How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

Arianespace and SpaceX are not even playing in the same court. Ariane 6 is made for heavy payloads, SpaceX can barely lift medium weight satellites.

Yann LeCun? He was literally already studying in Toronto in the 80s, he didn't flee France for Facebook.

As for startups, yes, we do. Are they unicorns? No, because contrary to HN's belief, they're an absolutely awful idea. Hell, I'm working in one, that's raising 5 millions, has clients throughout european countries and serves millions of daily users.

>Concerning your last point, saying that the current 3000-pages laws are just "preventing you from treating people like shit" is a simplification.

No, really, repeating the MEDEF's talking points without even fact checking them makes you look bad. Especially when it comes from Gattaz. 3000 pages includes the legislation AND the reglementation, including every single decree, as well as copies of the main jurisprudences. And the final 400 or so pages are mostly about what corresponds to what between versions of the law.

I literally have a copy of the work code with me. It's a sizeable book, yes. It's not 3000 pages.

However, there is a lot of added complexity because private entities want to add their own set of rules. So, instead of only knowing work law, you also have to know the 180 pages or so of Syntec when you start working in a french company that does IT. enjoy.

* You only have the basic, state social security (the 17% part OP talks about). This basically only covers you for emergency situations. There's tons to pay out of pocket in case of pretty much anything (hospital stays, glasses, teeth work, etc). This is usually covered by a complementary insurance, usually paid for by the employer (mutuelle). Private people can subscribe to it, but it costs extra.

* You do not contribute to any retirement. If you only do this for your whole life, at the end, you will only get the absolute minimum retirement (which is ridiculous).

* You do not get unemployment in case your business fails.

* In case of accident that prevents you from working (say car crash and you end up paralyzed or something) you're SoL. A "regular employee" (especially engineer level) could have an insurance covering this. In the situation described here, you'd have to pay extra or not get any money anymore.

All this is to say that for all the taxes paid (almost 50% !) you get pretty much... nothing. I'm curious how this compares to other countries with lower taxes where you're expected to pay for insurance out of pocket.

There's also another fun fact: once you have your 50k in hand after having paid the other 50k to the state, it doesn't stop there! Want to go buy something? The state would love you to, they get 20% out of that too!

I'd be curious to see a similar breakdown for the US in particular, where people usually say that for the higher salaries you have to pay more for healthcare. Maybe the extra insurance is much more expensive over there, don't know.

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Parent's error is you don't count the VAT in the revenue. It's invoiced on top of it and it goes back to the state directly. Also, if you have 100K in yearly revenue, it's not a good deal to pay regular income tax on that, the 30% flat rate is more advantageous.

All in all, your 100% dividend works out to 53869 which is a roughly 5% increase over their estimate.

In france, another problem is that some medium/higher social classes tend to capture publicly paid jobs. That's another problem too that needs to be tackled.

In my view, it's a choice of how a country decides to allocate its resources: not letting people live in awful conditions and work 3 jobs, or having trillion dollar companies make money on the technology developed on the back of DARPA something like 50 years ago.

It's easy to criticize an entire country for its "policy on tech", but it's important to not forget about tax optimization, which is another part of the problem. France does have a lot of good scientists too, build aircraft and is a nuclear power. I'm sorry to say that generally, the silicon valley VC aura is VERY OFTEN filled with libertarians who have zero clues about how poor people are "managed", and the reality of social inequality. It's a entirely different culture. France saw a socialist president in the 70s through the 80s, who had tough words against capitalism. You cannot dismiss political history.

Just my 50 cents, I really wanted to bring some nuance. All countries have their own political problems.

And to be clear: I'm poor and live in a 18 square meters, and would love to be silicon valley rich and make 80k per year. But I would also take resources from other people who don't have the education I have.

I'm using N26 right now, but I have since stoped using closed-source software altogether on my phone, and will likely switch full-time to a pinephone. One of the things that irks me is that multiple services require 2FA trough their proprietary app or SMS rather than TOTP or FIDO/Webauthn/other security-token based tech. Not sure if that's for legal reasons? In any case, that's my number one usability issue with other banks.

The costs are minimal in every country I've worked in so far, but I know it's different in others.

Would you at least be able to get started for under 500€ and live off of your income in France as long as you lived in a low cost area and didn't have family or medical expenses?