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Startup Nation? Entrepreneurs Still Toil in Macron's France

atlasunshrugged 8y ago
A good look at France's startup scene today and what's holding them back from creating the next Uber/Google “We set up in France around the same time as our rivals were starting in the U.S., but quickly they were raising 100 times more from investors and selling across the country,” Sapet said. “Meanwhile we were stuck translating into 20 European languages.” - Christophe Sapet (French entrepreneur)
- mattmanser 8y ago
  I don't get the 2nd part, there is nothing stopping French companies translating into the one other language which they probably speak fluently, English, testing it in the UK as they're roughly the same timezone, then moving onto the big English speaking markets of the US, Canada and Australia, which are all significantly bigger than probably 17 of those 20 languages. And the finance thing has nothing to do with Macron (or Merkel or May or any other European leader). European VCs don't speculate on potential unicorns like the US ones do. It's a different risk appetite, what are EU leaders supposed to do?
  - 505aaron 8y ago
    I interpreted it as required by regulation to support the mentioned languages. However, I would like to understand if this is the case.
    - victorNicollet 8y ago
      There is no such regulation. We're a B2B French company, based in Paris, and there's only one user interface language (English) that even our French customers have to use. Even for B2C, there are no language regulations. For public and almost-public organizations, there is a regulation: you can communicate in exactly one language (French) or at least three languages (usually these will be English and German). On the other hand, trying to sell to the average French person will require a French translation, and the same is probably true for most other EU countries if you wish to improve your chances ("have a translation in that language" is likely in the top 5 of improvement suggestions for a new market). 300 million people sharing the same language is a boon, especially for B2C or B2SMB.
      - solarkraft 8y ago
        Those 300 people also share similar culture, likely speeding up adoption through word of mouth. Since I mostly consume english, US-centric media, I wonder how high the marketing effect even outside the US is for services that launch in the US first.
    - mattmanser 8y ago
      As others say, there's no such regulation. In fact it's better to sell outside the EU as those customers don't have to pay VAT so you have better margins or can sell it cheaper.
  - no1youknowz 8y ago
    The 2nd part relates to the statement many make here on HN. The fallacy which is: That if you don't do business in the EU, you are missing out on 22%-25% GDP of the worlds economy.
    - tormeh 8y ago
      Well, you are. The statement is not wrong. It's just a terrible first market to go for, since there's just a lot more work required to penetrate it.
- dgut 8y ago
  > "Meanwhile we were stuck translating into 20 European languages.” - Christophe Sapet (French entrepreneur)" That's such a bad excuse. There is nothing stopping them from executing in English, or in French in France in the first place. There are five major languages in Europe: English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. No startup starts doing business in >1 market, not even Uber/Google.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    Any company interested in multinational growth should build localization into their app architecture to begin with, anyway. Then just contract out the actual act of translating the strings.
    - dgut 8y ago
      Big difference between building localization into the app architecture and translating the app to 20 languages as a starting point, though.
      - Apocryphon 8y ago
        Sure, but the idea is that you can pay another service to do the translations. The main difficulty is supporting things like right-to-left text and other specific characteristics, but that shouldn't be a problem in Europe only.
  - lordnacho 8y ago
    It's not purely a question of translating the website. There might be different laws and customs depending on the domain.
- adventured 8y ago
  What's holding France and everybody else back from creating the next Google, is that there is only ever one Google. Looking at the list of largest tech companies globally, there are perhaps four dozen very large tech companies in the West. Based on their ages, one might get founded in the entire West in a given year on average during the modern transistor era. Simply put, there aren't going to be 27 Ubers or Googles or Microsofts. There is one of each. So for France (or any given country) to produce these types of companies, they have to beat everyone else racing to produce that outcome. The odds are extraordinarily low, no matter what you do, once you start adding in all the hurdles, as time is of the essence since it's always winner take most. What countries like France can do, is produce a lot of mid-size tech companies that can take advantage of local and regional opportunties better than large foreign firms. The long-tail opportunties, in other words, that require being down in the minutiae. As an example, you'll never produce larger global retailers than Walmart or Amazon, no matter what you do, if you're a given country in the EU. That doesn't mean you can't occasionally beat them at their game on your turf however (as retailers routinely do around the globe). It heavily depends on the nature of the tech / segment in question. The reason that works that way, is similar to why Google, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Intel, Cisco, et al. have done so well as global giants, whereas SAP hasn't been vanquished in the European market by the likes of Oracle and Salesforce. Local relationships are immensely important in some areas of tech. If you're Google, it's the ability to dominate the huge US market, derive immense profit from that base, and rather easily perpetually project outward at claiming pieces of market share all over the planet. That concept only fails if the US economy does, there's nothing France can do to compete with it, unless the EU wants to entirely integrate (they don't and never will, national sovereignty is too important). The real local competitive advantage for a France is in tech where there is friction that provides an advantage based on culture or location. They're not going to produce the next Google, ever, and they shouldn't be aiming for that.
