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Things seem to change in France though. It's relatively easy to open a startup and get tax discounts for research and innovative work. Then you fly-in employees

Things seem to change in France though. It's relatively easy to open a startup and get tax discounts for research and innovative work. Then you fly-in employees (I'm one of them) on passeport talent which is very easy to get and lasts 4 years. Average IT salaries in Europe are much lower than in US, which is unpleasant but allows to run an IT startup with less funding and healthier economics. However the gap to close is huge and France alone is not big enough to compete with US, it has to be the whole EU. Will see where it goes.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eastbound 3y ago
So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference (something like a rest of revenge against the rich), and make them simply not possible, hindering the ability to build megacorporations. Apple wouldn’t have been possible here. We simply halt growth at median size and earn a good second spot on the market. That was true at the time of Dailymotion (second of Youtube), that is true in the times of AI.
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  Silicon valley was largely built by immigrants too. I believe in this concept, people who have enough determination to move are already above some potential energy threshold. And this threshold despite being relatively low still cuts off a huge part of local population who didn't have to pass it. I've seen it at work both for internal and international moves.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    By focussing on immigration, you missed the main point. I’ll simplify as: French people eat the rich.
    - forty 3y ago
      It's very possible to be very rich in France. It's not the result of random luck that both the richest man and the richest woman in the world were french not that long ago (Bernard Arnaud and Liliane Bettencourt). You should not buy the right wing discourse that in France rich people are too taxed and they flee blabla. This is just a way to push their right wing agenda. I'm myself quite rich and I'm doing well, so don't worry.
      - pjerem 3y ago
        I agree with you, and French people have nothing against riches as long as they don’t try to evade taxation. We have plenty of rich people who just contribute to the social system and live their life. What French people don’t like is when elites try to steal our social system. However your example isn’t really fair to be honest : Arnault and Bettencourt are really not self-made families, they are both from historical bourgeoisie. But we do have our fair share of new millionaires from the startup ecosystem.
        homarp 3y ago
        But Niel is a good example on how you can get rich in France.
        pjerem 3y ago
        Yes, but that’s also the only one self made billionaire I can think of so that make him more an exception than an example. Granted I limit myself to people who created successful businesses with real added value and mostly satisfied customers : businesses that are positive for the society.
        forty 3y ago
        Yes, I was just illustrating that we don't eat the riches, it's indeed not good examples of becoming rich in France (though the truth is our traditional "social elevator" is being broken more and more as free public schools are left in a worse and worse state by politicians who send all their kids to fancy private schools, which makes it harder and harder to move to the upper class)
- yobbo 3y ago
  The problem is product/market/financing; not in personnel or organisation. Airbus and Dassault are doing fine because they have well defined stable markets and (probably) government funding.
  - maigret 3y ago
    This doesn't fit LVMH which had tech-like growth in the last decade.
    - Rinzler89 3y ago
      Veblen goods aren't like tech products.
- forty 3y ago
  The issue is not that Apple is not possible here, but more that it is possible there and we allow them to operate normally in Europe (though things are starting to change on this front, as more laws are targeting them). Corporations that are so large have financial power that can threaten democracies, and have an overall negative impact on economy and innovation by destroying/preventing fair competition, and we should treat them as such threat/problem.
- andrepd 3y ago
  >We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference Yeah why would anyone dislike the idea of a run of the mill techbro making 50x more money than the janitor. I also don't see what this observation has to do with hiring immigrants or not.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    Immigrants do not care about the presence of rich people. French people do (a lot), and they’re systematic in getting rid of them. So French people are kind of undesirable when you build a company in France and the best thing about France is, indeed, that you can hire people from somewhere else.
miki123211 3y ago
As a European, I don't think it's just the law that matters here, though that's certainly a problem. There are two other issues, namely immigration and market size. The underappreciated thing about the US immigration system is the fact that you usually don't even need it. If you're a Silicon Valley startup, you have a pool of 330 million people to hire from, and they all live in your country, speak your language and are part of the same culture. Yes, the EU has free movement, but moving from Warsaw to Berlin, two European cities that are pretty close to each other, is going to be far bigger of an ordeal than moving from New York, Massachusetts, or even Texas or Alabama to San Francisco. Maybe not from a legal perspective, but definitely from a language / cultural / "how do I go to a doctor here" perspective. If you need very specific talent, like people with expertise in building distributed databases or self-driving cars, you're far more likely to find them amongst 330 million Americans than amongst, let's say, 2 million Latvians. This causes network effects to kick in, making America even more of a "magnet" for talented people. The other issue is basically the same problem, except going the other way. In the US, releasing a product means releasing it to 330 million prospective customers at once. In most industries, if you release your product in English and can accept credit cards, most people that you'd want as your early customers can already buy it. This is not true in Europe, every country has its own language and its own take on online payments. If your startup touches the physical world or legal system in any way (think easier invoicing for small businesses, 21st-century software for hotel management, an easy website builder for private medical practices etc), this is even more of an issue. The problem you're solving might not even exist in some countries (maybe their government already provides a good app for invoicing), and where it does exist, it's hard to figure out its nuances without speaking the right language. This basically means those kinds of startups usually work on a local level, not a European level.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

eastbound 3y ago

So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference (something like a rest of revenge against the rich), and make them simply not possible, hindering the ability to build megacorporations. Apple wouldn’t have been possible here. We simply halt growth at median size and earn a good second spot on the market. That was true at the time of Dailymotion (second of Youtube), that is true in the times of AI.

