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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

#31

Post by tormeh »

no1youknowz wrote: post #6
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…

The 2nd part relates to the statement many make here on HN. The fallacy which is: That if you don't do business in the EU, you are missing out on 22%-25% GDP of the worlds economy.

Well, you are. The statement is not wrong. It's just a terrible first market to go for, since there's just a lot more work required to penetrate it.

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

#32

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

eloisant wrote: post #23

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.

Both Youtube and Dailymotion grew in a pretty uncool way by not pulling down copyrighted content.

But Dailymotion was basically 5 years behind Youtube in removing that stuff. I was watching full movies and tv shows on Dailymotion even last year.

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

#33

Post by nraynaud »

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

And it is perfectly illustrated by the fact that they interviewed people form a management school about innovation in the article instead of someone from a technical background.

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

#34

Post by rossdavidh »

Hypothesis: other countries, when comparing their own startups to America's startup scene, have no idea how many American startups break a lot of laws at the beginning. It's not just Uber; Youtube had a lot of copyrighted content, many ecommerce sites sold into markets without the right export/import licenses, privacy laws were/are widely flouted at first, hate-speech laws are widely disregarded at first, etc. European startups tend to think (perhaps correctly) that they have to be more or less legal from the get-go, American startups tend to think (perhaps correctly) that they won't get much attention until/unless they get big, and they can worry about being legal later.

Just an hypothesis, I don't know if it's true. But if it is true, it might be hard for European leaders to see, because they probably aren't aware of how often American startups break the law at first.

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

#35

Post by presscast »

rossdavidh wrote: post #34

Hypothesis: other countries, when comparing their own startups to America's startup scene, have no idea how many American startups break a lot of laws at the beginning. It's not just Uber; Youtube had a lot of copyrighted content, many ecommerce sites sold into markets without the right export/import licenses, privacy laws were/are widely flouted at first, hate-speech laws are widely disregarded at first, etc. Europe…

Having lived in and worked in France, I think it has little to do with respect for the law, and more to do with other social/structural factors. In no specific order:

- A much less developed culture of failure

- Few(er) "real" startups. For reasons (see above), many startups in France are startups in name only. They operate under "incubators" that are internally-hosted by industry giants (e.g. AXA). This means it's harder to pivot since whatever you're working on has to serve the interests of your structure. In the AXA example, if you want to pivot from insure-tech to something else, good luck.

- A culture of "I'll work a normal job for 10 years to gain experience. Only then will I be legitimate as an entrepreneur." Again, see point 1. The effect is that most people never really get started.

- A culture that values job stability to an extreme that's difficult to grasp for Americans. In France, the idea that one should work his entire life in the same company is even built into the law in the form of stringent protections against layoffs.

This is slowly changing, but France is not the startup nation Marcon wants it to be.

All the French entrepreneurs (including yours truly, but then again I'm a French/US dual citizen...) are in London.

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

#36

Post by presscast »

axtn wrote: post #15

France has plenty of early stage startups, in fact the increase in size and quality in their ecosystem in just a few years has been very impressive. 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 o…

Agree with the analysis of funding you provide.

Concerning mindset, I think there's an even bigger cultural trait that's holding back French entrepreneurship: a complete absence of a "culture of failure".

By and large, French culture is one of fixed mindset. Mistakes/errors/failures reveal one's limitations or flaws, and aren't perceived as an opportunity to learn and grow. This starts very early and is very much baked in to the structure of schooling.

On the flip-side, this seems to be slowly changing. At the very least, people are aware that the US does this differently, and there seems to be some interest in effecting change.

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

#37

Post by dgut »

Apocryphon wrote: post #26
dgut wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Big difference between building localization into the app architecture and translating the app to 20 languages as a starting point, though.

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

#38

Post by lordnacho »

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.

It's not purely a question of translating the website. There might be different laws and customs depending on the domain.

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

#39

Post by Apocryphon »

dgut wrote: post #37
Apocryphon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big difference between building localization into the app architecture and translating the app to 20 languages as a starting point, though.

Sure, but the idea is that you can pay another service to do the translations. The main difficulty is supporting things like right-to-left text and other specific characteristics, but that shouldn't be a problem in Europe only.

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

#40

Post by chrstphrhrt »

zwp wrote: post #29
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…

Quite informative, thanks.
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