rezeroed 8y ago
Macron recently referred to the French as "change-resistant Gauls", which wouldn't be a useful characteristic for technology or entrepreneurship.
- nodefourtytwo 8y ago
  He is also a president with a very low popularity blaming the population for not being happy with his terrible reforms.
baud147258 8y ago
It's not limited to Startup, all small scale business in France have problems.
- ttoinou 8y ago
  Exactly. Startup is just a buzzword
EZ-E 8y ago
My opinion : the low salaries of engineers, high taxes and bureaucracy hold back the startup scene. Also, the mentality toward technical positions, in France if you didn't go from engineer to manager by 35 year old people wonder what's wrong with you. https://imgur.com/a/MOlau0V https://imgur.com/a/MOlau0V
- a008t 8y ago
  Low salaries should help the startup scene, not hurt it. Where would you rather create your startup - somewhere where it would cost more to hire or less?
  - jgforbes 8y ago
    That's only true if you don't lose capable talent due to the low salaries. If most of the talented French engineers move to Germany to get higher pay, then the low pay will hinder the startup scene.
  - EZ-E 8y ago
    Lots of talented people end up working in another country, especially top talent. Would you rather have a glass ceiling at 40k or start at 100+k in SF? Not to mention, low salaries garantees that not much international talent will relocate in France
    - eloisant 8y ago
      France is full of "service" jobs, those are crap and lower the average. Just ignore those and look at the jobs that matter, if you're the kind of developer who would have the skills to relocate to SF. If you're senior, in France, you can get a fairly good salary as a developer. There is definitely no glass ceiling at 40k; you can get more than 50k easily, and above 70k if you have can find the right company with a good fit. Comparison with SF is hard because it's such a weird place in terms of housing, US healthcare etc. So if you compare to Germany or UK, you still make less in France, but the gap is much smaller than 10 years ago and it's still contracting. That started before Macron actually. You can find jobs in well-funded startups (instead of the starving startups of 10 years ago happy to raise a million), and more and more international companies (US and others) are now recruiting engineers in France.
axtn 8y ago
France has plenty of early stage startups, in fact the increase in size and quality in their ecosystem in just a few years has been very impressive. What’s missing in France right now is an ecosystem of fast-growing mid-stage startups - series B and above. I think that’s caused by a combination of: 1) mindset (thinking globally from say one is easier said than done when nobody around you has done it before) 2) lack of late-stage funding. The seed money scene is not as bad as it used to be, and is in a virtuous cycle of early exits / successful entrepreneurs who want to give back. That is looking very good. However, the VCs still suck, with a few exceptions. They’re mostlt bankers, they’re risk-averse, ownership-greedy, and intrusive. Good luck growing a world-class business with them on your board and in your cap table. 3) The EU market is just weak conpared to US and China. So every european startup has to start outside their confort zone and attack foreign markets from day one... Which creates friction compared to growing at home for the first few years. Here are factors that in my opinion are NOT to blame: taxes (comparable to California), salaries (yes they’re lower than in SV; that’s a good thing for startups), bureaucratic red tape (that’s what lawyers and accountabts are for, it’s not rocket science), lack of work ethic (in my experience French employees work very hard and are very loyal - although they do complain a lot), brain drain (sure French people leave the country. Plenty stay, or come back. It’s nothing like what third world countries have to deal with). What I’m seeing more and more is French founders moving to SV, raising money there and keeping their engineers in France. Other international founders are doing the same. I think it’s the best available move at the moment.
- johnomarkid 8y ago
  Low salaries are not a good thing for the startups! Here's an article from a French engineer that is currently on the front page of HN: https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/09/25/go-west-young-man/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcr... tldr; he moved to SF because salaries are much, much higher than in France, even considering the social benefits that you get in France. Other threads on HN have French engineers saying that they love living in France while working remotely for American companies. I've lived in Paris, Berlin, NYC and California. I'll never understand how European founders can keep saying that 40k euro salaries for engineers is a benefit while they watch so many great engineers leave to American companies.
