10 ms·

Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

137 points by erwan 9y ago

atonse 9y ago
Paradoxically, while Trump has accomplished very little but make speeches, the damage his presidency has done to our image, and perception of how welcoming America is, will be felt for years. It's bringing back memories of our dismal global perception around 2006-2008. (Although this wasn't for "America is unwelcoming" reasons)
- douche 9y ago
  It's been great for my 401k, though. The best months in the past ten years were November 2016 and January 2017.
  - quantdev 9y ago
    Those gains were most likely based on the anticipation of tax cuts (increasing consumer spending and the supply of investable capital), deregulation (allowing higher profits, most notably by banks), and repatriation (allowing share buy backs). So far, none of those has happened and it remains to be seen if they will. If they don't, I don't expect a market decline, but just a smaller total cumulative growth since November that has nothing to do with Trump's election or the general agenda I outlined above.
    - astrange 9y ago
      Tax cuts on the rich don't increase consumer spending, since rich people don't spend all their money (proof: they're rich). Although this is a popular theory, mostly promoted by the people who don't want to pay taxes.
      - quantdev 9y ago
        Tax cuts to the rich increase investable capital, as I said. Trump also proposed tax cuts for everyone else, too, which would increase consumer spending.
- threeseed 9y ago
  It's going to be devastating over the long term. Those of us even in Australia are wary now of travelling to the US because of (a) fear they maybe mistakenly detained, (b) having to turn over social media information and (c) visa problems at the arrival gate. Places like Berlin, Amsterdam etc are looking far more interesting for startups because of the access to the European market and the sensible policies that seem to be enacted e.g. roaming.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nxtrafalgar 9y ago
    Exactly. Countries definitely lose out because of these policies. I intended to visit China in the near future -- but I've booked a trip to Taiwan instead, almost entirely because Taiwan doesn't require me to get a visa. Likewise, I can't see myself ever living in the US as long as I have access to free movement in Europe.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"I intended to visit China in the near future -- but I've booked a trip to Taiwan instead, almost entirely because Taiwan doesn't require me to get a visa." You still get a visa to enter Taiwan. It's just a "visa on arrival" as opposed to needing to obtain a visa prior to travel. Visa policies are reciprocal between countries. China and the US both charge citizens from each other's countries to visit for tourist purposes and that must be paid prior to travel. Tourist visa policies and immigrations polices have very little if anything to do with each other. I think you might be short changing yourself if your only reason for not visiting mainland China is solely because they require a visa. It's less than a hundred bucks, it's basically a tourist tax. You likely won't regret it.
      - nxtrafalgar 9y ago
        >You still get a visa to enter Taiwan. It's just a "visa on arrival" as opposed to needing to obtain a visa prior to travel. Sure -- 'doesn't require me to get a visa' as in I don't have to make a trip to an embassy or pay a fee. I'm sure I'll visit China eventually, but for the sort of low-budget travelling I'm doing, an entry visa represents a not-insignificant amount of the total cost. It also makes things less flexible: as I understand, authorities must be notified of exact travel plans before you depart.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Nah, people have short attention spans. You cite the dismal perception from 2006-2008, but what changed? In 2008 Obama was elected and everything is new again and he won the Nobel. Did the country completely change in 2 years? Has it changed that much in 8? Not really, that's why getting so riled up over singular negative events isn't worth your time. Things change fast, and countries have long histories. Germany and Japan were ruled by jingoist elites for centuries and just 80 years ago they were culling populations. Today they are examples of doing it right. Do we really believe 4 years of a bad leader is gonna flip centuries of progress? It's an issue, yeah, but let's not overstate it because that' s not being honest with ourselves.
  - atonse 9y ago
    Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long. And you're right, in the grand scheme of things, it may not matter. But four years is a pretty long time in tech-timelines for other countries to start catching up to Silicon Valley's vibrancy.
    - camus2 9y ago
      > Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long Bush damaged US reputation way more than Trump, USA did recover. For entrepreneurs and talents, Canada, Germany or France just can't compete, especially France with a bureaucracy that will crush one's bones.
