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Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

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Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#21

Post by Fede_V »

I lived in Paris for a year, and I'm now working for a big tech company in the US. I can't speak from the VC side of the table, but France has incredibly technically strong graduates (people with technical degrees from the top universities there are all very good) and young people have a very global outlook. Further, there are more and more programs that provide start up funding/locations/tax breaks.

What is missing is an ecosystem to sustain and nurture these companies. The capital in Europe is incredibly conservative and very old fashioned.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#22

Post by godzillabrennus »

Fede_V wrote: post #21

I lived in Paris for a year, and I'm now working for a big tech company in the US. I can't speak from the VC side of the table, but France has incredibly technically strong graduates (people with technical degrees from the top universities there are all very good) and young people have a very global outlook. Further, there are more and more programs that provide start up funding/locations/tax breaks. What is missing…

Sounds a lot like Chicago 10 years ago.

It takes a generation of entrepreneurs to start and have a success or two despite the conditions. Then unless they pull a lightbank they will reinvest in the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#23

Post by eloisant »

It's getting better.

Also, "YouTube wannabe Dailymotion" was founded just one month after than YouTube. The fact that YouTube won the monopoly instead of Dailymotion is an illustration of the problem, but presenting them as a copycat because they're not as successful is unfair to them.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#24

Post by mattmanser »

505aaron wrote: post #5
mattmanser wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the 2nd part, there is nothing stopping French companies translating into the one other language which they probably speak fluently, English, testing it in the UK as they're roughly the same timezone, then moving onto the big English speaking markets of the US, Canada and Australia, which are all significantly bigger than probably 17 of those 20 languages. And the finance thing has nothing to do with Macr…

I interpreted it as required by regulation to support the mentioned languages. However, I would like to understand if this is the case.

As others say, there's no such regulation.

In fact it's better to sell outside the EU as those customers don't have to pay VAT so you have better margins or can sell it cheaper.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#25

Post by etiennemarcel »

EZ-E wrote: post #8

My opinion : the low salaries of engineers, high taxes and bureaucracy hold back the startup scene. Also, the mentality toward technical positions, in France if you didn't go from engineer to manager by 35 year old people wonder what's wrong with you. https://imgur.com/a/MOlau0V

Bureaucracy is not an issue in my opinion. I've ran a successful business in France and if you have a good accountant (and lawyer for some particular issues), it's not anymore difficult than in the US. As an individual, compare how hard it is to make your tax return in the US and in France...

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#26

Post by Apocryphon »

dgut wrote: post #17
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #2

A good look at France's startup scene today and what's holding them back from creating the next Uber/Google “We set up in France around the same time as our rivals were starting in the U.S., but quickly they were raising 100 times more from investors and selling across the country,” Sapet said. “Meanwhile we were stuck translating into 20 European languages.” - Christophe Sapet (French entrepreneur)

> "Meanwhile we were stuck translating into 20 European languages.” - Christophe Sapet (French entrepreneur)" 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.

Any company interested in multinational growth should build localization into their app architecture to begin with, anyway. Then just contract out the actual act of translating the strings.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#27

Post by eloisant »

EZ-E wrote: post #12
a008t wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low salaries should help the startup scene, not hurt it. Where would you rather create your startup - somewhere where it would cost more to hire or less?

Lots of talented people end up working in another country, especially top talent. Would you rather have a glass ceiling at 40k or start at 100+k in SF? Not to mention, low salaries garantees that not much international talent will relocate in France

France is full of "service" jobs, those are crap and lower the average. Just ignore those and look at the jobs that matter, if you're the kind of developer who would have the skills to relocate to SF.

If you're senior, in France, you can get a fairly good salary as a developer. There is definitely no glass ceiling at 40k; you can get more than 50k easily, and above 70k if you have can find the right company with a good fit.

Comparison with SF is hard because it's such a weird place in terms of housing, US healthcare etc. So if you compare to Germany or UK, you still make less in France, but the gap is much smaller than 10 years ago and it's still contracting.

That started before Macron actually. You can find jobs in well-funded startups (instead of the starving startups of 10 years ago happy to raise a million), and more and more international companies (US and others) are now recruiting engineers in France.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#28

Post by eloisant »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #22
Fede_V wrote: post #21

I lived in Paris for a year, and I'm now working for a big tech company in the US. I can't speak from the VC side of the table, but France has incredibly technically strong graduates (people with technical degrees from the top universities there are all very good) and young people have a very global outlook. Further, there are more and more programs that provide start up funding/locations/tax breaks. What is missing…

Sounds a lot like Chicago 10 years ago. It takes a generation of entrepreneurs to start and have a success or two despite the conditions. Then unless they pull a lightbank they will reinvest in the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Yes, that's happening already. The founder of the company I work for (Rachel Delacour) got a good exit by selling to Zendesk and now she's a business angel.

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#29

Post by zwp »

EZ-E wrote: post #8

My opinion : the low salaries of engineers, high taxes and bureaucracy hold back the startup scene. Also, the mentality toward technical positions, in France if you didn't go from engineer to manager by 35 year old people wonder what's wrong with you. https://imgur.com/a/MOlau0V

That's an interesting picture. I took those numbers and compared them to Wikipedia's purchasing-power adjusted average wage figures for 2017 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w.... Here are the results sorted by ratio of average developer salary to average salary in each country. You get the best bang for your buck in .il and .fr doesn't (quite) get the wooden spoon.

    Country       Ratio dev:avg	        
    Netherlands   0.851031639465174	
    France        0.891326705519369	
    Canada        0.944941413632355	
    Finland       1.00083791080905	
    Australia     1.01779098644302	
    Germany       1.05075128717033	
    New Zealand   1.07384561596284	
    UK            1.18906064209275	
    Sweden        1.29738400207581	
    Norway        1.3082871202062         
    Switzerland   1.31657113498065	
    Denmark       1.34069094159251	
    USA           1.48617853958189	
    Israel        1.85359454758035

Re: Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

#30

Post by stephenhuey »

ig1 wrote: post #19

As an independent observer (VC; background in investing both in the US & Europe, currently based out of London) - the French ecosystem has transformed massively over the last few years, it's essentially unrecognizable from what it used to be. 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 Fre…

Yeah, I was very impressed when a little over a year ago the French American Chamber of Commerce came to reach out to startups at Station Houston about working in France.
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