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?

#221

Post by imdutch » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #182

erikb wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how Americans get so shocked about it, while it is quite clear to the rest of the world. Honestly when I was visiting the US the first time, I was shocked how Second World everything was. Most people live in poor areas (of course most well off Americans don't travel to these part of towns so they don't see it). Many non-chain shops are struggling. Food prices are ridiculously high in comparison to the not that…

That's false. France has a higher cost of living and higher food prices [1], with a considerably lower overall median and full-time median income level, versus the US. US GDP per capita is also currently 50% higher than France. France has an unemployment rate ~120% higher than in the US. US wage growth has been roughly 8x to 10x that of France over the last 20 years (France only averaged 0.5% annual wage growth over…

Please mind the difference exchange rates make, otherwise comparisons over time are meaningless. France it's GDP per capita was not higher in 1980, the relative gap was similar to today.

Furthermore, median wage growth has done much better there than in the US over that period. Also poverty rates are set by national standards not international, they're hard to compare unless when it's between EU members for example.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5668ba742340f8b1008b4...

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

#222

Post by p0nce » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:44 AM UTC

gregoriol wrote: post #23

gnicholas wrote: post #14

It has historically been difficult to fire employees in France, compared with the US. Apparently they considered relaxing this policy on 2016 [1], but IDK whether their efforts were successful. Considering the Silicon Valley mantra of “hire slow, fire fast”, it will be interesting to see how things evolve in France. Will they relax their labor laws/customs, or will they find a different way for startups to grow? 1: h…

There has been an "Auto Entrepreneur" status created a few years ago (2010?) that is used by many startups (mainly gig-economy like drivers/delivery/...) which has helped a lot to get started. It's not an employee status, more like a contractor status. It's easy on the company, but not like freestyle though as abuse could be re-qualified as a regular contract ("CDI" ie. employee contract) by a judge. Regular employme…

I'm using this for a software business and it's easy as pie (but less than in Delaware says the thread).

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

#223

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:46 AM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #214

jacquesm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not hard to understand: it's illegal. If someone restricts your movement against your will then depending on how much force they are prepared to bring to bear they should let you go or suffer the consequences. There is nothing symbolical about this, it is actual kidnapping.

OK, it's actual kidnapping. And it's illegal. Now walk me through this: 1. you are held hostage in a home invasion. You kill a kidnapper. The police won't arrest you (in the Netherlands - maybe other European countries they will, I don't know many details of all EU countries - but this is just for argument's sake anyway). Most likely you will not be convicted of anything (depending on the exact circumstances). 2. you…

Being completely realistic, what I would do would be to just attempt to leave.

If they locked a door I would try to break it down or break a window to get out. They'll either let me leave, or they're going to have to start to use force to stop my leaving, right? At that point they're the ones escalating it. The more force they used to try to stop me leaving, the more force I'd try to match it with.

If they get to the point where they're trying to make me stay using a knife, then yes I would literally stab them to escape, which would be totally reasonable force.

If it's really as 'just a prank bro' as you say, I guess they'd just let me leave at the point where I start breaking things to get out. If they're willing to use violence to keep me then I'm going to try to overmatch that with more violence.

The problem with just sitting there and accepting being captured is that you don't know how far it will escalate, and you have no control any more over what happens to you. You need to resist when you have the chance, not leave it until the point where things turn really ugly.

There were several cases of bosses being stripped recently weren't there? They must have been terrified they were going to be raped. Any reasonable person is going to fight for their life in that situation.

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

#224

Post by tluyben2 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:47 AM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #142

woah wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have to spend a lot of time proving that what you are doing qualifies for these bonuses. Seems mostly like a haven for those who have the connections and know-how to get through the approval process.

In Scandinavia, there's a thriving cottage industry of "government grant consultants". They'll fix up all the paperwork for these bonuses, for a low % success fee. No bonus, no fee. I'd be very surprised if France didn't have the same. Writing the applications is really easy, when you have already written a few dozen and have the templates ready.

They have this in most EU countries. They work fine and it is worth the no cure no pay fee as they usually score while small companies on their own usually do not.

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

#225

Post by hollerith » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:51 AM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #116

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 don't see how firing being harder is an issue. In France it's standard with the first several months being a probationary period where you can let the person go on the day, and only after that does it transform into a CDI. This period can be extended once. You can't really blame legislation for needing more than 6-8 months to realize that an employee is not a good fit.