ig1 8y ago
As an independent observer (VC; background in investing both in the US & Europe, currently based out of London) - the French ecosystem has transformed massively over the last few years, it's essentially unrecognizable from what it used to be. Historically French startups were relatively insular, primarily focusing on the French market while largely ignoring the larger global market. That's long gone - now you see French startups going after the global market from day one (indeed many run product/eng out of France while running sales from the US to be closer to their American customers). You can tell the article author hasn't really spent time in the French ecosystem due to the lack of mention of SaaS which is where Paris has found it's sweet spot - SaaStr even ran their first conference outside of SF in Paris. You can easily see the quality of SaaS startups emerging from the French YC alumni alone: Front, Algolia, Sqreen, Slite - each really building the category defining product in their space.
- stephenhuey 8y ago
  Yeah, I was very impressed when a little over a year ago the French American Chamber of Commerce came to reach out to startups at Station Houston about working in France.
  - stephenhuey 8y ago
    Not sure what the downvotes were for...?
Fede_V 8y ago
I lived in Paris for a year, and I'm now working for a big tech company in the US. I can't speak from the VC side of the table, but France has incredibly technically strong graduates (people with technical degrees from the top universities there are all very good) and young people have a very global outlook. Further, there are more and more programs that provide start up funding/locations/tax breaks. What is missing is an ecosystem to sustain and nurture these companies. The capital in Europe is incredibly conservative and very old fashioned.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Sounds a lot like Chicago 10 years ago. It takes a generation of entrepreneurs to start and have a success or two despite the conditions. Then unless they pull a lightbank they will reinvest in the next generation of entrepreneurs.
  - eloisant 8y ago
    Yes, that's happening already. The founder of the company I work for (Rachel Delacour) got a good exit by selling to Zendesk and now she's a business angel.
  - 1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
    Can you expand on pulling a Lightbank? Full disclosure, I’ve worked for two Lightbank-funded companies in Chicago but am just curious what you meant there.
eloisant 8y ago
It's getting better. Also, "YouTube wannabe Dailymotion" was founded just one month after than YouTube. The fact that YouTube won the monopoly instead of Dailymotion is an illustration of the problem, but presenting them as a copycat because they're not as successful is unfair to them.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  Both Youtube and Dailymotion grew in a pretty uncool way by not pulling down copyrighted content. But Dailymotion was basically 5 years behind Youtube in removing that stuff. I was watching full movies and tv shows on Dailymotion even last year.
rossdavidh 8y ago
Hypothesis: other countries, when comparing their own startups to America's startup scene, have no idea how many American startups break a lot of laws at the beginning. It's not just Uber; Youtube had a lot of copyrighted content, many ecommerce sites sold into markets without the right export/import licenses, privacy laws were/are widely flouted at first, hate-speech laws are widely disregarded at first, etc. European startups tend to think (perhaps correctly) that they have to be more or less legal from the get-go, American startups tend to think (perhaps correctly) that they won't get much attention until/unless they get big, and they can worry about being legal later. Just an hypothesis, I don't know if it's true. But if it is true, it might be hard for European leaders to see, because they probably aren't aware of how often American startups break the law at first.
- presscast 8y ago
  Having lived in and worked in France, I think it has little to do with respect for the law, and more to do with other social/structural factors. In no specific order: - A much less developed culture of failure - Few(er) "real" startups. For reasons (see above), many startups in France are startups in name only. They operate under "incubators" that are internally-hosted by industry giants (e.g. AXA). This means it's harder to pivot since whatever you're working on has to serve the interests of your structure. In the AXA example, if you want to pivot from insure-tech to something else, good luck. - A culture of "I'll work a normal job for 10 years to gain experience. Only then will I be legitimate as an entrepreneur." Again, see point 1. The effect is that most people never really get started. - A culture that values job stability to an extreme that's difficult to grasp for Americans. In France, the idea that one should work his entire life in the same company is even built into the law in the form of stringent protections against layoffs. This is slowly changing, but France is not the startup nation Marcon wants it to be. All the French entrepreneurs (including yours truly, but then again I'm a French/US dual citizen...) are in London.
Rjevski 8y ago