      - bogomipz 9y ago
        >"Bush damaged US reputation way more than Trump, USA did recover" George W. Bush was in office for 8 years, Trump has been in office for 6 months. How can you realistically compare the two? I also don't understand the past tense. Trump is still a sitting President.
      - jerrylives 9y ago
- orbifold 9y ago
  At least from my perspective so far he is not significantly worse so far than say George W. Bush, he might be if he starts new wars, but that seems unlikely. Pretty much all the previous presidents screwed over the rest of the world in some way or another. Just to give you an example in 2013 in 35% of Germans believed the US government to be trustworthy (Snowden NSA spying revelations) according to infratest dimap, now that value is at 22%, only slightly higher than that of Russia (20%).
  - dmix 9y ago
    People were convinced Trump was going to turn the US into an authoritarian/fascist state well before he even proposed any actual practical policies. They continue to despite the fact he has failed to pass any meaningful legislation beyond congress/courts months after getting into office. With the exception of dropping out of the largely non-binding Paris accord. Sadly I doubt this will be dependent on what he actually does vs other politicians. It's entirely about perception. This Russia congressional hearing is getting 10x the amount of coverage than the CIA torture hearing - if that's any indication of perception vs national priorities. The blatant criminality and anti-American behaviour by the CIA and the executive branch was far more obvious in that case going into the hearing. They openly destroyed 92 videos tapes of interrogations at a black site which would have provided direct evidence of abuse [1] which not a single person got punished for. Yet Jeff Session refusing to answer a few questions about private conversations with Trump got more scrutiny than the CIA did when they refused to release a 10,000 page report on their torture practices, using the same legal basis as Sessions did citing executive privilege during Obama's administration. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_CIA_interrogation_tapes_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_CIA_interrogation_tapes_d...
    - jonny_eh 9y ago
      Firing the head of the FBI for investigating his campaign was an authoritarian move. It remains to be seen if he gets away with it. If he does, America has become Authoritarian (i.e. when the law no longer applies to the leader).
- weberc2 9y ago
  I hope no one thinks that Trump is emblematic of a country that elected Obama 4 and 8 years prior. I can only imagine Trump is a passing fad; then again, I said that at every stage of his campaign...
  - krapp 9y ago
    He was elected, despite his numerous faults - so he and his policies are emblematic of at least enough of the country to be politically relevant.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      What does "political relevance" have to do with political longevity? We're not a fundamentally different country now than we were last year, and policies created with a pen stroker can be struck down just as easily. Anyone who thinks that Trump's policies are a good predictor of future US policy need to explain their rationale because it doesn't follow reason.
      - tangent128 9y ago
        The rationale: we aren't a fundamentally different country now, and won't be fundamentally different after Trump's term is over. Thus, no matter how progressive or good-neighborly future administration policies are, allies now have to build in the risk that every 4 years there will be a 50:50 chance that those policies will be reversed and any agreements voided.
        weberc2 9y ago
        How do you suppose one Trump election drives those odds up so high? And what percentage of international agreements has Trump actually voided? As bad as things may be, the sky isn't actually falling, and it does us no good to pretend otherwise.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
relyio 9y ago
The endowment of that venture fund (Viva Technology) will be around 10 billion euros. It has just been announced so the news hasn't come out in English media yet. Here is a reputable source in French: https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/030386245787-en-direct-viva-technology-2017-cest-parti-2094678.php https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/030386245787-en...
vmarsy 9y ago
