Welcome To The French Tech Ecosystem

Welcome To The French Tech Ecosystem

Jan 29th 2014, 16:59, by Romain Dillet

This is the story of a city that keeps reinventing itself. Over the past three weeks, I’ve been walking around Paris to meet with the brightest minds of a tech ecosystem in the making. My experience is as personal as it is relevant about what makes a startup ecosystem work, and why Europe is the next frontier.
When I first decided that I wanted to move to Paris, I was anxious and excited at the same time. I used to write for TechCrunch in New York, in a perpetually effervescent ecosystem. But I wanted to try something new. Many things got me excited about France —TheFamily created a good-looking accelerator, LeWebremained an unmissable event, and Europe as a whole was getting more exciting. Even more importantly, annoyingly good French entrepreneurs keptcreating amazingstuff.
I didn’t get it. Then, probably due toFOMO, I chose to get involved. And I don’t regret doing this at all.
I recently talked with a VC-turned-entrepreneur about the seismic changes in the tech scene. According to him, France has the potential to become a new startup nation.
You can receive up to 70 percent of your salary for up to two years when you create a company. Moreover, a lot of public money has been injected into VC firms or directly into VC-like public institutions over the past few years.
As a business angel, when you invest in a startup, you will pay less tax. As an entrepreneur, when you create a company and hire people, you will pay less corporate tax for the first few years. All of this is mostly unknown when you aren’t French, but it’s about to change.

Building An Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a four-sided network — you need entrepreneurs, VC firms, schools, and journalists. France is lucky enough to have some of the best schools in the world. That’s why many great engineers and smart investors come out of France’s school system. Many have been working in the Silicon Valley for decades. But many choose to work in Paris now.
What about entrepreneurs? While French people are historically risk averse, it is starting to change. Cass Phillipps and Roxanne Varza have hosted a few FailCon editions in Paris, it’s an encouraging sign.
And there is a broader shift happening in tech — startups are increasingly becoming a mainstream cultural element. It’s not as obvious as in the U.S., but huge exits (like Google buying Nest) now make the front page of Les Échos, and a good part of business coverage is now focused on startups and innovation.
In other words, people are interested in startups. Every day, I’m surprised to find out that a friend of mine is listing “startup” as one of his or her interests on Twitter or LinkedIn. 31 percent of French people eventually want to create or lead a company.
But I think one thing is still missing.
In Europe, most startup coverage on TechCrunch and other tech blogs focus on London and Berlin. The main reason behind it is that (surprise, surprise) English-speaking bloggers usually live in the U.K. And Berlin has more English-speaking entrepreneurs and investors than Paris.
It has to change. French entrepreneurs, if your product has no geographical constraint, release it in English and localize it in French. Your company blog should be in English. Startup events should be in English as well. Think big, France is a small market after all.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Paris is an incredible city to start a company, but this is mostly unknown as most of the information that you can find about the tech scene is in French. There are a few exceptions, but the vast majority of content is still in French.
I want to change that and find the best hidden gems this country has to offer and share them to the world on TechCrunch.

France’s Hidden Gems

Most of the news that comes out of France isn’t attractive. Yahoo wanted to acquire Dailymotion, but it was kiboshed by the French government. Apple pulled Appgratis from the App Store, and French minister of the digital economy Fleur Pellerin then stated that Apple didn’t “behave ethically.” Urban transportation services like Uber and LeCab now theoretically have to wait 15 minutes in France before letting a customer in the car — as a result, protesting taxi drivers recently attacked Uber cars.
But even all that was just a rough start for the Government — at first, it probably didn’t understand what startups wanted, but things are about to improve. I’m very optimistic with the new French techlabel. Aside from giving money to startups and investors, the French Tech ultimate goal is to greatly improve the image of France when it comes to startups. Everything is here to turn France into a startup nation, now everybody needs to act accordingly.