I am French, moved to the UK a few years ago. There are many cultural issues that will prevent France from ever becoming a startup nation. One of them is the fact that there's this idea floating around where you have to have higher education (Bac +5, aka 5 years of uni) to do anything even remotely related to IT, as if it was some kind of rocket science (where a degree would actually help). In fact, the first thing many French people will ask me when they learn about my job is how do I do it and whether I went to uni. They are all shocked when I tell them no when everywhere else self-taught developers are a common occurrence. You simply cannot get any IT job without that; even junior positions require it. This automatically disqualifies a lot of self-taught developers (like me) even if they have actual work experience, and I'm not sure if the ones that are left (those with the required education) are any better considering they never had the chance to work on a real project. The salaries are also awful. As a senior engineer (with the required education) you're still only looking around at 40k euros. I was already making more than that as a junior in London! (not to mention the Euros vs British Pounds conversion). An engineer is also not that well placed on the social ladder, management (even something relatively simple like running a small shop/restaurant) is deemed much more prestigious than software engineering. The relationship between employees and management is toxic. There is no concept of teamwork and where the "boss" is actually working with you towards the same goal as you. Instead, the boss is always seen as an enemy. There is no complicity what so ever between employees and management. This was actually a shock for me when I got my first job in the UK and realised that actually bosses are cool (<3 to my former managers, if you're reading this) and are there to support you. A meeting with the boss in France usually means you did something wrong, while everywhere else it's just a routine talk to go over any eventual issues, ask for advice (whether for the current job or about your career in general) and see if anything can be improved. Finally bureaucracy and taxes are still awful. Even if you can theoretically get tax relief on new companies and so on, the bureaucracy involved is a tax itself, and often not worth it. This comment thread (on an earlier post about this) sums it up pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169504
- alacombe 8y ago
  French expat on the west coast here, I totally agree with you on the social stigma of being a "rank-and-file" developer.
alacombe 8y ago
There is also a big social difference, if not social stigma of being a developer (and other "blue-collar" job in general). In the US, it's not unusual to be in a startup in your late 30's / 40's, and for founders (especially in the bay area) to have gray hair / beard. In France, if you are still a developer in your late 30's and haven't moved to a management, paper pushing, position, you're pretty much a loser. To some extend, there is a general disgust in France for being down the food chain, even if you're a rock star. note: I'm French now living on the west coast, making a figure I'd never do in France.
xvilka 8y ago
Apart from higher salaries in California Paris is way better for the quality of living. They have public transportation, good food and so far one of the emerging "mega/gigacities" of the future. They even have a "Grand Paris" [1] project which aims to integrate suburbs and surrounding cities in one huge melted conurbation. So opening a business here may be a good strategy in the long term. [1] http://www.grand-paris.jll.fr/en/paris/ http://www.grand-paris.jll.fr/en/paris/
- jrs95 8y ago
  From what I can tell the startup ecosystem is even weaker there than in areas like the Midwest in the U.S., which even after expenses related to transportation and healthcare makes a lot more economic sense in my opinion. Cost of living is very low but the salaries are much higher. Regardless of infrastructure, France and Europe in general needs higher salaries to be competitive. Sure some of the quality of living things are nice but ultimately I'm going to choose a job primarily for work I enjoy and how much money I'll have left over expenses.
- Joky 8y ago
  "quality of living" is all relative, I'm from France and one of the reason I don't want to go back is that I don't want to live in Paris (and outside of Paris the job opportunities aren't really there). With my family, we are feeling that we're very much better off in a suburb (like Mountain View) with quick access to hike trail and some nature. On top of this, I also have 10min commute by bike. My friends in Paris commonly have 2h commute daily.
wowzerhn 8y ago
As a developer in Europe who also worked in the US. I've no idea why would an average developer choose US over EU. Here in EU, i just do minimum of what is expected from me and don't even take calls on holidays including weekend. If i am sick, i go to government hospital and get treated for free. Thanks to our welfare estate, there is simply no pressure to risk more. I won't go homeless if i am out of job. I simply focus on my family and my life. Work can always wait. But can life wait? Noo. Now if u are a rockstar who is is worth 100s of developers like a CEO or VP of engineering, i can see why you would choose US but average developers should never choose US where u can go homless the moment you are out of job. I've no reason to work harder than i am already doing... In US, there was always pressure to make more to save for rainy days this required throwing your own friends under the bus to save your job. Second thing is, here most people look like me. They are like my own brothers and sisters. In US, not all people look like you, so it's quite difficult to not discriminate against them and throw them under the bus, it goes in both directions. Not my people, not my problem. Because of Homegeneous society i feel more trust in European community. In US, it will never be the case which made me a bad human because i actively descriminated against different ethincs. Now, i feel much better in EU.