I can see those cuts in corporate tax being good to increase startup competition. Some of the other big remaining issues to see highly successful startups are salaries and lack of tech talent. We could argue that startup salaries aren't the highest anyways, so if salary isn't too big of an issue if French startup can provide equity easily. It seems that when you exercise stock options in France, you don't need to pay tax on it until the options are actually sold[1][2], so that's a good thing for employee, no need to scratch your head with 83b elections and whatnot. Regarding the lack of tech talent, there's still a lot to be done. France has incredible engineers, but those engineering schools are not focused enough on Computer Science, instead they excel in "old-school" engineering like Aerospace, Civil, Nuclear, ... . On the other hand, Free universities have Computer Science degrees, but they don't prepare the future graduates as much as the Engineering "Grandes Écoles" would in regard to core engineering knowledge. There are some attempts at schools focused more on Software Engineering, but I feel that they're more similar to longer bootcamps with a focus on projects, I think those who graduate such schools are trained to be good "monkey coders" (pardon the expression) but lack a growth-mindset. [1] (in French) https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/questions/jai-des-stock-options-comment-est-impose-le-gain-levee-doptions https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/questions/jai... [2] (in French) https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/lactionnariat-salarie https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/lactionnariat...
- valuearb 9y ago
  Tax cuts and being able to fire people is far more important to startup formation than government directed investment. The mindset comes from opportunity and belief that you can own what you build. Schooling is almost irrelevant, especially today.
- allan_s 9y ago
  I agree with you on most parts. However I come from a private "engineering" school focused on computer sciences (named Supinfo) and there's some others (Epitech / Epita ) that though they don't deliver a engineer diploma (as per the law-regulated definition of engineer) but rather a master diploma (but that you can name "engineer in computer science" or somekind of trick like that and the schools play on that to attract student), actually have to my opinion, provide a decent education. I learned assembly, C, logical gates and how to build a 1 bits processor. I then learned HTML, and SQL, and then PHP, and some basic of algorithm (though no data structure courses, I learned only years after being graduated what was a quick-sort/merge-sort) But I also learned management (how to hold a meeting, how to manage conflict) and project management (Gantt-diagram, Agile and Scrum) and some basis of ITIL And even more related to the entrepreneur-ship world I had lessons about copyrights law, labor laws, patent laws , as well as finance course (what is an asset active/passive, what is the difference between giving yourself a salary and giving you shares etc.) However I have to admit 10 years ago, I wanted to be a monkey-coder and thought the management and finance lessons were bullshit for people who were not good enough to code and still needed a job. So I have to say the school totally prepared me for the "startup world" (and with 30 campuses in France and ~5000 graduated student a year, quite some others were prepared, though they were maybe with the same mindset as me).
GuiA 9y ago
A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting. Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month) or Ciel Compta (9 euros/month). The keen observer will notice that they're produced by the same company, whose former CEO had a stint at Intuit - another software company that is very good at manipulating legislation to push its own interests. If you get audited and are not in conformity, you get a 7500 euro fine and 60 days to correct your situation. But what if you are serving foreign clients, and use foreign software to produce invoices that fulfill local regulation? Or if you developed in house software to meet your very particular needs? Heh, sucks to be you, go give money to Ciel. That being said, the law says that if you do your accounting without software, you don't fall under the regulation. So can you just do your accounting in Excel, copy it by hand, and show that when you get inspected? Who knows. There are many, many cases like this of useless bureaucracy and regulation in France that make it a nightmare for anyone to start and run their own business. My friends who have been "auto entrepreneur" in the past have hated every minute of it, and most of them have moved to other countries. I'm French, likely to start a company in the next 5 years, and would never go back to France to do it. The government doesn't really want to create an environment where small businesses can flourish - no one has the proper background to really get what factors contribute to that. What they want is to get the big bucks from venture capital flowing into the country so that they can boast about having a French Google or Airbnb or whatever, which is purely a vanity metric and not particularly constructive for the economy. [0]: http://www.codial.fr/wp-content/uploads/BOI-TVA-DECLA-30-10-30-20160803.pdf http://www.codial.fr/wp-content/uploads/BOI-TVA-DECLA-30-10-...
