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A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

visa.lafrenchtech.com

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Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#71

Post by EnglishInFrance »

falloutx wrote: post #56
bogomipz wrote: post #4

Does anyone know how big of an impediment is not knowing French? EDIT: I should have articulated my question better by saying "in the short term." I agree its foolish to not learn the local language if you plan on staying. But if the office language is French that is going to be almost a non-starter for someone who doesn't already speak it. It can be intimidating enough changing jobs in your native language. I know S…

Real question for me is that how good french people are at speaking English? If I go there, I wouldn't be able to speak any French on day 1, so It would be nice if there is a decent percentage of people speaking English so that I get by until I learn Essential French.

When compared to a country that has high levels of English literacy such as the Netherlands, there's a major difference here.

You will be able to get by just fine in Paris for things like restaurants and hotels, but as soon as you have to deal with the government in any fashion, you absolutely must speak French.

In places other than Paris and the tourist areas of some major cities, it will be very difficult if you don't speak any French.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#72

Post by throwaway1892 »

hartator wrote: post #51

Don't go there. The limit of freedom of speech is real and can block you. Even when you run a startup that has nothing to do with local politics or anything controversial. Plus, we are still in "state of emergency", that gives the state more rights than the patriot act. Go to the US, Canada or New Zealand.

> The limit of freedom of speech

Could you expand on that? I'm French, living and working near Paris and I would be interested to hear what limits do you think of.

Personaly I think it is no worse that any other Western country.

Edit: The limits I can think of are more from media watchdogs, which can be ignored (just look at Dieudonné). Or you can be sued by anti racist/anti _____phobe associations for slander, but I would not qualify that as a limit on freedom of speech like can exist in other countries.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#73

Post by PaulRobinson »

upen wrote: post #47

Is French language proficiency mandatory for this program?

No mention on the website that I can see, but my guess be they won't explicitly require French language exams for the visa, but not speaking French in France is going to be difficult, particularly in the North (including Paris).

It may well be that the right firm, in the right part of France (the South is normally a little friendlier), you're going to be fine. In Paris though? It seems like it is almost a national sport to be a little rude to non-native speakers, and a lot more rude to people who just try and get by in English.

But if you're planning to move to France, to start a French start-up business, and employ French employees, it is probably a good idea to learn some French.

As an English speaker, the michelthomas.com courses point out that you already know a lot more French than you think. :-)

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#74

Post by Sarki »

bogomipz wrote: post #4

Does anyone know how big of an impediment is not knowing French? EDIT: I should have articulated my question better by saying "in the short term." I agree its foolish to not learn the local language if you plan on staying. But if the office language is French that is going to be almost a non-starter for someone who doesn't already speak it. It can be intimidating enough changing jobs in your native language. I know S…

To summarize: It depends where you'll end up and which tech area you're specialized in. Paris is often a good spot, south east as well (Monaco, Cannes, Nice) if you're specialized in hardware. Regarding the south-east part, english might not be too much of a problem since international tourism is a big part of the local economy, I even heard that Google used to look for a spot there until some local political figure blew it up due to personal interests conflicts. Also for the record, Paul Allen's yacht is frequently seen cruising around when it's time for the Cannes festival.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#75

Post by FabHK »

xiaoma wrote: post #40
paraboul wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like not speaking the local language of any country : won't work in the long term.

I've met people who did well in Hong Kong for decades without learning the local language (Cantonese) and then haven't bothered to learn Mandarin since China took control 20 years ago. It's pretty doable in Sweden, too. In Japan, Russia or Argentina, though, you'd be at an enormous disadvantage.

To be fair, HK is bilingual, at least in the sense that all government/utility/etc. forms are available in both Cantonese and English (these days also in Simplified Chinese).

Article 9 of the Basic Law stipulates: "In addition to the Chinese language, English may also be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region."

So, it's quite easy to get along without Cantonese or Mandarin (or without English, for that matter).

However, without Cantonese, one only has limited access to what's going on in politics, civil society, show biz, etc.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#76

Post by oelmekki »

hartator wrote: post #51

Don't go there. The limit of freedom of speech is real and can block you. Even when you run a startup that has nothing to do with local politics or anything controversial. Plus, we are still in "state of emergency", that gives the state more rights than the patriot act. Go to the US, Canada or New Zealand.

Also, maybe people will want to wait for next elections results (in may 2017) before considering moving in :)

I don't see either what you mean with freedom of speech problems, except maybe if it's about holocaust denial or things like that which are punished by law, here. But I guess most people won't be bothered.

State of emergency is indeed a problem, not to mention that there's a high chance we'll be targeted again by terrorism.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#77

Post by klipt »

toddsiegel wrote: post #39
spyspy wrote: post #30

Does anyone know if there similar opportunities for other European countries?

Portugal has a similar visa. http://www.portugalinvestorvisa.com/ My guess is other have too. Lisbon is supposedly becoming a hot tech hub. Regardless, it's a wonderful city.

The Portuguese one is targeting people with money, not people with talent. Not similar at all.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#78

Post by pyrale »

lawless123 wrote: post #34
jlangenauer wrote: post #5

Apropos of this, I was in Paris recently at a startup event, and was pleasantly shocked at the sheer number of startups and people I saw doing things. This is a good move by the French, and will help attract entrepreneurs away from other countries (particularly like those just across the channel currently inflicting generational economic damage on themselves.)

The timing can't be too much of a coincidence.

The french tech stuff actually predates brexit.

There's been a lot of nice french initiatives to promote tech, in the last few years. It's still hard to overcome the anglosphere bias and to promote internationally, but from the inside it's still a nice atmosphere.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#79

Post by hacker_9 »

jlangenauer wrote: post #5

Apropos of this, I was in Paris recently at a startup event, and was pleasantly shocked at the sheer number of startups and people I saw doing things. This is a good move by the French, and will help attract entrepreneurs away from other countries (particularly like those just across the channel currently inflicting generational economic damage on themselves.)

As someone from the UK, my main reason for not moving anywhere else in Europe is the language barrier. I'm not even sure I'm capable of learning another language; 5 years in school trying to learn French + German, and can still only put together about two sentences. From what I remember, no one else seemed to really pick up the languages either.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#80

Post by bsaul »

Warning : Highly sensitive subject

Everyone who has ever done recruiting in a french IT company noticed that 80 to 90% of the resumes you receive come from North African countries (old colonies, mainly Algeria and Tunisia), that try to get a job in order to get a Visa. Most of them are unqualified, but they just "go for it".

Now, is this initiative going to lead to most of them pretending to want to start a company ? And how is the program going to filter qualified individuals to opportunists ?

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