Startups Founded by French Entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

Startups Founded by French Entrepreneurs

rudebaguette.com

62 pointsliam_boogar49 comments

Earlier a HN front page post about a startup entrepreneur who's a woman, and now a post about entrepreneur who are French. Can't wait for the posts about entrepreneurs who are blonde, or muslims, or wearing green shirts.

Bottom line: I don't get why "I am xxxxx and I'm an entrepreneur" is relevant at all.

I think, for this particular exemple, this is due to the recent rise in French bashing in a lot of British and American medias.

That included some nuggets such as “The best thinkers in France have left the country. What is now left is mediocrity.”

So I guess, we, French, have decided to fight back all of this and prove them wrong.

Granted, this article is about expatriates, so one could think it is proving the quote right, but I still think this goes in the general direction of fighting back the partiality of all those articles.

Great response, Gmo!

Indeed, while it doesn't entirely combat the 'bashing' - some of the bashing is due, so we can't expect to entirely reject all criticism - it does put a stick in the bicycle wheel of the "France doesn't have a word for entrepreneur" banter.

Origin of Entrepreneur : French, from Old French, from entreprendre; to undertake.

I guess the irony is lost on them.

Just a question: Doesn't "entrepreneur" totally sound French? I'm French so it's obvious to me, but I'm surprised you fetched a dictionnary to back you up. Do English speakers need to be scholar to guess it's a French word?

French as well, so I'm only backing my point with the dictionary definition ;)

Given how weirdly they tend to pronounce french word and sometimes transform them -see rouge (but it's only fair since we do the same sometimes) I guess it doesn't hurt to reiterate it.

The "the French don't have a word for entrepreneur" is supposedly a quote from George Bush [1], and he's ridiculed for it because we all know "entrepreneur" is French.

[1] http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.asp

That would explain a lot indeed.

And don't take any offence with what's been said above, it's funny to see a word / idiom / expression being taken over by the english language, as much as the opposite; ie : The Hangover being translated Very Bad Trip.

Does the phrase you're translating as "Very Bad Trip" have the same druggie double meaning in French?

Kinda but it's mostly bad drug experience, whereas The Hangover encompass any substance (especially alcohol).

It's an unimaginative 'translation', making it sound more fancy than the literal french equivalent ("La cuite").

I didn't even know this quote came from anywhere in particular. I honestly believed it was poking fun at the French bureaucracies inability to grow small businesses due to taxes and social charges.

Even a few years ago if you wanted to start a new business in a market that didn't exist yet you would be told it can't be done. For example, "Le Camion qui Fume" had to spend years to get the business license because the concept of the food truck didn't exist in France. Surprisingly, mobile epiceries, bakers, and butchers have existed for years so I don't know why mobile restaurants took so long.

I can't speak to the other posts, but as the author of this post, the intrigue for me is that the common thread, their country of Origin, makes a big statement about France's ability to educate and product entrepreneurs.

There is also a subtle undertone (I chose not to dive into it in the article, as it's been discussed in depth elsewhere) about the fact that many of France's most successful citizens found their success outside of France, suggesting that, while the French system produces a consistent flow of intelligent entrepreneurs (a keystone of a healthy startup ecosystem), it fails to create an environment in which those entrepreneurs feel they can succeed.

Right. And for me that is positive, because creating the economical environment is easier than improving greatly the education and fostering creativity and self thinking. Basically France needs to reduce taxes on employment, and provide for better ways for investment to happen. That seems doable.

Let's dig (Granted: It's a kind of Godwin point for a French entrepreneur post):

- 71% tax above 31k€ per year: VAT 20%, Revenue tax 15%, Taxe Pro/Education 1%, [health, retirement, elderly, unemployment and similar] social mandatory fees 46%, mandatory fees and tax agent 2200€, the total is around 71%.

- Research incentives "CIR" can pay up to 90% of your PhD employees,

- ACCRE, women incentives and some I'm-a-victim incentives can get you 10-80k€ loans that you don't have to reimburse in case of failure.

It looks to me like we're selecting our best start-ups on how well they do at smuggling benefits.