- camus2 9y ago
  Absolutely outrageous, and there is no free open source alternative? how is this even possible. > Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month) or Ciel Compta (9 euros/month). The keen observer will notice that they're produced by the same company, whose former CEO had a stint at Intuit - another software company that is very good at manipulating legislation to push its own interests. Fucking "socialists". Macron need to struct down this law, this is straight out corruption, there is no other way to say it.
camus2 9y ago
French governments like to create all these grants and loopholes, but it doesn't mask the complexity and the hostility of french bureaucracy toward entrepreneurs. Don't be fooled by these PR stunts. If Macron really wants to change things he needs to start telling the tax office to stop treating every business owner as a de-facto fraudster and criminal.
- relyio 9y ago
  It's the same everywhere. Do you think the IRS is any better than the FISC? Tax administrations are out to get you, regardless of your country.
  - ttoinou 9y ago
    Both of you are right, it's about all western governments. Still, we have in france a strong anti market thinking that is well reflected in how our government keeps piling laws and regulations. This news is indeed a PR stunt nothing more
- wott 9y ago
  French business owners have earned that reputation of fraudsters. To the point that salary-men, who cannot cheat much, used to have a tax reduction to compensate for that inability to cheat compared to business owners who were "expected" to cheat. All small business owners around me, or whom I ever knew, are fraudsters. At the moment, the one right left of my house is a fraudster (he's been caught several times but doesn't care). The one 50 meters forward is a fraudster (he's not been caught yet). The friends of mine who own bars and restaurants are fraudsters, they generally don't get caught, or they only get caught for minor stuff, unrelated to their main fraud. The guy the wedding of whom I last attended got a several millions euros fine (so, same for not so small business!), he didn't blink. The bosses I worked for broke many work rules and that's just considered standard behaviour. Cheating is a religion is this country.
aweb 9y ago
As a French, I hope this will also bring large "big5-like" compagnies to open engineering offices in my country as well. I'm always a bit disappointed to see them have offices in London or Dublin but not here where we have a lot of engineering talent as well.
graniter 9y ago
As an American living and working in France, this sounds like a scenario where France would love to have the results and benefits of a startup boom, but they don't want to take the necessary steps to enable it. Having a bunch of free money or easy visas are actually not what will cause a boom. France is notorious for never-ending paperwork and administration, and it's true. It's like trying to swim in molasses. You can do it. No one is "stopping" you. But eventually you just get too tired and give up, and go to the cafe and enjoy life. But hey, yeah let's make France attractive to startups and catch some of those taxes and world attention. But we don't want to change anything about our culture or regulations, so we can give give out a bunch of money, right? That will get people to flock here, make billion euro companies, and we'll reap the benefits. That's what it seems like to me.
- pawadu 9y ago
  > France is notorious for never-ending paperwork and administration Having visited the Paris startup scene recently, I got the feeling that the bureaucracy is much less taxing these days.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    No it's the same except we embraced IT and it helped a lot.
- sametmax 9y ago
  +1. We have a culture problem. French companies won't take risks. Banks fund only very classical projects. And it's very hard to get money or when you do get it, it's a small amount. Everybody ask for rock star programmers and put them on boring tasks and don't pay them well. Eventually they quit or never come so they can work for non french companies. And it's not a problem of skills. The french society produce plenty of skilled managers, devs or innovators. We just make just those skills will always be underused. We had barriers everywhere to protect the old, avoid uncertainty and fit.
- sametmax 9y ago
  +1. We have a culture problem. French companies won't take risks. Banks fund only very classical projects. And it's very hard to get money or when you do get it, it's a small amount. Everybody ask for rock star programmers and put them on boring tasks and don't pay them well. Eventually they quit or never come so they can work for non french companies. And it's not a problem of skills. The french society produce plenty of skilled managers, devs or innovators. We just make just those skills will always be underused. We had barriers everywhere to protect the old, avoid uncertainty and fit.