alexey-salmin 3y ago
Silicon valley was largely built by immigrants too. I believe in this concept, people who have enough determination to move are already above some potential energy threshold. And this threshold despite being relatively low still cuts off a huge part of local population who didn't have to pass it. I've seen it at work both for internal and international moves.
- eastbound 3y ago
  By focussing on immigration, you missed the main point. I’ll simplify as: French people eat the rich.
  - forty 3y ago
    It's very possible to be very rich in France. It's not the result of random luck that both the richest man and the richest woman in the world were french not that long ago (Bernard Arnaud and Liliane Bettencourt). You should not buy the right wing discourse that in France rich people are too taxed and they flee blabla. This is just a way to push their right wing agenda. I'm myself quite rich and I'm doing well, so don't worry.
    - pjerem 3y ago
      I agree with you, and French people have nothing against riches as long as they don’t try to evade taxation. We have plenty of rich people who just contribute to the social system and live their life. What French people don’t like is when elites try to steal our social system. However your example isn’t really fair to be honest : Arnault and Bettencourt are really not self-made families, they are both from historical bourgeoisie. But we do have our fair share of new millionaires from the startup ecosystem.
      - homarp 3y ago
        But Niel is a good example on how you can get rich in France.
        pjerem 3y ago
        Yes, but that’s also the only one self made billionaire I can think of so that make him more an exception than an example. Granted I limit myself to people who created successful businesses with real added value and mostly satisfied customers : businesses that are positive for the society.
      - forty 3y ago
        Yes, I was just illustrating that we don't eat the riches, it's indeed not good examples of becoming rich in France (though the truth is our traditional "social elevator" is being broken more and more as free public schools are left in a worse and worse state by politicians who send all their kids to fancy private schools, which makes it harder and harder to move to the upper class)
yobbo 3y ago
The problem is product/market/financing; not in personnel or organisation. Airbus and Dassault are doing fine because they have well defined stable markets and (probably) government funding.
- maigret 3y ago
  This doesn't fit LVMH which had tech-like growth in the last decade.
  - Rinzler89 3y ago
    Veblen goods aren't like tech products.
forty 3y ago
The issue is not that Apple is not possible here, but more that it is possible there and we allow them to operate normally in Europe (though things are starting to change on this front, as more laws are targeting them). Corporations that are so large have financial power that can threaten democracies, and have an overall negative impact on economy and innovation by destroying/preventing fair competition, and we should treat them as such threat/problem.
andrepd 3y ago
>We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference Yeah why would anyone dislike the idea of a run of the mill techbro making 50x more money than the janitor. I also don't see what this observation has to do with hiring immigrants or not.
- eastbound 3y ago
  Immigrants do not care about the presence of rich people. French people do (a lot), and they’re systematic in getting rid of them. So French people are kind of undesirable when you build a company in France and the best thing about France is, indeed, that you can hire people from somewhere else.

miki123211 3y ago

As a European, I don't think it's just the law that matters here, though that's certainly a problem. There are two other issues, namely immigration and market size. The underappreciated thing about the US immigration system is the fact that you usually don't even need it. If you're a Silicon Valley startup, you have a pool of 330 million people to hire from, and they all live in your country, speak your language and are part of the same culture. Yes, the EU has free movement, but moving from Warsaw to Berlin, two European cities that are pretty close to each other, is going to be far bigger of an ordeal than moving from New York, Massachusetts, or even Texas or Alabama to San Francisco. Maybe not from a legal perspective, but definitely from a language / cultural / "how do I go to a doctor here" perspective. If you need very specific talent, like people with expertise in building distributed databases or self-driving cars, you're far more likely to find them amongst 330 million Americans than amongst, let's say, 2 million Latvians. This causes network effects to kick in, making America even more of a "magnet" for talented people. The other issue is basically the same problem, except going the other way. In the US, releasing a product means releasing it to 330 million prospective customers at once. In most industries, if you release your product in English and can accept credit cards, most people that you'd want as your early customers can already buy it. This is not true in Europe, every country has its own language and its own take on online payments. If your startup touches the physical world or legal system in any way (think easier invoicing for small businesses, 21st-century software for hotel management, an easy website builder for private medical practices etc), this is even more of an issue. The problem you're solving might not even exist in some countries (maybe their government already provides a good app for invoicing), and where it does exist, it's hard to figure out its nuances without speaking the right language. This basically means those kinds of startups usually work on a local level, not a European level.