

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:33 AM UTC

nopless wrote: post #104

I am curious about the real number of founders in this thread? It seems that most of the replies are focused on system criticism… and it's a completely false statement. Creating a startup in France is really easy to do if you do it well. Take an accountant and he will handle almost everything for you, from the creation to the run. Man Power is cheap compare to the USA. The only limitation seems to be the motivation……

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by petre » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:43 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #18

nkkollaw wrote: post #8

I understand why a small percentage of startups could benefit from being in San Francisco and similar and want to enjoy the ecosystem, hire people, etc. However, I have no idea why any early-stage startup would go to France and last 3 months, while with the same money they could go to Poland and enjoy the same level of support from the government, availability of highly-skilled tech people, and twice-4 times the buyi…

The risk of going to Poland is that the government of Poland is currently expressing views that are extremely hostile to the EU, and therefore you must take into account the political risk that Poland might try to pull a stunt like Brexit -- at which point you find that you have been building a business on the assumption that you are inside of the EU, and now you suddenly find yourself outside of the EU. I have thoug…

First of all, that doesn't happen suddenly, you have time to relocate in a different EU country. Look at Brexit. Then a startup always means risk. Political risk is one of those.

The EU is not that rosy, not for Eastern Europeans anyway. It works fine for Germany but the other countries, Central and Eastern European ones specifically are second class citizens in the EU. Fortunately most of us still have our own currencies and are not totally at the mercy of the EU. It's still better than being "friends" with the USSR though.

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

#110

Post by chillidoor » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

altharaz wrote: post #106

chillidoor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how big the contractor market is in France. I mean, contractors are easy to hire and fire so it could be a good compromise (at least in the short term).

Actually we have two common cases which make it harder to work with contractor. 1. If your contractor has just you as a client for a long time, if you stop the mission he can sue you for « economical dependance » 2. The real estate market does not let you rent without a solid employee contract, making it very hard to independent contractors to find a house. The important market is not in contractors but rather in « c…

> If your contractor has just you as a client for a long time, if you stop the mission he can sue you for « economical dependance »

Here in the UK, if your contractor works for you for a long time the government could argue that they're a "disguised employee". This a type of tax dodge, so they will come down on them like a ton of bricks, and might come after you as well.

>The real estate market does not let you rent without a solid employee contract, making it very hard to independent contractors to find a house.

My previous employer found this out the hard way, as they tried to get a developer to work in Paris for a few months. But because he was employed by the London office and not the French one, they didn't want to give him a French work contract. The whole thing fell through when the developer did a lot of research (which I feel the company should have done before making the offer) and said he wasn't going to move unless they helped him with all of the paperwork to make it fully legal. The company realised how much work was involved and then said he didn't have to come, haha. They also looked at renting AirBnB rooms for the whole period but Paris is clamping down on AirBnB so it wasn't worth it.

>These « middlemen » take the juridical risk, which make the big corporations accepting the contractors, and help the contractors finding missions.

Yeah, contractor recruiters are very big in IT here, especially in London. Most IT contractors use recruiters because they do all of the legwork, and also take most of the risk. But the government is starting to put a lot of pressure on them because they are so worried about disguised employment (which to me seems like a non-issue anyway).