137 points by erwan 9y ago

Paradoxically, while Trump has accomplished very little but make speeches, the damage his presidency has done to our image, and perception of how welcoming America is, will be felt for years. It's bringing back memories of our dismal global perception around 2006-2008. (Although this wasn't for "America is unwelcoming" reasons)

douche 9y ago
It's been great for my 401k, though. The best months in the past ten years were November 2016 and January 2017.
- quantdev 9y ago
  Those gains were most likely based on the anticipation of tax cuts (increasing consumer spending and the supply of investable capital), deregulation (allowing higher profits, most notably by banks), and repatriation (allowing share buy backs). So far, none of those has happened and it remains to be seen if they will. If they don't, I don't expect a market decline, but just a smaller total cumulative growth since November that has nothing to do with Trump's election or the general agenda I outlined above.
  - astrange 9y ago
    Tax cuts on the rich don't increase consumer spending, since rich people don't spend all their money (proof: they're rich). Although this is a popular theory, mostly promoted by the people who don't want to pay taxes.
    - quantdev 9y ago
      Tax cuts to the rich increase investable capital, as I said. Trump also proposed tax cuts for everyone else, too, which would increase consumer spending.
threeseed 9y ago
It's going to be devastating over the long term. Those of us even in Australia are wary now of travelling to the US because of (a) fear they maybe mistakenly detained, (b) having to turn over social media information and (c) visa problems at the arrival gate. Places like Berlin, Amsterdam etc are looking far more interesting for startups because of the access to the European market and the sensible policies that seem to be enacted e.g. roaming.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nxtrafalgar 9y ago
  Exactly. Countries definitely lose out because of these policies. I intended to visit China in the near future -- but I've booked a trip to Taiwan instead, almost entirely because Taiwan doesn't require me to get a visa. Likewise, I can't see myself ever living in the US as long as I have access to free movement in Europe.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"I intended to visit China in the near future -- but I've booked a trip to Taiwan instead, almost entirely because Taiwan doesn't require me to get a visa." You still get a visa to enter Taiwan. It's just a "visa on arrival" as opposed to needing to obtain a visa prior to travel. Visa policies are reciprocal between countries. China and the US both charge citizens from each other's countries to visit for tourist purposes and that must be paid prior to travel. Tourist visa policies and immigrations polices have very little if anything to do with each other. I think you might be short changing yourself if your only reason for not visiting mainland China is solely because they require a visa. It's less than a hundred bucks, it's basically a tourist tax. You likely won't regret it.
    - nxtrafalgar 9y ago
      >You still get a visa to enter Taiwan. It's just a "visa on arrival" as opposed to needing to obtain a visa prior to travel. Sure -- 'doesn't require me to get a visa' as in I don't have to make a trip to an embassy or pay a fee. I'm sure I'll visit China eventually, but for the sort of low-budget travelling I'm doing, an entry visa represents a not-insignificant amount of the total cost. It also makes things less flexible: as I understand, authorities must be notified of exact travel plans before you depart.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Nah, people have short attention spans. You cite the dismal perception from 2006-2008, but what changed? In 2008 Obama was elected and everything is new again and he won the Nobel. Did the country completely change in 2 years? Has it changed that much in 8? Not really, that's why getting so riled up over singular negative events isn't worth your time. Things change fast, and countries have long histories. Germany and Japan were ruled by jingoist elites for centuries and just 80 years ago they were culling populations. Today they are examples of doing it right. Do we really believe 4 years of a bad leader is gonna flip centuries of progress? It's an issue, yeah, but let's not overstate it because that' s not being honest with ourselves.
- atonse 9y ago
  Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long. And you're right, in the grand scheme of things, it may not matter. But four years is a pretty long time in tech-timelines for other countries to start catching up to Silicon Valley's vibrancy.
  - camus2 9y ago
    > Assuming Trump stays for the full term (all signs point that way right now, no matter what impeachment hopes and dreams people have), four years of damage is pretty long Bush damaged US reputation way more than Trump, USA did recover. For entrepreneurs and talents, Canada, Germany or France just can't compete, especially France with a bureaucracy that will crush one's bones.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"Bush damaged US reputation way more than Trump, USA did recover" George W. Bush was in office for 8 years, Trump has been in office for 6 months. How can you realistically compare the two? I also don't understand the past tense. Trump is still a sitting President.
    - jerrylives 9y ago
orbifold 9y ago
At least from my perspective so far he is not significantly worse so far than say George W. Bush, he might be if he starts new wars, but that seems unlikely. Pretty much all the previous presidents screwed over the rest of the world in some way or another. Just to give you an example in 2013 in 35% of Germans believed the US government to be trustworthy (Snowden NSA spying revelations) according to infratest dimap, now that value is at 22%, only slightly higher than that of Russia (20%).
- dmix 9y ago
  People were convinced Trump was going to turn the US into an authoritarian/fascist state well before he even proposed any actual practical policies. They continue to despite the fact he has failed to pass any meaningful legislation beyond congress/courts months after getting into office. With the exception of dropping out of the largely non-binding Paris accord. Sadly I doubt this will be dependent on what he actually does vs other politicians. It's entirely about perception. This Russia congressional hearing is getting 10x the amount of coverage than the CIA torture hearing - if that's any indication of perception vs national priorities. The blatant criminality and anti-American behaviour by the CIA and the executive branch was far more obvious in that case going into the hearing. They openly destroyed 92 videos tapes of interrogations at a black site which would have provided direct evidence of abuse [1] which not a single person got punished for. Yet Jeff Session refusing to answer a few questions about private conversations with Trump got more scrutiny than the CIA did when they refused to release a 10,000 page report on their torture practices, using the same legal basis as Sessions did citing executive privilege during Obama's administration. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_CIA_interrogation_tapes_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_CIA_interrogation_tapes_d...
  - jonny_eh 9y ago
    Firing the head of the FBI for investigating his campaign was an authoritarian move. It remains to be seen if he gets away with it. If he does, America has become Authoritarian (i.e. when the law no longer applies to the leader).
weberc2 9y ago
I hope no one thinks that Trump is emblematic of a country that elected Obama 4 and 8 years prior. I can only imagine Trump is a passing fad; then again, I said that at every stage of his campaign...
- krapp 9y ago
  He was elected, despite his numerous faults - so he and his policies are emblematic of at least enough of the country to be politically relevant.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    What does "political relevance" have to do with political longevity? We're not a fundamentally different country now than we were last year, and policies created with a pen stroker can be struck down just as easily. Anyone who thinks that Trump's policies are a good predictor of future US policy need to explain their rationale because it doesn't follow reason.
    - tangent128 9y ago
      The rationale: we aren't a fundamentally different country now, and won't be fundamentally different after Trump's term is over. Thus, no matter how progressive or good-neighborly future administration policies are, allies now have to build in the risk that every 4 years there will be a 50:50 chance that those policies will be reversed and any agreements voided.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        How do you suppose one Trump election drives those odds up so high? And what percentage of international agreements has Trump actually voided? As bad as things may be, the sky isn't actually falling, and it does us no good to pretend otherwise.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

