Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

For public and almost-public organizations, there is a regulation: you can communicate in exactly one language (French) or at least three languages (usually these will be English and German).

On the other hand, trying to sell to the average French person will require a French translation, and the same is probably true for most other EU countries if you wish to improve your chances ("have a translation in that language" is likely in the top 5 of improvement suggestions for a new market). 300 million people sharing the same language is a boon, especially for B2C or B2SMB.

What’s missing in France right now is an ecosystem of fast-growing mid-stage startups - series B and above. I think that’s caused by a combination of:

1) mindset (thinking globally from say one is easier said than done when nobody around you has done it before)

2) lack of late-stage funding. The seed money scene is not as bad as it used to be, and is in a virtuous cycle of early exits / successful entrepreneurs who want to give back. That is looking very good. However, the VCs still suck, with a few exceptions. They’re mostlt bankers, they’re risk-averse, ownership-greedy, and intrusive. Good luck growing a world-class business with them on your board and in your cap table.

3) The EU market is just weak conpared to US and China. So every european startup has to start outside their confort zone and attack foreign markets from day one... Which creates friction compared to growing at home for the first few years.

Here are factors that in my opinion are NOT to blame: taxes (comparable to California), salaries (yes they’re lower than in SV; that’s a good thing for startups), bureaucratic red tape (that’s what lawyers and accountabts are for, it’s not rocket science), lack of work ethic (in my experience French employees work very hard and are very loyal - although they do complain a lot), brain drain (sure French people leave the country. Plenty stay, or come back. It’s nothing like what third world countries have to deal with).

What I’m seeing more and more is French founders moving to SV, raising money there and keeping their engineers in France. Other international founders are doing the same. I think it’s the best available move at the moment.

That's such a bad excuse. There is nothing stopping them from executing in English, or in French in France in the first place. There are five major languages in Europe: English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. No startup starts doing business in >1 market, not even Uber/Google.

Historically French startups were relatively insular, primarily focusing on the French market while largely ignoring the larger global market.

That's long gone - now you see French startups going after the global market from day one (indeed many run product/eng out of France while running sales from the US to be closer to their American customers).

You can tell the article author hasn't really spent time in the French ecosystem due to the lack of mention of SaaS which is where Paris has found it's sweet spot - SaaStr even ran their first conference outside of SF in Paris.

You can easily see the quality of SaaS startups emerging from the French YC alumni alone: Front, Algolia, Sqreen, Slite - each really building the category defining product in their space.