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Comment by aout | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

"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.

> 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.

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?

> 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.

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?

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.

> 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".

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.

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.

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