relyio 9y ago

The endowment of that venture fund (Viva Technology) will be around 10 billion euros. It has just been announced so the news hasn't come out in English media yet. Here is a reputable source in French: https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/030386245787-en-direct-viva-technology-2017-cest-parti-2094678.php https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/030386245787-en...

vmarsy 9y ago

I can see those cuts in corporate tax being good to increase startup competition. Some of the other big remaining issues to see highly successful startups are salaries and lack of tech talent. We could argue that startup salaries aren't the highest anyways, so if salary isn't too big of an issue if French startup can provide equity easily. It seems that when you exercise stock options in France, you don't need to pay tax on it until the options are actually sold[1][2], so that's a good thing for employee, no need to scratch your head with 83b elections and whatnot. Regarding the lack of tech talent, there's still a lot to be done. France has incredible engineers, but those engineering schools are not focused enough on Computer Science, instead they excel in "old-school" engineering like Aerospace, Civil, Nuclear, ... . On the other hand, Free universities have Computer Science degrees, but they don't prepare the future graduates as much as the Engineering "Grandes Écoles" would in regard to core engineering knowledge. There are some attempts at schools focused more on Software Engineering, but I feel that they're more similar to longer bootcamps with a focus on projects, I think those who graduate such schools are trained to be good "monkey coders" (pardon the expression) but lack a growth-mindset. [1] (in French) https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/questions/jai-des-stock-options-comment-est-impose-le-gain-levee-doptions https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/questions/jai... [2] (in French) https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/lactionnariat-salarie https://www.impots.gouv.fr/portail/particulier/lactionnariat...

valuearb 9y ago
Tax cuts and being able to fire people is far more important to startup formation than government directed investment. The mindset comes from opportunity and belief that you can own what you build. Schooling is almost irrelevant, especially today.
allan_s 9y ago
I agree with you on most parts. However I come from a private "engineering" school focused on computer sciences (named Supinfo) and there's some others (Epitech / Epita ) that though they don't deliver a engineer diploma (as per the law-regulated definition of engineer) but rather a master diploma (but that you can name "engineer in computer science" or somekind of trick like that and the schools play on that to attract student), actually have to my opinion, provide a decent education. I learned assembly, C, logical gates and how to build a 1 bits processor. I then learned HTML, and SQL, and then PHP, and some basic of algorithm (though no data structure courses, I learned only years after being graduated what was a quick-sort/merge-sort) But I also learned management (how to hold a meeting, how to manage conflict) and project management (Gantt-diagram, Agile and Scrum) and some basis of ITIL And even more related to the entrepreneur-ship world I had lessons about copyrights law, labor laws, patent laws , as well as finance course (what is an asset active/passive, what is the difference between giving yourself a salary and giving you shares etc.) However I have to admit 10 years ago, I wanted to be a monkey-coder and thought the management and finance lessons were bullshit for people who were not good enough to code and still needed a job. So I have to say the school totally prepared me for the "startup world" (and with 30 campuses in France and ~5000 graduated student a year, quite some others were prepared, though they were maybe with the same mindset as me).

GuiA 9y ago

A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting. Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month) or Ciel Compta (9 euros/month). The keen observer will notice that they're produced by the same company, whose former CEO had a stint at Intuit - another software company that is very good at manipulating legislation to push its own interests. If you get audited and are not in conformity, you get a 7500 euro fine and 60 days to correct your situation. But what if you are serving foreign clients, and use foreign software to produce invoices that fulfill local regulation? Or if you developed in house software to meet your very particular needs? Heh, sucks to be you, go give money to Ciel. That being said, the law says that if you do your accounting without software, you don't fall under the regulation. So can you just do your accounting in Excel, copy it by hand, and show that when you get inspected? Who knows. There are many, many cases like this of useless bureaucracy and regulation in France that make it a nightmare for anyone to start and run their own business. My friends who have been "auto entrepreneur" in the past have hated every minute of it, and most of them have moved to other countries. I'm French, likely to start a company in the next 5 years, and would never go back to France to do it. The government doesn't really want to create an environment where small businesses can flourish - no one has the proper background to really get what factors contribute to that. What they want is to get the big bucks from venture capital flowing into the country so that they can boast about having a French Google or Airbnb or whatever, which is purely a vanity metric and not particularly constructive for the economy. [0]: http://www.codial.fr/wp-content/uploads/BOI-TVA-DECLA-30-10-30-20160803.pdf http://www.codial.fr/wp-content/uploads/BOI-TVA-DECLA-30-10-...

