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In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
21–30 of 97 posts
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#22Is it really fine to work without speaking French in Paris?
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#23ReaLLY??
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#24While I applaud any efforts toward entrepreneurship, I can't help but think that these "megaproject" efforts kind of miss the point. By their very nature, startups tend to originate from grungy, grassroots hackerspaces, undergrad dorms, shared apartments, graduate common rooms, and so forth. Places where weird and innovative ideas get cross pollinated. I mean, yeah, "let a thousand flowers bloom", and all. But if Fra…
The university in my local area is trying to do the same thing: they spend all of their time writing funding proposals for a new 3500m2, three-storey, $20m shiny glass incubator building in an area where the startup ecosystem is maybe 2 years old, and has zero angel/VC or mentor networks.
The people behind the project are all academics and have never launched a startup in their lives. They can't even fill a trial "incubator" (that is nothing more than a coworking space) they started two years ago that has a legal maximum of 25 people due to stairwell access. At any given time, there are maybe 6-8 people in there.
Meanwhile the entire startup community is like "WTF mate"!
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#25While I applaud any efforts toward entrepreneurship, I can't help but think that these "megaproject" efforts kind of miss the point. By their very nature, startups tend to originate from grungy, grassroots hackerspaces, undergrad dorms, shared apartments, graduate common rooms, and so forth. Places where weird and innovative ideas get cross pollinated. I mean, yeah, "let a thousand flowers bloom", and all. But if Fra…
If you look at the Valley as an example, it's a bit of both. The grungy garages are the most romanticized element, but there was quite a bit of large-scale institutional support. Stanford Industrial Park and the cluster around NASA's Moffett Field served as two anchors that were something like incubators, though focused on somewhat larger, more capital-intensive, engineering-oriented companies than what today's startup incubators tend to focus on.
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#26Are they still legally obliged to call computers ordinateurs and use Megaoctet over there?
You know most people outside your country speak a different language than yours?
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give examples of red tape/paperwork you'd like to see removed to help entrepreneurs in France?
Let me clarify something first: I am not an entrepreneur myself. I don't deal with said paperwork, the people I currently work for or have worked for in the past do. I've had the same feedback from a lot of them, in small and bigger companies. Basically the complaints are always the same: it's not necessarily the amount of paperwork, it's the fact that when interfacing with the various agencies (regarding legal, fina…
Oh yes, I remember during first year in France. Every time I visited back home, I'd go to my local bureaucrats to get a few more birth certificates. It seemed that every single desk in France needs one, obviously no more than 3 months old (as if my birth data changed so often). And that was even without trying to start any business...
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#28Let me be the classical Frenchy (i.e. never happy) here and point out that as long as the tax code, red tape and overall overwhelming paperwork entrepreneurs in France have to deal with won't be reduced or greatly simplified, having big incubators will be a nice touch but the road to growth will still be paved with unnecessary hurdles. The task at hand is HUGE, one that not so many developed countries have to deal wi…
I love rien, I am a Parisien ;)
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#29While I applaud any efforts toward entrepreneurship, I can't help but think that these "megaproject" efforts kind of miss the point. By their very nature, startups tend to originate from grungy, grassroots hackerspaces, undergrad dorms, shared apartments, graduate common rooms, and so forth. Places where weird and innovative ideas get cross pollinated. I mean, yeah, "let a thousand flowers bloom", and all. But if Fra…
Just even the media of this will stir up the ecosystem and I imagine inspire would-be entrepreneurs into action.
Re: In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world
#30It will not happen/work while Hollande is president
It will when Niel will be ;)