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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

I don't know a single french entrepeneur that doesn't think about leaving the country if its start up starts to become successful. And those who are successful all tell me either to not hire anyone ( work with contractors instead), or leave the country.

Our culture is rotten to its core. Emmanuel macron is trying to change that, but he has no power at all, and every single president is scared to death of the risks he would take by going too far on the liberal side ( liberal candidate never make more than 10% ). French like big, safe, and conservative structures. They complain a lot about it, and then vote for the candidates that promise to maintain the status quo.

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Then meet me. I can also give you a list of french entrepreneurs that love Paris, France and hire a lot of people. Just look at Save, BlaBlaCar and Criteo. Also, remember that our social system is the biggest VC in Europe, allowing thousand of entrepreneurs to keep their "old job salaries" while working on their own companies.

It seems to me you are just the typical example of "French Bashing" : always complaining and seeing the bad side of things.

So why aren't there any major new international tech players coming out of France? I've heard of BlaBlaCar, but none of the three listed are exactly heavyweights.

I'm not anti-France and I'd ask the same question of my own country, the United Kingdom.

If the social security allows you to start your own company, and if people are cheaper, and cost of living is lower, then why can't Europe produce a Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft?

The social system is fine to bootstrap for a year because you'll have 60% of your old salary, "free" healthcare and education, but once you have to raise millions to grow quickly, it won't help. To produce a Google or Facebook, you need a flawless execution, a right timing and a boatload of money.

To build a Google or Facebook, you of course also have to get the US market.

So you have to accelerate to massive scale across Europe, and then conquer the US market before a US company conquers the US and spreads across Europe. It's clearly a far more difficult proposition for the European company. The only alternative I can think of that might work, is for European companies to start with targeting the US market first (a challenging concept in its own right - to target a foreign market first).

> why can't Europe produce a Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft?

Market size, for one. Europe is not a country, and startups begin on a small national market, or at least national-scale funding.

> why can't Europe produce a Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft?

I wonder how much it has do to with education and research. The US have been ahead of Europe in the computer sector. For instance, when Google was founded, were there competitive research teams in Europe working on this type of technologies?

Actually, I graduated around that time in a high-ranked French engineering school, and I think our CS classes were pretty weak (at the master level).

I completely agree. Our great engineer culture is now a burden. We need phds and great research to be able to compete.

Please make it "European bashing". In my experience, it's the same almost everywhere on our continent and everyone thinks it's only in their country of origin.

There are three big french IT companies that "made it" in the last decade : dailymotion, criteo and blablacar ( with dailymotion now close to death). Criteo is making tons of money thanks to the huge ad business. But let me tell you a story about blablacar :

I was on a train to nantes last year, and heard two local politicians ( from green parties) talking together about environmental issues. As time passed on, i started talking to them, and we ended up talking about new transport systems. Well, one of them started mentionning blablacar, a site he used sometimes, and how it became a marketplace rather than a service company, and became philosophical about it, only to end to the conclusion that : the state should start regulating their activity.

I was dumbfounded. I had to tell him that users would go elsewhere if prices would start to go up too much, and basically explain to him the benefit of a free market.

This is not anecdotical. This is a cultural issue. Politicians are clueless about the basis of a sane economy.

> with dailymotion now close to death

Not close to death, it's just not a unicorn. They can IPO whenever they want as long as they claim a correct valuation.

"This is not anecdotical." yes it is, and badly biased as the green party in france is (nearly) extreme left-wing

"This is a cultural issue. Politicians are clueless about the basis of a sane economy." on the very thread about the minister of economy going to the CES and talking about the need of VC money

mr macron is clearly not representative, he is an outsider and that's why he's so popular. As for going to CES, it is is one thing, but it's clearly not going to change anything.

Much more symptomatic was the scandal about the minister of work not knowing the conditions for a short term work contract when asked on TV, just two days after the reform of the work laws have been announced publicaly to be in the work.

That's interesting about keeping the old job salaries while bootstrapping. How long do you have to work at a company for that to be the case? I always thought that one of the main benefits of something like a basic income system is that it would make it easier for many people to take a risk on a startup. I guess this shows you can have that support without a basic income. Are there many downsides to the French system in practice do you think?

It lasts a year. And it is indeed what everybody i know has done when starting its company. It's also the reason 2/3 of the companies die on their 3rd year. First year is paid by social security, second year is spending your saving, third year is the year you have to stop.