A good look at France's startup scene today and what's holding them back from creating the next Uber/Google “We set up in France around the same time as our rivals were starting in the U.S., but quickly they were raising 100 times more from investors and selling across the country,” Sapet said. “Meanwhile we were stuck translating into 20 European languages.” - Christophe Sapet (French entrepreneur)

mattmanser 8y ago
I don't get the 2nd part, there is nothing stopping French companies translating into the one other language which they probably speak fluently, English, testing it in the UK as they're roughly the same timezone, then moving onto the big English speaking markets of the US, Canada and Australia, which are all significantly bigger than probably 17 of those 20 languages. And the finance thing has nothing to do with Macron (or Merkel or May or any other European leader). European VCs don't speculate on potential unicorns like the US ones do. It's a different risk appetite, what are EU leaders supposed to do?
- 505aaron 8y ago
  I interpreted it as required by regulation to support the mentioned languages. However, I would like to understand if this is the case.
  - victorNicollet 8y ago
    There is no such regulation. We're a B2B French company, based in Paris, and there's only one user interface language (English) that even our French customers have to use. Even for B2C, there are no language regulations. For public and almost-public organizations, there is a regulation: you can communicate in exactly one language (French) or at least three languages (usually these will be English and German). On the other hand, trying to sell to the average French person will require a French translation, and the same is probably true for most other EU countries if you wish to improve your chances ("have a translation in that language" is likely in the top 5 of improvement suggestions for a new market). 300 million people sharing the same language is a boon, especially for B2C or B2SMB.
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      Those 300 people also share similar culture, likely speeding up adoption through word of mouth. Since I mostly consume english, US-centric media, I wonder how high the marketing effect even outside the US is for services that launch in the US first.
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    As others say, there's no such regulation. In fact it's better to sell outside the EU as those customers don't have to pay VAT so you have better margins or can sell it cheaper.
- no1youknowz 8y ago
  The 2nd part relates to the statement many make here on HN. The fallacy which is: That if you don't do business in the EU, you are missing out on 22%-25% GDP of the worlds economy.
  - tormeh 8y ago
    Well, you are. The statement is not wrong. It's just a terrible first market to go for, since there's just a lot more work required to penetrate it.
dgut 8y ago
> "Meanwhile we were stuck translating into 20 European languages.” - Christophe Sapet (French entrepreneur)" That's such a bad excuse. There is nothing stopping them from executing in English, or in French in France in the first place. There are five major languages in Europe: English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. No startup starts doing business in >1 market, not even Uber/Google.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Any company interested in multinational growth should build localization into their app architecture to begin with, anyway. Then just contract out the actual act of translating the strings.
  - dgut 8y ago
    Big difference between building localization into the app architecture and translating the app to 20 languages as a starting point, though.
    - Apocryphon 8y ago
      Sure, but the idea is that you can pay another service to do the translations. The main difficulty is supporting things like right-to-left text and other specific characteristics, but that shouldn't be a problem in Europe only.
- lordnacho 8y ago
  It's not purely a question of translating the website. There might be different laws and customs depending on the domain.
adventured 8y ago
What's holding France and everybody else back from creating the next Google, is that there is only ever one Google. Looking at the list of largest tech companies globally, there are perhaps four dozen very large tech companies in the West. Based on their ages, one might get founded in the entire West in a given year on average during the modern transistor era. Simply put, there aren't going to be 27 Ubers or Googles or Microsofts. There is one of each. So for France (or any given country) to produce these types of companies, they have to beat everyone else racing to produce that outcome. The odds are extraordinarily low, no matter what you do, once you start adding in all the hurdles, as time is of the essence since it's always winner take most. What countries like France can do, is produce a lot of mid-size tech companies that can take advantage of local and regional opportunties better than large foreign firms. The long-tail opportunties, in other words, that require being down in the minutiae. As an example, you'll never produce larger global retailers than Walmart or Amazon, no matter what you do, if you're a given country in the EU. That doesn't mean you can't occasionally beat them at their game on your turf however (as retailers routinely do around the globe). It heavily depends on the nature of the tech / segment in question. The reason that works that way, is similar to why Google, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Intel, Cisco, et al. have done so well as global giants, whereas SAP hasn't been vanquished in the European market by the likes of Oracle and Salesforce. Local relationships are immensely important in some areas of tech. If you're Google, it's the ability to dominate the huge US market, derive immense profit from that base, and rather easily perpetually project outward at claiming pieces of market share all over the planet. That concept only fails if the US economy does, there's nothing France can do to compete with it, unless the EU wants to entirely integrate (they don't and never will, national sovereignty is too important). The real local competitive advantage for a France is in tech where there is friction that provides an advantage based on culture or location. They're not going to produce the next Google, ever, and they shouldn't be aiming for that.

