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Show HN: How to start a business in France

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Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#61

Post by chomp »

kmlx wrote: post #32
pjc50 wrote: post #23

I'm slightly surprised to see that not only is this in English but there isn't even an obvious option to switch it to French. That's pretty un-French in the first place. It's interesting to read the SARL process and compare it with the UK one: https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation In the UK, not only is a company bank account not a prerequisite, it's the other way round - you form the company first. There's no…

“There's no requirement to notify a newspaper.” :) what is this nonsense?

There's some places around the world (including some places in the U.S., I think New York is one of them) where if you form a corporation, you have to publicize it in a newspaper. It can be expensive.

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#62

Post by baud147258 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #59
baud147258 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about using consultants, it might be easier to "hire/fire" them?

This is what I would expect, but in some places state tries hard to force self-employed consultants into permanent positions (not sure how France works in this regard). And if you mean external company consultants, they are not much cheaper.

I was thinking about external company consultant, since I have more experience with that type than self-employed (I'm a consultant, working for a big French consulting firm (Alten)). Also I think there's more available company consultant than self-employed consultants in France.

I agree that external company consultant are more expensive than employees, but on the other hand it's much more flexible than employees.

> in some places state tries hard to force self-employed consultants into permanent positions

I don't think that France is trying to do that, but it's from talking to a half-dozen of self-employed consultant, so anecdote, not checking the legislation. Still in France, regarding consultants, there's a limit on how long a consultant can stay in the same mission, I think that beyond three years, the law state that they should become employee where they are really working. But I don't know how much it is applied.

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#63

Post by jeanlaf »

saiya-jin wrote: post #18
nerbert wrote: post #8

France is a fantastic country to start a company: very little things to pay until you actually make a profit, company creation process is easy, consequences for failure are very low to inexistant if you’re a startup. And the state is there to help you get all kind of loans by offering guarantees to the banks for you.

Firing people is ridiculously hard in France. I would say quite an important point in case startup experiences anything else but ideal logarithmic growth, actually even in that case (realizing somebody wasn't a great hire after trial period)

Have been working in San Francisco for 6 years. Actually, contrary to what you believe, there are approximately the same rules. You cannot fire people in the US without reason too.

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#64

Post by jypepin »

realusername wrote: post #36
baud147258 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it's not, first there's the trial period for permanent employees The trial period go both way: the employee can choose to leave very easily. We had one such case where I'm working, the employee left before the 6-months period was finished. In addition to firing, it exists legal possibilities to cancel the employee/employer contract if both side agree on it ("rupture conventionnelle"), if I've understood the mech…

> The trial period go both way: the employee can choose to leave very easily. We had one such case where I'm working, the employee left before the 6-months period was finished. Yes exactly, that's pretty fair, if the employer can fire at-will, the employee can leave quickly as well, it's flexibility on both sides. > In addition to firing, it exists legal possibilities to cancel the employee/employer contract if both…

rupture conventionnelle is very expensive :)

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#65

Post by jypepin »

realusername wrote: post #16
jypepin wrote: post #14

Looking at the cost of hiring, it's crazy to see that the employee only gets ~50% (or even less as the salary grows) than what the employer pays. This makes it very expensive for an employer to pay their employees well, and explains very well why salaries are so low in France. Something else to note is also employment laws, which are way more strict in France and makes it either extremely expansive or just impossible…

That's because in France you get indirect salary as well whereas in other countries you have to pay some of those things from the indirect salary from your own pocket. To compare to a US salary, I would personally add 30 to 40% to those raw figures to reflect external costs. > Something else to note is also employment laws, which are way more strict in France and makes it either extremely expansive or just impossible…

never heard of indirect salary before, can you explain what that is?