> It seems to me you are just the typical example of "French Bashing" : always complaining and seeing the bad side of things.

I think it is partly brought on by the strong political turn that any discussion takes over here. Any topic becomes a Left vs Right debate, and since the country is still mostly divided between the two (or at least used to be till recently), you got highly polarized opinions, like, "we suck because of the other guys".

Actually, the majority of the ones I know (myself included at the time) are not thinking about leaving the country at all and/or don't care about contract issues.

These kinds of anecdotal arguments won't get us nowhere.

Hanging around at TheFamily's diners (for instance), you'll find the only reason they'd leave is because they want to raise with SV investors and/or penetrate the US market (which is hard to do from abroad).

Most start ups in thefamily incubators aren't big enough to think about full time hiring issues and legislation. The problem isn't for companies that are only composed of founders, or by companies that struck a gold mine. It's for the huge chunk that sits in between.

> I don't know a single french entrepeneur that doesn't think about leaving the country if its start up starts to become successful.

In that case, why don't they start their companies abroad from the start? basically, they want to enjoy the security offered by their country in case of failure, but they don't want to pay their share in case of success.

> French like big, safe, and conservative structures

What's wrong with that? many elite graduates (not only in France) choose to work for big corporations that provide great benefits and little risk. It seems to be a rationale choice.

> why don't they start their companies abroad from the start?

Because it's easier to move a company to the US once it is funded and starts getting traction than to start it there.

Also, technical talent is much cheaper in France than in the US, so building the product in France makes sense. A lot of French tech companies that "move to the US" actually keep a subsidiary with their development team in France. And we see tech companies such as Facebook and Google open offices in France to benefit from the talent pool.

Young develpers are also probably more willing to try working at a startup instead of going for the safety of a big company because they do not have student loans to pay back...

France has been good with seed-stage startups for years now (incubators, accelerators, seed VC / angels, tax cuts & subsidies...) The problem is the growth stage and beyond. The French market is too large to force companies to think global from the start and too small to scale for most. VC is much harder to find beyond series A, and moves like the French government preventing exits to foreign buyers scares foreign capital.

But I am optimistic: France figured out the early stage just a few years ago, it will figure out later stages in time.

It's actually much easier to start a company in "tax-friendly" states of USA where you don't have to reside in order to start a company and don't have to pay taxes until you hit $1M revenue, like DL or NV. You can do it comfortably from within EU never setting your foot on the other side of Atlantic, via US Embassy and some US bank subsidiary.

> In that case, why don't they start their companies abroad from the start?

Well, possibly because they are leeches.

It's pretty easy in France to work on your startup while collecting unemployement benefits (and no need to get fired to collect unemployement, there is a special case of voluntary quitting that permits you to collect benefits).

The French state is a very good angel investor, the trouble starts when you need VC...

I am French leaving in France and totally agree and the culture being rotten.

However I don't think all the blame should be put on politicians, unions are also their share of responsibility for the status-quo. Just a few days ago, all (employee) unions rejected the idea of having a more flexible employment contract. The worst part is that they just represent a tiny fraction of the French workers. To me it is the main reason why unemployment is so high in France, it is to hard to get rid of people. It can protect the employer sometimes. For instance, I have been approached by foreign companies but when I say that I have a 3-month notice (like many French employees), usually they are not interested anymore. As an entrepreneur, I'd also be scared to hire in France, to much of a hassle to fire someone.

You should look up http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/07/save-secures-16-7-million-t...

300 hires in a year is no small feat, isn't it?

Not exactly big either.

Well, can you provide me with another similar example in the last 5 years ? Maybe Save will be the next blablacar. We got one of them every 10 years, so who knows. It's insignificant when analysing the economy of the country, though it makes people hope things aren't as bad as they are.

If you manage to find a great business, you can accomodate with cumbersome legislation. Either because you're making huge margins, or because you can afford to hire people that will find loopholes and do the paperwork.

On my case I don't know (I'm French), I currently work in the UK but I will definitely found a small company in a few years time with some online services, that's something I always wanted to do. Will I do it in France or in the UK ? The thing is, at least in the UK, if I buy a book, I can understand how the system works, in France I'm not sure even with the help of my parents I would be able to...

It's just not only about taxes, I don't want to spend all my time filling some massive amount of paperwork nonsense.

I still hope it's going to improve in the future but it seems it's just worse every year... :(

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