France bids to reverse tech brain drain • Hacker News Board

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#131

Post by david_p » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #18

david_p wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our startup was created in France 2,5 years ago. Here is our experience: Some of us started working on the project while getting unemployment benefits (huge boost). We get (very) affordable office spaces from the city and various incubators (we are located in Paris). We are able to live on first customers + 0% loans from the state + hundreds of thousands of euros in various grants for innovation ( http://www.bpifranc…

So one wonders why there's a problem because evidently there is.

Could you elaborate?

Because I see this: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/blablacar-raises-a-massive-...

And this: http://1000startups.fr/?lang=en

And I see Paris being startup-heaven in a couple of years. And things are already pretty nice!

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#132

Post by david_p » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

fche wrote: post #24

david_p wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our startup was created in France 2,5 years ago. Here is our experience: Some of us started working on the project while getting unemployment benefits (huge boost). We get (very) affordable office spaces from the city and various incubators (we are located in Paris). We are able to live on first customers + 0% loans from the state + hundreds of thousands of euros in various grants for innovation ( http://www.bpifranc…

That degree of risk-eliminating subsidy should indeed light a fire under entrepreneurship (while the gravy train can keep moving). Do you suppose the benefits are commesurate with the costs? IOW, are there enough new companies thusly incubated that become self-supporting or better?

What would you say are the costs to compare to the benefits?

In my opinion, it would have be extremely difficult to bootstrap our company anywhere else. As everyone knows, getting out of cash is what kills early stage companies. We go access to "free cash" (0% loans and more than 100k€ in grants) and some of our employees got paid on unemployment benefits .. I mean, how much further could you go? We survived thank to this benefits.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#133

Post by david_p » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

S4M wrote: post #67

david_p wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our startup was created in France 2,5 years ago. Here is our experience: Some of us started working on the project while getting unemployment benefits (huge boost). We get (very) affordable office spaces from the city and various incubators (we are located in Paris). We are able to live on first customers + 0% loans from the state + hundreds of thousands of euros in various grants for innovation ( http://www.bpifranc…

French expat here, considering coming back. I just checked bpifrance.fr you linked, and... it's really badly designed. The navigation is really made really complex (you need to know exactly what you are looking for in order to get the information to it, and you can't go back without changing the URL of the page) and the page is slow as hell. I may still come back to France, but this page is not encouraging.

This is free money man, pick up your phone and call them instead of complaining about their website design :)

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#134

Post by david_p » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

S4M wrote: post #67

david_p wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our startup was created in France 2,5 years ago. Here is our experience: Some of us started working on the project while getting unemployment benefits (huge boost). We get (very) affordable office spaces from the city and various incubators (we are located in Paris). We are able to live on first customers + 0% loans from the state + hundreds of thousands of euros in various grants for innovation ( http://www.bpifranc…

French expat here, considering coming back. I just checked bpifrance.fr you linked, and... it's really badly designed. The navigation is really made really complex (you need to know exactly what you are looking for in order to get the information to it, and you can't go back without changing the URL of the page) and the page is slow as hell. I may still come back to France, but this page is not encouraging.

You comment is actually pretty interesting.

I see a lot of French people convinced that France is worse than anywhere else in the world. Everything that is done in France is seen as "not good enough" by many French. It's an attitude problem and might be the reason why so many of us move away, convinced that "things are better out there".

Maybe the biggest problem with having the state do so much for us is that it makes many people act like spoiled kids: they see things as not-perfect-enough and are easily discouraged.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#135

Post by touristtam » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

Joky wrote: post #98

Fiahil wrote: post #12

This "Reviens Léon" initiative is a masquerade and based on the grotesque idea that expats are not french because they crossed a border. Countries are not bound to frontiers anymore, if I'm growing a network out of my country, I'm becoming an ambassador of the whole french culture. How is that less beneficial to its international standing? French companies and administrations deplore the lack of tech engineers, but a…

"Countries are not bound to frontiers anymore", well from a fiscal point of view it is, you got a free education while you were in France, and now you work and pay taxes in another country, which couldn't scale because it breaks the French system

I think he meant Nation rather than Country