> One thing I noticed in France on the other hand is the importance of the diploma. In Sweden it has very little value, whereas in France it sometimes shapes your whole career. And the good students coming from a good school directly get high paying jobs in big comfortable companies so that does limit the incentive to risk it all in a startup instead.

That's interesting. A lot of the insanely good engineers I've worked with (and work with) either don't have diplomas or didn't even finish high school. Perhaps France is missing on this a lot by being pretty discriminatory when hiring.

Also, one thing I'm thinking about now, I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants (e.g. adderall) whereas I doubt this is really a thing in France.