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Ask HN: How's the Paris startup scene?
We're moving there next year for my wife's job. What's the startup scene in Paris like? How good does my French need to be? Are there any languages/platforms/etc. that are popular there more than in Silicon Valley/Fairfax County (the places I'm used to working)?
- isawczuk 8y agoyou can start from this: https://stationf.co/ https://stationf.co/ - startup campus https://vivatechnology.com/ https://vivatechnology.com/ - annual conference main topic is startups
- dawhizkid 8y agoThere’s Station F https://stationf.co/ https://stationf.co/ - the “biggest startup campus in the world.” I think FB and Google also rent office space out of there. Not sure that’s necessarily proof Paris has “made it” as far as incubating successful cos, though. AFAIK the most high profile European tech companies are out of London, Amsterdam, and Berlin.
- cassandrajam 8y agoHi, French here but I don't know much about the Paris scene, more the Lyon scene but they're probably close. Regarding the French language: you don't need to be good at it. Just learn enough of it so you can show the locals you tried, and soon they'll be ok speaking to you in English. All coding languages are English-based so everybody knows enough to work efficiently with non French-speaking people. Like the other users said, Station F is the flagship startup trend in Paris but there are many startups that don't go there and just operate in Paris itself, it's up to you to find them using meetups (there are plenty) to network. Coding language wise, it's difficult to say but from my experience a lot of people are into Node.js and Ruby. Hope this can help, enjoy your time there
- baud147258 8y agoFrench here too; regarding language, it's rather annoying when there's one only person who don't speak French at work, forcing everyone else to switch. But if the co-workers are young enough, there shouldn't have too much difficulty for them to speak English. And regarding code, all the variable + comment are usually in English.
- arendtio 8y agoYes and it is kinda annoying if there's only one country which doesn't want to adopt English, forcing everyone to learn their language ;-) So it is just a matter of perspective. I wonder how the chinese see that picture.
- cassandrajam 8y ago> only one country which doesn't want to adopt English What? You've never been to Europe have you? Try travelling here and speaking English in any country other than the obvious champions like Norway / Sweden / Danemark and you'll come to the crazy realization that people like speaking their own language.
- frockington 8y agoI've never had that experience traveling. Just knowing a few basic greetings and pleasantries is enough, smile a little bit and most people are forgiving
- cassandrajam 8y agoExactly! Weird how people aren't asshats when you show them you're trying.
- arendtio 8y agoIn fact, I am German. I had both English and French as foreign languages in school. I know that Germans aren't that good at English either but the French people are by far the most resistant I have met when it comes to learning English. Yes, they are also the most forgiving when it comes to trying to understand someone who is trying to speak their language but that does not change the first issue. But hey, on the positive side of things I have a feeling that the younger generations depend less on their own language and have better English skills.
- Jaxan 8y agoSince English is only third most spoken language, why would they adopt English?
- nrjames 8y agoI know this is unrelated, but I thought you might be interested. It's an Arabic programming language, by Ramsey Nasser: http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/ http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/
- cassandrajam 8y agoIndeed it's pretty cool. Thanks :)
- maxired 8y agoThe biggest startups are all either parts of https://www.thefamily.co/ https://www.thefamily.co/ or https://www.efounders.com/ https://www.efounders.com/ They are quite impressive in the way they operate
- livatlantis 8y agoI'm not in the start-up world personally but from I understand it's all rather vibrant. I went to Vivatech and was, despite the lack of air in the building, quite impressed with the sheer number of start-ups present. Having French language skills is a HUGE benefit and was not too long ago an absolutely necessity. It's getting better now and you can more or less get by speaking only English, at least in a professional context. Socially it won't be that great, although if you're motivated I'm sure you'll learn enough for everyday conversations rather quickly. A good website to check out job offers is https://welcometothejungle.co https://welcometothejungle.co (in French only unfortunately). LinkedIn is big (how I got my previous job). Also, Hired I've heared (no personal experience).
- catwell 8y ago+1 for Welcome To The Jungle to check out which companies are hiring. If you are a software engineer who doesn't know the ecosystem and want to get offers, I would recommend Paris-based https://www.talent.io https://www.talent.io rather than Hired. Otherwise, direct networking is always best.
- KeitIG 8y ago> What's the startup scene in Paris like? The start-up scene is currently definitely at an interesting point: really young and active (people already shared links to Startup studios, you should have a look at them). The meetup scene is great too. The salary is still a pity though (compared to the States, Switzerland or Baltic countries). For a middle developer position, you may be around 40K euros, which is "nice in France", but not a lot, especially after paying your taxes. > How good does my French need to be? To work, English is fine, to live, it's another problem. French people are usually really kind to people trying to learn French as it's a hard language. If you don't care about french, people won't care about you. > Are there any languages/platforms/etc. that are popular there more than in Silicon Valley/Fairfax County There's a bit of everything, but the Web and Robotics are especially important.