rezeroed 8y ago

Macron recently referred to the French as "change-resistant Gauls", which wouldn't be a useful characteristic for technology or entrepreneurship.

nodefourtytwo 8y ago
He is also a president with a very low popularity blaming the population for not being happy with his terrible reforms.

baud147258 8y ago

It's not limited to Startup, all small scale business in France have problems.

ttoinou 8y ago
Exactly. Startup is just a buzzword

EZ-E 8y ago

My opinion : the low salaries of engineers, high taxes and bureaucracy hold back the startup scene. Also, the mentality toward technical positions, in France if you didn't go from engineer to manager by 35 year old people wonder what's wrong with you. https://imgur.com/a/MOlau0V https://imgur.com/a/MOlau0V

a008t 8y ago
Low salaries should help the startup scene, not hurt it. Where would you rather create your startup - somewhere where it would cost more to hire or less?
- jgforbes 8y ago
  That's only true if you don't lose capable talent due to the low salaries. If most of the talented French engineers move to Germany to get higher pay, then the low pay will hinder the startup scene.
- EZ-E 8y ago
  Lots of talented people end up working in another country, especially top talent. Would you rather have a glass ceiling at 40k or start at 100+k in SF? Not to mention, low salaries garantees that not much international talent will relocate in France
  - eloisant 8y ago
    France is full of "service" jobs, those are crap and lower the average. Just ignore those and look at the jobs that matter, if you're the kind of developer who would have the skills to relocate to SF. If you're senior, in France, you can get a fairly good salary as a developer. There is definitely no glass ceiling at 40k; you can get more than 50k easily, and above 70k if you have can find the right company with a good fit. Comparison with SF is hard because it's such a weird place in terms of housing, US healthcare etc. So if you compare to Germany or UK, you still make less in France, but the gap is much smaller than 10 years ago and it's still contracting. That started before Macron actually. You can find jobs in well-funded startups (instead of the starving startups of 10 years ago happy to raise a million), and more and more international companies (US and others) are now recruiting engineers in France.

axtn 8y ago

France has plenty of early stage startups, in fact the increase in size and quality in their ecosystem in just a few years has been very impressive. What’s missing in France right now is an ecosystem of fast-growing mid-stage startups - series B and above. I think that’s caused by a combination of: 1) mindset (thinking globally from say one is easier said than done when nobody around you has done it before) 2) lack of late-stage funding. The seed money scene is not as bad as it used to be, and is in a virtuous cycle of early exits / successful entrepreneurs who want to give back. That is looking very good. However, the VCs still suck, with a few exceptions. They’re mostlt bankers, they’re risk-averse, ownership-greedy, and intrusive. Good luck growing a world-class business with them on your board and in your cap table. 3) The EU market is just weak conpared to US and China. So every european startup has to start outside their confort zone and attack foreign markets from day one... Which creates friction compared to growing at home for the first few years. Here are factors that in my opinion are NOT to blame: taxes (comparable to California), salaries (yes they’re lower than in SV; that’s a good thing for startups), bureaucratic red tape (that’s what lawyers and accountabts are for, it’s not rocket science), lack of work ethic (in my experience French employees work very hard and are very loyal - although they do complain a lot), brain drain (sure French people leave the country. Plenty stay, or come back. It’s nothing like what third world countries have to deal with). What I’m seeing more and more is French founders moving to SV, raising money there and keeping their engineers in France. Other international founders are doing the same. I think it’s the best available move at the moment.

johnomarkid 8y ago
Low salaries are not a good thing for the startups! Here's an article from a French engineer that is currently on the front page of HN: https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/09/25/go-west-young-man/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcr... tldr; he moved to SF because salaries are much, much higher than in France, even considering the social benefits that you get in France. Other threads on HN have French engineers saying that they love living in France while working remotely for American companies. I've lived in Paris, Berlin, NYC and California. I'll never understand how European founders can keep saying that 40k euro salaries for engineers is a benefit while they watch so many great engineers leave to American companies.