camus2 9y ago
Absolutely outrageous, and there is no free open source alternative? how is this even possible. > Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month) or Ciel Compta (9 euros/month). The keen observer will notice that they're produced by the same company, whose former CEO had a stint at Intuit - another software company that is very good at manipulating legislation to push its own interests. Fucking "socialists". Macron need to struct down this law, this is straight out corruption, there is no other way to say it.

camus2 9y ago

French governments like to create all these grants and loopholes, but it doesn't mask the complexity and the hostility of french bureaucracy toward entrepreneurs. Don't be fooled by these PR stunts. If Macron really wants to change things he needs to start telling the tax office to stop treating every business owner as a de-facto fraudster and criminal.

relyio 9y ago
It's the same everywhere. Do you think the IRS is any better than the FISC? Tax administrations are out to get you, regardless of your country.
- ttoinou 9y ago
  Both of you are right, it's about all western governments. Still, we have in france a strong anti market thinking that is well reflected in how our government keeps piling laws and regulations. This news is indeed a PR stunt nothing more
wott 9y ago
French business owners have earned that reputation of fraudsters. To the point that salary-men, who cannot cheat much, used to have a tax reduction to compensate for that inability to cheat compared to business owners who were "expected" to cheat. All small business owners around me, or whom I ever knew, are fraudsters. At the moment, the one right left of my house is a fraudster (he's been caught several times but doesn't care). The one 50 meters forward is a fraudster (he's not been caught yet). The friends of mine who own bars and restaurants are fraudsters, they generally don't get caught, or they only get caught for minor stuff, unrelated to their main fraud. The guy the wedding of whom I last attended got a several millions euros fine (so, same for not so small business!), he didn't blink. The bosses I worked for broke many work rules and that's just considered standard behaviour. Cheating is a religion is this country.

aweb 9y ago

As a French, I hope this will also bring large "big5-like" compagnies to open engineering offices in my country as well. I'm always a bit disappointed to see them have offices in London or Dublin but not here where we have a lot of engineering talent as well.

graniter 9y ago

As an American living and working in France, this sounds like a scenario where France would love to have the results and benefits of a startup boom, but they don't want to take the necessary steps to enable it. Having a bunch of free money or easy visas are actually not what will cause a boom. France is notorious for never-ending paperwork and administration, and it's true. It's like trying to swim in molasses. You can do it. No one is "stopping" you. But eventually you just get too tired and give up, and go to the cafe and enjoy life. But hey, yeah let's make France attractive to startups and catch some of those taxes and world attention. But we don't want to change anything about our culture or regulations, so we can give give out a bunch of money, right? That will get people to flock here, make billion euro companies, and we'll reap the benefits. That's what it seems like to me.

pawadu 9y ago
> France is notorious for never-ending paperwork and administration Having visited the Paris startup scene recently, I got the feeling that the bureaucracy is much less taxing these days.
- sametmax 9y ago
  No it's the same except we embraced IT and it helped a lot.
sametmax 9y ago
+1. We have a culture problem. French companies won't take risks. Banks fund only very classical projects. And it's very hard to get money or when you do get it, it's a small amount. Everybody ask for rock star programmers and put them on boring tasks and don't pay them well. Eventually they quit or never come so they can work for non french companies. And it's not a problem of skills. The french society produce plenty of skilled managers, devs or innovators. We just make just those skills will always be underused. We had barriers everywhere to protect the old, avoid uncertainty and fit.
sametmax 9y ago
+1. We have a culture problem. French companies won't take risks. Banks fund only very classical projects. And it's very hard to get money or when you do get it, it's a small amount. Everybody ask for rock star programmers and put them on boring tasks and don't pay them well. Eventually they quit or never come so they can work for non french companies. And it's not a problem of skills. The french society produce plenty of skilled managers, devs or innovators. We just make just those skills will always be underused. We had barriers everywhere to protect the old, avoid uncertainty and fit.