- catwell 8y ago> For a middle developer position, you may be around 40K euros I won't get into details here but 40k€ before taxes ("brut") for a developer between junior and senior is not considered that good in Paris anymore. It would have been decent 8 years ago but wages went up with the increase in demand. Of course it depends on skills, position, stack, etc... That being said, you will almost always make more money working as a freelancer, and you will definitely make more working remotely for a California-based startup (which may be difficult because of French employment laws but is still definitely possible).
- mrspeaker 8y agoI don't know how much has changed in the last 5 years, but "more" in the US was at least 3 (over 4 for me) times more. Computer programming (in the mainstream regard) was a "meh" position: something you do while trying to become a manager. I loved it there and would advise anyone to do it (I'm thinking of doing it again!) - but if money is your goal... I traded an awful lot of "opportunity dollars" for "opportunity experiences".
- azatris 8y agoI am working in Tallinn. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone say anything good about the salaries here. I'm happy with mine, but it would be 3x higher in US and Switzerland (I have also worked there). What do you base this opinion on?
- pandascore 8y agoHi French founder here. Imho: French start-up ecosystem is booming. Still immature in some aspects. Really good tech companies, less aggressive in sales than german for example. Cash is coming really hard from french VCs but also UK and some US. I consider France a tax heaven for start-up with multiple leverage: - JEI (Jeune Entreprise Innovante) status: basically you pay low employer's contribution - CIR (Crédit Impot Recherche): you have 30% of you Research and Development (if it's really R&D) refunded as tax break or cash. - BPI (Banque Publique d'Investissement): basically some free money, loans and cash for equity investement; Really easy if VCs are already onboard. - Unemployment law. If you've worked enough you get paid for a period of time to find another job and creating a company qualify as finding another job. Other cool stuff: culture, low salary, top tier math/engineer schools, good business school/MBA, great community but a bit too nice. Bad stuff: weather in Paris, English is pretty bad (with some progress), French market too small for most businesses, a lot of uneducated BAs, VCs and Entrepreneurs. Europe fragmented market, administration is slow and heavy, overcrowd of start-up recently.
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago> great community but a bit too nice Too nice? Care to elaborate?
- Jdam 8y agoWhy do you mention a low salary is cool? Is that a mistake?
- frockington 8y agoAs a founder it would be, probably not going to attract great talent though
- pandascore 8y agoAverage salary is lower than the US so a 2M€ fundraising in EU allow more than a in the US. It’s not really about attracting talent, that’s really not an issue. Cost of life is lower but also salary includes social security and all.
- kjullien 8y agoI live in Paris, am french, and have been working at the same startup for more than a year and some months now. The scene is very active, any new company these days will always brand themselves as a "startup" no matter how they function behind the scenes. So alot of "false advertising" when you postulate, "we're cool and all, we SOMETIMES allow a day of remote work a week" and typical bs like that. Your french will need to be good, because it has been proven time and time again that we are bad as flip at learning languages and if you watch statistics online you'll see we're worst ranked in the entirety of Europe in languages. Used to be that there were some "startup heavy" districts inside Paris, still is the case, but now we also have the brand new "Station F" that sells itself (or rather Macron sells as) the next Silicon Valley of Europe.... Never heard that anywhere... My SO is currently in internship at station F and she told me the turnover is pretty crazy, it's more of an incubator that helps new startups get on their feet, so they'll probably stay around 6 months and then move far away to get cheap offices. Also apparently their selection process is run by old investors that have no idea what they are doing and if you simply sell your sh#t product/service well enough you'll get in. From what my SO told me about 50% of the startups over there are your typical "marketing" based "services" that sell you vaporware and invest 99% of their revenue in better "packaging" and what not, if you know what type of "company" I'm talking about... Last thing, you'll probably get a good pay since your resume mentions the words "worked at Silicon Valley", but from my experience, every single HR will try to f#ck you over when you are being hired, so you better be a tough negotiator. For reference I currently earn 30k eur (about 21k after tax) a year as a junior (2 year xp) full-stack dev (mainly node, php and alot of sysops) I'd resume by saying that overall, startups in Paris are more akin to those in SF than the Silicon Valley if you know what I mean. That might be your sort of thing, but I'm more of a "I want to build the future with my new js framework" type of guy... So have been considering moving out of France.