It also looks like we weigh on those who could grow. Make your calculation: Without 71% of tax, how many people do our competitors hire?

Last thing, there is a heavy hate for "those who make money" in France. I'm constantly at fear of talking about money and being bashed on the spot. Not like I try to improve on that anyway, I've seen how rich is the rest of the world and I think we should have a little talk here. Also, we don't incentive successful ones to come back. The retirement and health systems welcome you like someone who is intensely rich, which, in France, isn't good. And intensely rich starts at the programmer wage.

We like to say "Fuite des cerveaux" when talking about our engineers going to [insert any place in the rest of the world]. But we're getting into the range of "Fuite des mains": Two blue collar of my friends have left to Canada. We need to have a little talk in France about money.

That said... I came back from Australia to France to start my company. The competent doctors was a big one for me, as well as a cheaper cost of living.

NB: Thanks heaps to Liam for doing this little research. Looking forward to the list of local startups, e.g. Xavier Niel.

Come on, stop the French whining, and then maybe the French bashing will stop.

I wont even comment the 71%, because any educated reader will understand that theses taxes do not add up like that.

And even if it was true, a French engineer is still way cheaper than a SF one, especially once you want to provide health care and 401k. Added that since they whine all the time, French startups pay almost no taxes the first years.

The only reason why France do not have an important startup scene, is because French entrepreneur and investors are afraid of risk, and prefer to fund their companies with government subsidies.

Byroot, it's gross to reject an argument like that. Look:

> I wont even comment the 71%, because any educated reader will understand that theses taxes do not add up like that.

Emh, have you... done the calculation? Because I did. And I've found 71% for a scenario of 70k€.

It's insulting to assume I've just been adding up percentages. And when I find 71%, it's enough to back my statement that we're plainly choking our companies.

> The only reason (...) is because French entrepreneurs and investors are afraid of risk

Requires citation, it's just an unbacked statement. You have to prove it's the genes and not the administrative burden that weighs on us. I say it's the administrative burden.

> I've found 71% for a scenario of 70k€.

It's not even clear what you are talking about. Anyway what I meant is that you are adding, VAT, income taxes and employment taxes, It makes no sense because they all have a different "Assiette fiscale" (sorry no idea of the translation, it mean that their cost are based on different amounts i.e. benefit vs revenue vs salaries).

> Requires citation

Xavier Niel: "France is a tax heaven" [0]

Plus my own experience of parisian entrepreneurs / startups. Most of them are ramen profitable from the start just because of the R&D grants and other subsidies.

[0] http://www.latribune.fr/technos-medias/20131011trib000790084...

I need to work on a small infography to explain the figure with details. It would bring a better fact sheet to discuss about it.

Good job on citing Xavier Niel. The tax+subsidies system still alters the profile of start-up that survives.

At the risk of grossly generalizing, it's interesting to contrast the French and Silicon Valley cultures -- the pursuit of wealth versus benefit to society. SV invented the hipster capitalist, he wants to get rich but pretends to really want to change the world. OTOH the French are proud of their social institutions like education and health, but hate paying for it all.

Canada seems to be on a middle ground (ignoring the present administration). We complain about taxes too, but even the most conservative like our universal healthcare. It's a trade-off.

Unfortunately as a society (Canada) we're a little too conservative when it comes to entrepreneurship. Where I live anyway, the only path to 'success' that anyone can envision is working for a large corporation...

Tax wise BC Canada and California are about equal. BC has about %3 more sales tax, and consumer goods are more expensive for a combination of reasons. But on the other hand companies don't pay much in healthcare costs either.

The far more competitive and close by Seattle although draws in a lot of talent with no state income tax and being cheaper than California yet still close to home.

Women entrepreneurs are relevant because there is (at least in general media) a recognition that there are a lot of negative stimuli towards women (especially when young) aiming to be entrepreneurs. Everyone needs role models.

French entrepeneurs are relevant maybe to counter the idea that France doesn't know how to innovate. I'm not sure how relevant ebay's guy is as an example. As someone who did something similar (Born in France, went to US for elementary school and middle school, back in france for HS Uni) I feel more american than french.