ig1 8y ago

As an independent observer (VC; background in investing both in the US & Europe, currently based out of London) - the French ecosystem has transformed massively over the last few years, it's essentially unrecognizable from what it used to be. Historically French startups were relatively insular, primarily focusing on the French market while largely ignoring the larger global market. That's long gone - now you see French startups going after the global market from day one (indeed many run product/eng out of France while running sales from the US to be closer to their American customers). You can tell the article author hasn't really spent time in the French ecosystem due to the lack of mention of SaaS which is where Paris has found it's sweet spot - SaaStr even ran their first conference outside of SF in Paris. You can easily see the quality of SaaS startups emerging from the French YC alumni alone: Front, Algolia, Sqreen, Slite - each really building the category defining product in their space.

stephenhuey 8y ago
Yeah, I was very impressed when a little over a year ago the French American Chamber of Commerce came to reach out to startups at Station Houston about working in France.
- stephenhuey 8y ago
  Not sure what the downvotes were for...?

Fede_V 8y ago

I lived in Paris for a year, and I'm now working for a big tech company in the US. I can't speak from the VC side of the table, but France has incredibly technically strong graduates (people with technical degrees from the top universities there are all very good) and young people have a very global outlook. Further, there are more and more programs that provide start up funding/locations/tax breaks. What is missing is an ecosystem to sustain and nurture these companies. The capital in Europe is incredibly conservative and very old fashioned.

godzillabrennus 8y ago
Sounds a lot like Chicago 10 years ago. It takes a generation of entrepreneurs to start and have a success or two despite the conditions. Then unless they pull a lightbank they will reinvest in the next generation of entrepreneurs.
- eloisant 8y ago
  Yes, that's happening already. The founder of the company I work for (Rachel Delacour) got a good exit by selling to Zendesk and now she's a business angel.
- 1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
  Can you expand on pulling a Lightbank? Full disclosure, I’ve worked for two Lightbank-funded companies in Chicago but am just curious what you meant there.

eloisant 8y ago

It's getting better. Also, "YouTube wannabe Dailymotion" was founded just one month after than YouTube. The fact that YouTube won the monopoly instead of Dailymotion is an illustration of the problem, but presenting them as a copycat because they're not as successful is unfair to them.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
Both Youtube and Dailymotion grew in a pretty uncool way by not pulling down copyrighted content. But Dailymotion was basically 5 years behind Youtube in removing that stuff. I was watching full movies and tv shows on Dailymotion even last year.

rossdavidh 8y ago

Hypothesis: other countries, when comparing their own startups to America's startup scene, have no idea how many American startups break a lot of laws at the beginning. It's not just Uber; Youtube had a lot of copyrighted content, many ecommerce sites sold into markets without the right export/import licenses, privacy laws were/are widely flouted at first, hate-speech laws are widely disregarded at first, etc. European startups tend to think (perhaps correctly) that they have to be more or less legal from the get-go, American startups tend to think (perhaps correctly) that they won't get much attention until/unless they get big, and they can worry about being legal later. Just an hypothesis, I don't know if it's true. But if it is true, it might be hard for European leaders to see, because they probably aren't aware of how often American startups break the law at first.

presscast 8y ago
Having lived in and worked in France, I think it has little to do with respect for the law, and more to do with other social/structural factors. In no specific order: - A much less developed culture of failure - Few(er) "real" startups. For reasons (see above), many startups in France are startups in name only. They operate under "incubators" that are internally-hosted by industry giants (e.g. AXA). This means it's harder to pivot since whatever you're working on has to serve the interests of your structure. In the AXA example, if you want to pivot from insure-tech to something else, good luck. - A culture of "I'll work a normal job for 10 years to gain experience. Only then will I be legitimate as an entrepreneur." Again, see point 1. The effect is that most people never really get started. - A culture that values job stability to an extreme that's difficult to grasp for Americans. In France, the idea that one should work his entire life in the same company is even built into the law in the form of stringent protections against layoffs. This is slowly changing, but France is not the startup nation Marcon wants it to be. All the French entrepreneurs (including yours truly, but then again I'm a French/US dual citizen...) are in London.