- Dannymetconan 8y agoJust a comment but 30k for 2 years full experience seems low. I'm working in another European capital and I'm at 40k for a similar full-stack dev role.
- 8y ago
- catwell 8y agoFrench software engineer working at startups in Paris since 2010 here. > What's the startup scene in Paris like? Booming. A bit too much, if you ask me. The ecosystem started growing fast when I arrived, basically. In 2011, the first real startup accelerator (Le Camping) opened. At that time, there was a very interesting meetup for the Parisian HN community called Paris Hackers, with very interesting people including founders of Docker (then dotCloud), Capitaine Train (acquired by Trainline), etc. Today I would say there are at least 10x more startups and 20x more people working in them, which resulted in the average level of people in the ecosystem going down. There are accelerators and incubators everywhere, as well as very interesting things like eFounders (https://www.efounders.com https://www.efounders.com). Meeetups have grown unwieldy large (e.g. the machine learning meetup is often having a hard time finding rooms large enough to fit its 200 - 300 people per session). As for companies, some startups have become large (Criteo, LeBonCoin, BlaBlaCar, ...); some are obviously growing fast (Algolia, Aircall, Platform.sh, ...); some (like Moodstocks where I used to work) have been acquired by US companies which have set up offices in Paris, among other things to tap into the well known talent at French research labs in CS and AI (Google and Facebook in particular). To accompany all this, more VC funds are opening and rounds become larger and larger. There is a lot of good to all this, but personally I feel like this is kind of a bubble and I miss the time, not so long ago, when we were all a bit more reasonable. > How good does my French need to be? It depends on the company. I would say most tech startups do most of their written work (including chat etc) in English. People might still speak French, but will switch to English when non-French speakers are around if they want to. > Are there any languages/platforms/etc. that are popular there more than in Silicon Valley/Fairfax County (the places I'm used to working)? I would say the obvious one is Python for Web backend. The French (and European in general) tech community has adopted Python a lot more while the US was going with Ruby. Some of the larger and older startups use a lot of Scala as well. Newer companies tend to use Go. There are interesting startups using less popular stacks, especially functional programming. What is propably the largest French startup, Vente Privée, is using some Haskell, and so is https://www.fretlink.com https://www.fretlink.com (whose CTO is a former Capitaine Train CTO). https://margo.com https://margo.com is building a bank from scratch with Elixir and Scala (the CEO is the former CEO of Capitaine Train). There are a lot of Erlang people around too. As you may see I mentioned Capitaine Train a lot because this is how the ecosystem is growing: thanks to disaporas of people from acquired startups (à la Paypal mafia). A few years earlier it was Exalead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exalead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exalead). If you need more information feel free to get in touch. My email address is on my home page, which is linked in my HN profile.
- rb808 8y agoYou should also investigate living in Paris and working in London. There are a lot more start ups and financial tech jobs there with salaries much higher. Its only a 2-3 hr train ride and you might be able to work one week on one week off, or short term blips of 6m at a time.
- sametmax 8y agoOk, so a lot of people here are comparing the french Startup scene to what it was before. I understand why, but it's misleading. Yes, compared to what it was before, it's booming. But it was ridiculously bad before. However compared to what's happening in the US, it's still lagging. Innovation is alright, however investment and risk taking are nowhere close to the American standard. It's still very meh. The culture of flexibility is starting to sink in, but again, you will face the french "lutte des classes" legacy, with old style hierarchies and management structures. And of course, even including social benefits, the salary is 2 to 3 times less than in the valley. But they will publish crazy requirements in job offers. On the other hand, working in France is sweet. Paris is great city, and the life style is super nice. And while French people can have a pretty negative attitude, they won't tell you everything is ok or doable before even checking they can, or be artificially friendly to the point it's weird. All in all, it's a lot less pressure. Best bet is to actually live in France, but remotely work for an American company. Plus you can buy actual tomatoes and not red plastic balls.
- Jdam 8y ago> the salary is 2 to 3 times less so it’s negative?
- mtremsal 8y agoRule of thumb is that half the salary amount (e.g. 120k USD to 60k EUR) in Paris will get you about the same or better quality of life as you have in NYC or SF, once you account for differences in how real estate, taxes, healthcare, and retirement work.
- a_lieb 8y agoI'm sure there are loads of confounding factors here, but for what it's worth, a study of tech salaries by Hired.com found that Paris had the lowest cost-of-living adjusted salary of all cities reviewed, at about $56,000 in San Francisco dollars[1]. [1] https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2018 https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2018
- Rjevski 8y agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314
- reacweb 8y agoFrench here, not in a startup but in an international company. Meetings are in english as soon a non french speaker is there, but during lunch, discussions are often in french even when non french speaker are present. I know it is not very polite. I really think you must learn french if you come to work in France. Even if your french is totally broken, the effort to speak french will be really appreciated. I have some coworkers who can speak french quite well but asked me to not tell it at work so that they can continue to prented they can't. This is also a reasonnable choice. I think you need to have a good understanding of oral french. People won't care if you make mistakes or if you write mails in english. I have noticed that OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) is far less popular here than in US. I think that IOS and linux are also slightly less popular than in US.