Definitely agree that the eBay example is a stretch (i wrote the article); however, I grew up in the Bay Area around French families (mostly engineers), and there was a certain French culture retained - not sure how you feel with respect to that.

The greater idea was that there is something inherently 'French' that produces great entrepreneurs - not that these particular ones owe France anything, but that it's worth reflecting on.

To counter the general conviction of some Americans that only American males innovate and start startups?

Now, we need some examples of "I innovate but I do not run startup" to counter the idea that starting startup is the only way to innovate.

Done. Here are the videos of the 30C3:

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/

Lots of hacking. Startups, not so much.

I agree with your point, but I'd like to say that the woman-founder article was a personal blog entry that got 104 upvotes, is 8 hours old and currently ranks at #90 on HN at the very bottom of the third page - compared to this piece of meaningless top-ten writing which got 39 upvotes, is 6 hours old, and still going strong on the front page.

Lots of respect to jbk - though it's kind of weird that the author listed jbk's "VLC" (non startup) in the subtitle.

And ... how can this list not mention Fabrice Bellard, without whom neither QEMU (essential to KVM and VirtualBox), nor FFMPEG (very significantly behind the scenes in VLC, Handbrake, YouTube, Chrome and just about any other media related software) would have been. If you have used the internet for 60 minutes today, it is quite likely you've used a Bellard derived product.

Bellard: Prolific hacker? Yes. Entrepreneur? Not so much...

(As an aside: a former French entreprenuer that immediately comes to mind is Jean-Louis Gassée who founded Be Inc.)

You're definitely right - I chose to mention the "VLC" project instead of Videolabs in the subtitle, as I felt people would recognize it more. Hence the explanation in the text.

The list is in no way complete, nor indicative of any 'ranking' - I think I could write a similar list once a week for the next year and not give everyone their due respect.

My old boss and a partner, both French (one living in the US, the other in Germany), founded http://snapengage.com/. They're doing quite well competing with OLark, Zopim, etc.

This is a peculiar article - maybe it should be written in French to show French people that they can do it?

'Cause there's a ton of great companies with French founders: Dassault, Parrot, Genostar, Mandriva, Digimind, and more...

CritSend was started in France.

This article strikes on one of my pet peeves, though. Calling non-startups startups. Ebay hasn't been in a startup in over 10 years. They are simply a 'company' now.

Totally true (author here); however, when they started, they were a startup. And when they were a startup, they were founded by someone French.

Most of the list are current startups; VLC is also only somewhat a startup (VideoLab is more of a startup; VLC being the project).

There's also various languages and technology many people use and may or may not realise are developed by French developers - OCaml, Coq, Haxe (my personal fave), Pharo...

Well personally, I'd love to move to Paris to do a tech startup with a French cofounder. Partly because it would give me a non-SVP insight into building products for a non-American user base (I'm a 4th generation SV native). And partly to prove the rumors that you can't build startup teams in Paris are false.

Interested in getting in touch, although I may not be able to give you exactly what you're looking for. I grew up in Paris and am currently looking to start a company in SV, so I'm curious about what prompts you to do the opposite journey.

There also other towns in France where it might be easier you know, especially regarding cost of living :) (For instance, Nantes, where I am living right now)

To add to the anecdotal evidence, the winners of the Coursera/Stanford startup challenge were French: http://www.goopil.co/.

So that's ebay and 9 projects I never heard of :)

You've really never heard of VLC (admittedly hardly a startup, but certainly a project) or Feedly?

Or Docker...?

What about Renaud Visage, co-founder of Eventbrite?

I would add qobuz[1], for innovating in hifi, lossless streaming and dailymotion, the only video hosting platform (other than vimeo) that survided against the youtube[2] behemoth I'm aware of. Also netvibes still exists.

[1] http://www.qobuz.com/

[2] http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dailymotion

Any french speaker who can tell me what is meaning of Khodabakchian or omidyar in french?

It means nothing in french

yes, because none of them are french!! they are iranian :D, if you want I can tell you the meaning of both ;)

2 of your french Entrepreneurs are actually iranian! Pierre Omidyar , Edwin Khodabakchian

Don't forget Dashlane.

No that not truth. I didn't know 9 of them, and I know eBay

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