Rjevski 8y ago

I am French, moved to the UK a few years ago. There are many cultural issues that will prevent France from ever becoming a startup nation. One of them is the fact that there's this idea floating around where you have to have higher education (Bac +5, aka 5 years of uni) to do anything even remotely related to IT, as if it was some kind of rocket science (where a degree would actually help). In fact, the first thing many French people will ask me when they learn about my job is how do I do it and whether I went to uni. They are all shocked when I tell them no when everywhere else self-taught developers are a common occurrence. You simply cannot get any IT job without that; even junior positions require it. This automatically disqualifies a lot of self-taught developers (like me) even if they have actual work experience, and I'm not sure if the ones that are left (those with the required education) are any better considering they never had the chance to work on a real project. The salaries are also awful. As a senior engineer (with the required education) you're still only looking around at 40k euros. I was already making more than that as a junior in London! (not to mention the Euros vs British Pounds conversion). An engineer is also not that well placed on the social ladder, management (even something relatively simple like running a small shop/restaurant) is deemed much more prestigious than software engineering. The relationship between employees and management is toxic. There is no concept of teamwork and where the "boss" is actually working with you towards the same goal as you. Instead, the boss is always seen as an enemy. There is no complicity what so ever between employees and management. This was actually a shock for me when I got my first job in the UK and realised that actually bosses are cool (<3 to my former managers, if you're reading this) and are there to support you. A meeting with the boss in France usually means you did something wrong, while everywhere else it's just a routine talk to go over any eventual issues, ask for advice (whether for the current job or about your career in general) and see if anything can be improved. Finally bureaucracy and taxes are still awful. Even if you can theoretically get tax relief on new companies and so on, the bureaucracy involved is a tax itself, and often not worth it. This comment thread (on an earlier post about this) sums it up pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169504

alacombe 8y ago
French expat on the west coast here, I totally agree with you on the social stigma of being a "rank-and-file" developer.

alacombe 8y ago

There is also a big social difference, if not social stigma of being a developer (and other "blue-collar" job in general). In the US, it's not unusual to be in a startup in your late 30's / 40's, and for founders (especially in the bay area) to have gray hair / beard. In France, if you are still a developer in your late 30's and haven't moved to a management, paper pushing, position, you're pretty much a loser. To some extend, there is a general disgust in France for being down the food chain, even if you're a rock star. note: I'm French now living on the west coast, making a figure I'd never do in France.

xvilka 8y ago

Apart from higher salaries in California Paris is way better for the quality of living. They have public transportation, good food and so far one of the emerging "mega/gigacities" of the future. They even have a "Grand Paris" [1] project which aims to integrate suburbs and surrounding cities in one huge melted conurbation. So opening a business here may be a good strategy in the long term. [1] http://www.grand-paris.jll.fr/en/paris/ http://www.grand-paris.jll.fr/en/paris/

jrs95 8y ago
From what I can tell the startup ecosystem is even weaker there than in areas like the Midwest in the U.S., which even after expenses related to transportation and healthcare makes a lot more economic sense in my opinion. Cost of living is very low but the salaries are much higher. Regardless of infrastructure, France and Europe in general needs higher salaries to be competitive. Sure some of the quality of living things are nice but ultimately I'm going to choose a job primarily for work I enjoy and how much money I'll have left over expenses.
Joky 8y ago
"quality of living" is all relative, I'm from France and one of the reason I don't want to go back is that I don't want to live in Paris (and outside of Paris the job opportunities aren't really there). With my family, we are feeling that we're very much better off in a suburb (like Mountain View) with quick access to hike trail and some nature. On top of this, I also have 10min commute by bike. My friends in Paris commonly have 2h commute daily.

wowzerhn 8y ago

As a developer in Europe who also worked in the US. I've no idea why would an average developer choose US over EU. Here in EU, i just do minimum of what is expected from me and don't even take calls on holidays including weekend. If i am sick, i go to government hospital and get treated for free. Thanks to our welfare estate, there is simply no pressure to risk more. I won't go homeless if i am out of job. I simply focus on my family and my life. Work can always wait. But can life wait? Noo. Now if u are a rockstar who is is worth 100s of developers like a CEO or VP of engineering, i can see why you would choose US but average developers should never choose US where u can go homless the moment you are out of job. I've no reason to work harder than i am already doing... In US, there was always pressure to make more to save for rainy days this required throwing your own friends under the bus to save your job. Second thing is, here most people look like me. They are like my own brothers and sisters. In US, not all people look like you, so it's quite difficult to not discriminate against them and throw them under the bus, it goes in both directions. Not my people, not my problem. Because of Homegeneous society i feel more trust in European community. In US, it will never be the case which made me a bad human because i actively descriminated against different ethincs. Now, i feel much better in EU.