- jdmg718 8y agoI don't know in France but at least in Spain iOS usage is a small percentage compared to Android's
- jonathankoren 8y ago> I really think you must learn french if you come to work in France. Even if your french is totally broken, the effort to speak french will be really appreciated. This reminds me of the a story an American friend told me while visiting France. She was at this stand buying something, when the American tourist in front of her, asked the shopkeeper something in English, and the just responded back in French. Frustrated, the tourist left. When it was her turn, she tried to stammer something out in whatever French she could remember from high school. The shopkeep smiled, and then immediately switched into English to complete the transaction. ;) > I have noticed that OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) is far less popular here than in US. I think that IOS and linux are also slightly less popular than in US. I don't think OpenOffice is popular at all in the US. I don't think I've anyone that used it. Linux used to be popular with developers, but it seems like almost everyone has switched to macs. iOS is popular though.
- Jonas_ba 8y agoExpat who moved to Paris here. The tech scene is definitely very active, lots of events and meetups to join and some very active companies with good products around as well as active VC's in the city. Add Station F and The Family and you got a nice place to start a company. Salary wise, I guess you are looking at 40-70k range, depending on experience and role. The part where Paris is not that great is moving into the city. Speaking from personal experience, my gf moved in with me and tried finding a job outside tech w/o speaking French and it's basically a nightmare, she moved back. Getting any paperwork done or renting an apartment in Paris is a nightmare as well. So overall, Paris is nice, but you need to be French or speak French to enjoy it, otherwise it might take some time and in my opinion, it's the only thing that makes Paris fall short of being a good place to move to.
- ousta 8y agoplease give me one example of a major city where renting an apartment as a foreigner is not a nightmare lol.. in USA you need a credit score....
- Jonas_ba 8y agoI guess any other city than US. I'm fine with paying up front for multiple months, but I was asked multiple times to provide details of my salary for the last 3 months, working for the company that employs me, a FR guarantor (which not coming from France is not that easy to find, I was lucky my company helped me here) + your salary needs to be 3x rent and there's about 20 people looking to move in to every apartment 1h after it's posted on any apartment board.
- ousta 8y agosame in any major high density city. london is worse. ny is worse. sf is worse.
- fshaun 8y agoMy experience in London was much better... sure, a hot market meant you needed to move fast, but no hoops around local guarantors or months of pay stubs. It was easier than most local rentals I've done in Boston.
- phnk 8y ago> What's the startup scene in Paris like? There is a lively scene, at least for someone with my interests (data science, aka. applied statistics and machine learning), with lots of 'incubators' and related places where startups seem to congregate. I have been to many events organised or sponsored by the Big Ones (Apple, Microsoft, Google), plus a myriad of smaller meetups and events sponsored by all sorts of companies and public sector organisations. > How good does my French need to be? Okay (B-) spoken French is enough to interact with most people, but you will need to understand spoken French much better (A, A+) than you speak it -- it will make your day _much_ less tiresome. Note that I would say the same about, say, German if you were to move to Germany or Austria. There are only few countries in Europe where English is spoken by such a large fraction of the population that you can almost do without the local language. > Are there any languages/platforms/etc. […] I do not know. Re: other posts --- Re: wages, it depends on how much you decide to spend on rent. If both you and your wife are working, you will be fine, and will be able to afford a well-above-median lifestyle, assuming that you are not currently in debt and that the IRS won't strip you of all your assets if you return home. Re: pollution, again, it depends on where you will settle. I would never, ever raise a child in Paris. As for myself, I tend to worry more about noise than pollution, and noise can be awful depending on your street + windows. (The other significant environmental issue is urban density and parks, or lack thereof.) Re: food, I was in the USA earlier this year (near Phillie), spending $40 on every trip to the organic food supermarket nearby. The cheapest grocery store in my street has better stuff for at least 4 times less. Bio note -- I live and work in Paris as well as in Lille (Northern France, near Belgium). I work in a French/English bilingual environment, which is rather exceptional in my sector (higher ed). Meta-note -- Some comments in this thread speak with comically high confidence of a country that their authors have very obviously not visited, except perhaps for the few square miles in central Paris that exist almost only for Chinese and US/UK tourists.