51–60 of 119 posts
As a previous foreign entrepreneur who lived in Paris for 8 years here's my experience and my advice: In paris entrepreneurship is a VIP club for rich people who will rarely take real risk. Seed investment is next to impossible. The tax reduction schemes requires months of procedures and administrative paperwork. Real estate is almost as expensive as London. And the worst, if you're a foreigner you'll have a real har…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've lived in Paris (and Lyon) for years, and here is what I have to say about that: - "Apartment quality is really really bad": no always true, like in any other major city (try NYC), - "The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days": the same, - "food quality is abysmal": very true (only applies to restaurants, supermarket food is standard), - "Parisian being grumpy": fair enough, - "pretending not to speak Englis…
> "pretending not to speak English" It's not that they pretend, they really don't speak English ;-) More precisely they have some notions of English but 1) they won't understand a native and can only pick a few words 2) they're ashamed of their accent so they won't even try to speak 3) due to their poor lifestyle Parisians are (mostly) dicks and do not represent Frenchies in general. Don't get fooled by the French pe…
I had it on the tip of my tongue, but I did not want to sound too offensive; although I dread to say it, it is quite true; however, it's not uncommon to hear people at least trying.
ooo - I've one for Dublin, Ireland. http://www.slideshare.net/FrontlineVC/the-irish-tech-startup... Kudos to people who will post the tech guides for other European cities like Berlin and London as I don't have them.
The presentation claims that it takes 4 hours to travel from Paris to Amsterdam by car. Well, the distance is 750 km so you need a pretty fast car for that and a big wallet to pay for the speeding tickets ..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've lived in Paris (and Lyon) for years, and here is what I have to say about that: - "Apartment quality is really really bad": no always true, like in any other major city (try NYC), - "The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days": the same, - "food quality is abysmal": very true (only applies to restaurants, supermarket food is standard), - "Parisian being grumpy": fair enough, - "pretending not to speak Englis…
> "pretending not to speak English" It's not that they pretend, they really don't speak English ;-) More precisely they have some notions of English but 1) they won't understand a native and can only pick a few words 2) they're ashamed of their accent so they won't even try to speak 3) due to their poor lifestyle Parisians are (mostly) dicks and do not represent Frenchies in general. Don't get fooled by the French pe…
*or however it's written.
The presentation claims that it takes 4 hours to travel from Paris to Amsterdam by car. Well, the distance is 750 km so you need a pretty fast car for that and a big wallet to pay for the speeding tickets ..
The presentation claims that it takes 4 hours to travel from Paris to Amsterdam by car. Well, the distance is 750 km so you need a pretty fast car for that and a big wallet to pay for the speeding tickets ..
Thalys high-speed trains get you from Paris to Amsterdam in 3h; add another hour to move to/from the train stations, and here are your 4 hours.
This makes me cringe a bit. What this document says seems to be that France is a great country to start a company in mostly because you can get cheap labor. It is stated that a mid-level dev is $50-80K in France, however the cost of living in Paris is comparable to living in New York, so it means that you ultimately should come to Paris because you can cut your payroll by 20%.
Don't forget that your employees enjoy perks such as free healthcare or unemployment insurance from the government. Moreover, they had their MSc for free or almost, which means they don't have any student loan to pay back. If they have kids, their school is probably both decent and free. If it isn't, what's meant by "expensive private school" around there is a couple thousand euros a year. Also, 5-7 weeks of paid vacation are included.
Most US workers would be better off getting all of this for a 20% pay cut.
As a previous foreign entrepreneur who lived in Paris for 8 years here's my experience and my advice: In paris entrepreneurship is a VIP club for rich people who will rarely take real risk. Seed investment is next to impossible. The tax reduction schemes requires months of procedures and administrative paperwork. Real estate is almost as expensive as London. And the worst, if you're a foreigner you'll have a real har…
Wow, that's a great deal of french bashing in such a short comment. I agree that the immigration laws must be a real pain for some people. But for the rest, you must have been out of luck : - tax reduction schemes are a no brainer, you just have to justify once a year that you are doing something in relation with R&D, and there are too lots of ways to get some government grant to help start your business - french ent…
Can we stop with this? I'm tired of French people always responding to any kind of critics with the "French bashing" strawman. I'm French myself by the way.
> and government grants are here too to help
Most entrepreneurs don't want the government to help, they want the government to stay out of the way. A concept many of my fellow French have a hard time understanding the benefits.