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#66

Post by daxat_staglatz »

etiennemarcel wrote: post #33
pjc50 wrote: post #23

I'm slightly surprised to see that not only is this in English but there isn't even an obvious option to switch it to French. That's pretty un-French in the first place. It's interesting to read the SARL process and compare it with the UK one: https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation In the UK, not only is a company bank account not a prerequisite, it's the other way round - you form the company first. There's no…

> The more I think about social security requirements, the more I think they should just be paid out of general taxation and not entangled with a particular relationship of "employment". In France they are too, with the CSG and CRDS.

Interestingly (?), courts disagree about the legal nature of the CSG/CRDS (see [0] for some information):

- According to the Cour de Cassation, it is both a tax and a social contribution - According to the Conseil Constitutionnel, it is a tax - According to the Conseil d'Etat and the EUCJ, it is a social contribution

[0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contribution_sociale_g%C3%A9n%...

Slightly off topic but for foreigners who are interested, the welfare state (called Social Security, the word thus a much broader sense than in the US context) in France has been created as a separate entity from the Government.

It is managed by workers' representatives and employers' representatives. Since, in the end, it is the Governement (the Parliament, to be exact) that make laws, including those related to the Social Security, it has as much power over this sytem as it wants.

Nonetheless, this leads France to have technically two different budgets - the Government one and the Social Security one - with their own bills and two systems of taxation - social contributions, which go to the Social Security budget; and taxes, which go to the Government budget.

OVertime, social contributions - which are computed on labor income - have been cut, especially for low wage earners. The shortfall in financing has been partly compensated by transferring tax revenues to the Social Security.

This leads to weird public accounting and public debate: for instance, there is much talk about the Social Security deficit or even specific branches of the Social Security (since they are all financed by their social contribution), missing the fact that it reflects completely arbitrary ways to earmarked specific taxes to different part of the Government.

Another example of weirdness in the public debate because of this is the enormous importance of the "income tax" in the public debate, and especially that few households pay it and most of the money comes from a minority of household ... but the "income tax" actually brings _less_ money than the CSG, which is a tax on income that is different thatn "the income tax" (impôt sur le revenu). Because of the names and the arbitrary accounting practices, the vast majority of income taxation is completely out of the public debate radar.

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#67

Post by ramkam »

Majestic121 wrote: post #40
saiya-jin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing people is ridiculously hard in France. I would say quite an important point in case startup experiences anything else but ideal logarithmic growth, actually even in that case (realizing somebody wasn't a great hire after trial period)

You can fire at will for the first 4 month, renewable once, so practically 8 month, for IT people. It's plenty of time to determine whether someone is fit for a job or not.

Short sighted / Incomplete. The odds are you'll be a service co, hence, "high" salaries. There will be up and downs in your sales, and you will find yourself in a cash crunch at some point - especially when you are "small" with just few projects at a time - and you will have to fire. If you do that by the book, you wont be allowed to hire for 2 years. It just makes it incredibly hard to manage, hence, the reluctance to hire quickly, and ... the thrive of consulting services (often more than 50% of the dev team are consultants ... ;-) ). It's a mess, for everyone.

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#68

Post by jpic »

jypepin wrote: post #64
realusername wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trial period go both way: the employee can choose to leave very easily. We had one such case where I'm working, the employee left before the 6-months period was finished. Yes exactly, that's pretty fair, if the employer can fire at-will, the employee can leave quickly as well, it's flexibility on both sides. > In addition to firing, it exists legal possibilities to cancel the employee/employer contract if both…

rupture conventionnelle is very expensive :)

i thought the minimum was the equivalent of a month of gross salary

Re: Show HN: How to start a business in France

#69

Post by jpic »

jypepin wrote: post #65
realusername wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because in France you get indirect salary as well whereas in other countries you have to pay some of those things from the indirect salary from your own pocket. To compare to a US salary, I would personally add 30 to 40% to those raw figures to reflect external costs. > Something else to note is also employment laws, which are way more strict in France and makes it either extremely expansive or just impossible…

never heard of indirect salary before, can you explain what that is?

maybe they mean social rights
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