The employee knows about probationary periods and adjusts his behavior to them.

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

#226

Post by Kurtz79 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:52 AM UTC

p0nce wrote: post #215

pilooch wrote: post #41

I run a machine learning company in France. Call it a startup or not, doesn't matter. Most of what I read in the comments here is not exactly true nor relies on statistics (sound like my story is...). For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov tax…

And programmer salary can be rock-bottom too, it's not unheard of to hear people earning 20k€/year (at a cost of ~28k€ top for the employer thanks to CIR). In US dollar that is $33k. (that said, retaining developers is very very hard)

At these salary levels? What do you expect?

Higher salaries do exists, so people will move away as soon as something better shows up.

What companies paying 20K€ end up doing is provide "free" training and experience, to the benefit of the companies that ultimately will end up signing the employees, paying what they are actually worth.

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

#227

Post by reacweb » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:57 AM UTC

kakwa_ wrote: post #195

pilooch wrote: post #41

I run a machine learning company in France. Call it a startup or not, doesn't matter. Most of what I read in the comments here is not exactly true nor relies on statistics (sound like my story is...). For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov tax…

CIR is a huge joke, it doesn't help small companies that much. Big companies are far better at collecting it than start-ups. On paper, CIR is for research and development efforts, basically it's for efforts that improve the state of the art. But in practice CIR is a tax break/subvention in disguise for medium to big french companies like Orange, Thales, bnpparibas... Just to give you an idea, at one of my former job,…

The fact that big companies are using CIR as a mean to get money from the government does not imply that it does not work for real research companies.

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

#228

Post by yaantc » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:58 AM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #142

woah wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have to spend a lot of time proving that what you are doing qualifies for these bonuses. Seems mostly like a haven for those who have the connections and know-how to get through the approval process.

In Scandinavia, there's a thriving cottage industry of "government grant consultants". They'll fix up all the paperwork for these bonuses, for a low % success fee. No bonus, no fee. I'd be very surprised if France didn't have the same. Writing the applications is really easy, when you have already written a few dozen and have the templates ready.

Yes, there' the same in France. It's the most efficient way to get started really, otherwise you'd waste too much time learning the process. And as you say, once you've done it a few times it can be done internally.

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

#229

Post by rjsw » Mon, May 28, 2018, 11:10 AM UTC

pwaai wrote: post #26

I actually looked into this with the local France Business startup organization. At the time, I was young (30, I am now 31) and started learning French with hopes of trying out a alternative to Anglo culture. But reality hits hard. I don't know how I would be able to adjust from living in a multicultural and laws where minorities are protected and enforced to a republic where it is not. Once you are in France, you ar…

France has regional accents too, none are as different as a Quebec one though.

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

#230

Post by nkkollaw » Mon, May 28, 2018, 11:11 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…

You believe what you believe because you read European newspapers, which are anti whoever doesn't comply with what Germany says.

Poland is absolutely NOT hostile to Europe, on the contrary (sorry, I couldn't find a source right now). Italy and other countries are a huge percentage more against Europe than not Poles.

Poland simply doesn't need to lower its wages like Germany did, and has therefore no interest in letting in any of the extra hundred of thousands of migrants that hang around across Europe thanks to Germany opening the borders to them. That would significantly increase crime--which is virtually not-existent in terms of personal safety in Poland--like it happened in Italy and I assume other countries, and cost a ton of money that is currently put into much better and more productive use.

The government is extremely stable. If you read about extreme Catholic-based laws, it's just because that's what they believe in, and after a few years of "West no matter what" following their independence from the Soviets, they are now trying to find their own identity--which is like it or not extremely Catholic and nationalistic. I don't necessarily love those laws, but I'm not Polish and I have different values. The US has it even worse, with laws dictating what sexual positions are legal and which ones are illegal in many states--and no one is complaining.

From a business point of view, I have a company that I opened in 1 day. You have the right to issue invoices from the minute you apply, the government has 1 week to send you a tax ID # (I got mine via email after 3 days). Everything is done electronically, via a trusted profile like your bank account. It's extremely efficient. Taxes are a joke compared to what I'm used to (Italy at 45%): 19% flat. My accountant is EUR 40/mo., but you can find cheaper ones (by comparison, my accountant in Italy cost me EUR 120/mo. because of the bureaucracy involved).

Many people don't know a lot about Poland, and what they know is pretty far from the truth.