ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide • Hacker News Board

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#61

Post by patrickaljord » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:47 PM UTC

Aramsae wrote: post #33

carlob wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, a lot of “random brasseries” are pretty good, you can eat a good meal for €10 everywhere in the city. You'd have better luck with a random $3 slice of pizza in NYC IMHO. Don't get me started on the kind of lunch €5 gets you anywhere in Italy.

Well, in France we don't have the culture of junk food and fast-food... If you want to eat that way you need to prepare it yourself, if not yeah you're right it's more expensive than NYC. But you should try a sandwich with a good baguette !

> Well, in France we don't have the culture of junk food and fast-food

Are you sure you live in Paris? Cause I see kebab and nutella crepes stands at every corner.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#62

Post by reacweb » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

carlob wrote: post #43

Aramsae wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in France we don't have the culture of junk food and fast-food... If you want to eat that way you need to prepare it yourself, if not yeah you're right it's more expensive than NYC. But you should try a sandwich with a good baguette !

I lived four years in Paris and the fact that junk food culture is absent in France is a myth! University cafeterias serve fries every day as one of the options and there are a lot of kebab places throughout the city, but mind you not a good pita with lots of salad, but a sandwich with a ton fries. Moreover I think a slice of pizza with tomato and mozzarella is not junk food. But maybe that's just me.

By "junk food culture absence" in France, it means that junk food in France is most often very very bad.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#63

Post by patrickaljord » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

maximem wrote: post #36

hk__2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days. According to Wikipedia [1] it’s only 30% (650mm/year, while it’s 980mm/year in Bordeaux or 800mm/year in Nice [2]) > the random brasserie is an expensive tourist trap To be fair, a lot of “random brasseries” are pretty good, you can eat a good meal for €10 everywhere in the city. [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climat_de_Paris [2]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cli…

10€ meal in Paris! First Price in Brasseries start at 12 / 13€ for a decent main course.

Only if you consider a half unfrozen meal in the microwave to be worth €10/€13.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#64

Post by Yoric » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:51 PM UTC

madlag wrote: post #48

sp4ke wrote: post #39

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…

> - 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

Really? Have you spent time filing them? I have, and they were a big time waster for me. There is a way out, of course (i.e. pay some specialized company to file them for you).

Agreed on the other points, though.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#65

Post by patrickaljord » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:51 PM UTC

jmnicolas wrote: post #40

alexjab wrote: post #21

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…

> due to their poor lifestyle Parisians are (mostly) dicks and do not represent Frenchies in general.

Really? Cause that's a pretty dickish thing to say. Also, most people who work/live in Paris are not actually from here, so if you consider Paris to be full of dicks, that would mean most French are too. Just saying.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#66

Post by Jacqued » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:51 PM UTC

madlag wrote: post #48

sp4ke wrote: post #39

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…

Tax reductions schemes are mostly abused AFAIK. Very few startups do anything resembling actual R&D, but they still use the tax schemes, which could be risky in case of tax audit. Anyway, most early startups won't benefit from that as they have no profit to show so it is mostly a moot point.

As for the other points from the parent, they're not specific to France. The "startups are a rich man's game" problem is universal, and financing is just as hard to raise anywhere. Of course you'll probably raise a much smaller amount in France than SV but that's to be expected.

However, I agree with you that we have a nice perk : anyone with a good plan & a few months of free time to write up the paperwork can get something like 50K in grants, without giving up any equity. That's not very useful for an Internet company but can be a tremendous help for dedicated teams in other fields.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#67

Post by foobarge » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:52 PM UTC

jmnicolas wrote: post #40

alexjab wrote: post #21

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…

> they really don't speak English ;-)

I see it slowly changing - I blame this on how good American TV has become now (I'm taking about the series of course.)

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#68

Post by Yoric » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #56

jmnicolas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

Have you lived in Paris? Everyone I talk to tell me parisians* are dicks. I don't get how an entire city can be full of only arrogant bastards. Is that really the case? *or however it's written.

Just to clarify, "parisiennes" == "women of Paris". Is that what you had in mind when you wrote that comment?

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#69

Post by flanbiscuit » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

carlob wrote: post #10

There are a bunch of nice things to be said about Paris and the tax rebate system they put in place for startups and companies that spend heavily in R&D. However I think that Paris has a very low quality of life in most of the fields that are ignored in metrics: - Apartment prices are usually measure by the room when doing comparisons. In Paris the room count is misleading: I've seen studios smaller than 15 m^2 and 1…

I'm curious to know where your comparison is coming from? You obviously had some experience with Paris but I'd like to know where you were living before you went to Paris.

Coming from NYC I don't see that much of a difference in some of the things you've mentioned from living here.

Re: ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide

#70

Post by afterburner » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #16

carlob wrote: post #10

There are a bunch of nice things to be said about Paris and the tax rebate system they put in place for startups and companies that spend heavily in R&D. However I think that Paris has a very low quality of life in most of the fields that are ignored in metrics: - Apartment prices are usually measure by the room when doing comparisons. In Paris the room count is misleading: I've seen studios smaller than 15 m^2 and 1…

> The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days. According to Wikipedia [1] it’s only 30% (650mm/year, while it’s 980mm/year in Bordeaux or 800mm/year in Nice [2]) > the random brasserie is an expensive tourist trap To be fair, a lot of “random brasseries” are pretty good, you can eat a good meal for €10 everywhere in the city. [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climat_de_Paris [2]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cli…

er, but Nice has almost double the average number of sunny hours per day. That's probably more important to perception than total rainfall.