In 2016, Paris to be home to the biggest startup incubator in the world

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, financial, bank-related, employment or health issues) you usually have to provide the same documents OVER and OVER (and interfacing with people who are not always accountable to someone given the number of layers in the French administration, creating a system where some people have a job for life, don't understand that the "state" is all of us and don't give their all).

It sometimes feels that it never ends and doesn't make sense. Since the system in France is very centralized and since all the different agencies ALL depend from the state, this should be centralized to a given location and then dispatched to the agencies upon request.

The bigger problem anyway (if you call that a problem) is that your social contract in France is that of a mutual network of citizens taking care of each other through taxation. This is great when it comes to a lot of topics (health, education, social services), but it naturally has a cost when you're competing against the likes of the USA who have made a clear choice that the private sector tends to come first. I've yet to think of a good way to have my lunch and eat it but this more often than not puts our SME/SMI in a difficult spot.

In this startup incubator there will be a counter with administrative people to help us with all this paperwork. So less pain with all this formalities, we will just have to pay more as we are in France.

By the way, one more time, thanks Xavier Niel, he's the only one in France who invests so much money on things like this and taking so many initiatives to make things change.

He gave us the cheapest contract for mobile phone in the world, he offered us the 42 school (free school for computer sciences with an innovative learning method), he offers us the most efficient dedicated servers for a decent price (http://www.online.net/fr/serveur-dedie/comparatif-serveur-de...), and so much more.

Thanks Xavier Niel.

All of it...The issue in France is politicians that create harsh constraints for entrepreneurs then architect "usines à gaz" for there friends to pretend they are helping entrepreneurs.

Really interesting, but a building != an incubator. Access to capital/investors is key and its unclear from the article if this is something they've got a plan to address.

So there is 30.000m² of space, but it seems that most of it can't be used for actual work. It'd have been more beneficial if they used the money to build a building and have subsided apartments for start-ups. I think at a starting stage, I'm more in need for work space than an auditorium or another restaurant.

But this doesn't solve the problem for France. I'm (geographically) quite close to France but will incorporate my next start-up in Hong Kong. No Visa, much easier paper work, and easier to get a bank account; and also cheaper.