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France really wants to be the next big place in tech startups (like any country really). It's a noble initiative, but speaking as a French citizen who moved to
by GuiA 13y ago
France really wants to be the next big place in tech startups (like any country really). It's a noble initiative, but speaking as a French citizen who moved to SV roughly 3 years ago (and to the US 5 years ago), I don't believe it has any chance of doing so.
Between the backwards government (cf. the dumb stuff that Fleur Pellerin regularly does/say) and the structures that are impossible to work with (a friend of mine, still in Paris, has been fighting for weeks to just get a ~bank account opened~ for his startup), France will not have its Google or Facebook (a catchphrase often used by the politicians) anytime soon.
It's a shame, because there is real engineering talent in France (you can thank Napoleon for that), and those who don't want to move abroad (typically England/Germany) end up working for shitty consulting/outsourcing companies ("SSII"), or work in small local web dev agencies. There are programmers from my small French university that I would hire over Stanford students any day of the week for a startup. (this is not a jab at Stanford or anything- I've tutored Stanford undergrads, and many of them are brilliant, but surprisingly not crazily moreso than the top students from my small no-name public university.)
People at the top just don't get it, and they come from old school élitiste backgrounds (HEC, Sciences Po Paris, ENA, etc.) that are at the complete opposite of what building an entrepreneur friendly environment would require.
- c2prods 13y agoNo offence, that's a somewhat classical rant of a French who left 5 years ago ;) Actually France is changing. Regulation is becoming easier to deal with, people are more and more entrepreneurs-friendly, etc. This very article proves it. I agree with you concerning the waste of talent in SSII but that too is evolving. Give France some time!
- marcosdumay 13y agoSorry, but an official program for creating entrepeuners isn't evidence of anything. Entrepeuner friendly governments normaly have less official programs, of any kind. What's too bad, because Brazil is in exactly that same boat. We also won't have a thriving high-tech industry any time soon.
- fidotron 13y agoTo some extent the problems you describe cover many places outside SV, though French bureaucracy is notorious. It doesn't strike me as obvious that SV is going to remain any better for gestating startups into the future, largely thanks to the cost of living, but simultaneously I don't see excessively bureaucratic countries pulling it off either. Balancing government services that can help small business (and I put state health care in there) with a low tax and admin burden is the magic combination that would foster true growth. France can only do that if it can convince the piles of public servants it is in their interests to do it - but they're not stupid, and it isn't. Basically any country where a significant proportion of the population aspires to being a civil servant is just going to enter a sort of slow decline.
- mathattack 13y agoMy 2 cents... The French system is great at producing mathematicians, and by extension computer scientists. The problem is there is a cultural aversion to risk taking and working for small companies, and the government is increasingly taxing away the upside. So why wouldn't people go abroad if they don't want to work for large boring firms? It's a shame, because the system produces some very smart people.
- jotm 13y agoSeriously, what is up with opening a bank account in Europe? They will soon require cavity searches just to let you into the damn building. Just give me a checking account without overdraft and other risky options so I can start working. It's amazing how disinterested they are in new (business!) customers...
- marcosdumay 13y agoFrom the way they act, looks like modern banks get no marginal return from a client that just puts money in them. Instead, they are botlenecked by the amount of people they can lend to. I have no idea if that's the real case, or just a bad case of the right hand not knowing what the left one is doing. If it real, I don't understand how it's even possible, since governments are all eager to get loans from anybody... But they do act as if it was true.
- jotm 13y agoBut more clients = more potential customers for their credit lines. Unless it's a huge drag on their resources (doubt it), opening a simple checking account for a new business should be a no brainer - they should take some ideas from US banks...
- mercer 13y agoEurope isn't a country. In Holland, I registered my business and then went and got a business bank account plus working (temporary) bank card in about four hours total...