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Comment by sp4ke | Hacker News Reader

As a previous foreign entrepreneur who lived in Paris for 8 years here's my experience and my advice: In paris entrepreneurship is a VIP club for rich people who will rarely take real risk. Seed investment is next to impossible. The tax reduction schemes requires months of procedures and administrative paperwork. Real estate is almost as expensive as London. And the worst, if you're a foreigner you'll have a real hard time given all the immigration laws nonsense.

You're better off making your startup almost anywhere else.

EDIT: and as other comments said, people don't speak English, the French have some sort of pride of only speaking their native language ...

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Wow, that's a great deal of french bashing in such a short comment. I agree that the immigration laws must be a real pain for some people. But for the rest, you must have been out of luck :

- tax reduction schemes are a no brainer, you just have to justify once a year that you are doing something in relation with R&D, and there are too lots of ways to get some government grant to help start your business

- french entrepreneurs are from a lot of different origins. Of course you will find and some rich people creating companies, but most of the people creating companies here are taking real risks and don't have large amount of cash to back them if they fail

- seed investment is not difficult at all, and government grants are here too to help save your shares, even better that seed .

I am telling this as a cofounder of Stupeflix, the company behind Replay, app of the year on the Apple App Store, and proudly based in Paris for 6 years now.

EDIT: sorry for my English, it's not my native language, but I am trying hard to learn it...

> that's a great deal of french bashing

Can we stop with this? I'm tired of French people always responding to any kind of critics with the "French bashing" strawman. I'm French myself by the way.

> and government grants are here too to help

Most entrepreneurs don't want the government to help, they want the government to stay out of the way. A concept many of my fellow French have a hard time understanding the benefits.

I can assure you that you will want the government to help, especially when you don't have any money to start your business. You should ask a few entrepreneurs about this.

I am an entrepreneur and I don't want the government's help. The government is the new Church here and I want out.

So you choose to suffer the bad sides of the government without taking any advantage from it ? You are free to do so, but is it really the wisest solution when you are just looking for a solution to survive ? And isn't it a form of church too, to refuse anything coming from the government ? (I am not from any church, if you're asking)

> And isn't it a form of church too, to refuse anything coming from the government ?

I refuse help from any kind of church, I like to call this Freedom :)

> (I am not from any church, if you're asking)

Except for the government.

> - tax reduction schemes are a no brainer, you just have to justify once a year that you are doing something in relation with R&D, and there are too lots of ways to get some government grant to help start your business

Really? Have you spent time filing them? I have, and they were a big time waster for me. There is a way out, of course (i.e. pay some specialized company to file them for you).

Agreed on the other points, though.

Yes, of course, no paperwork at all would be perfect, you don't want to waste your time on anything but your job, but the benefits are really worth it. And to answer you, I had to do some reporting, yes.

Tax reductions schemes are mostly abused AFAIK. Very few startups do anything resembling actual R&D, but they still use the tax schemes, which could be risky in case of tax audit. Anyway, most early startups won't benefit from that as they have no profit to show so it is mostly a moot point.

As for the other points from the parent, they're not specific to France. The "startups are a rich man's game" problem is universal, and financing is just as hard to raise anywhere. Of course you'll probably raise a much smaller amount in France than SV but that's to be expected.

However, I agree with you that we have a nice perk : anyone with a good plan & a few months of free time to write up the paperwork can get something like 50K in grants, without giving up any equity. That's not very useful for an Internet company but can be a tremendous help for dedicated teams in other fields.

You don't have to make some profit to benefit it, as you get employer taxes back for R&D employees, which can be very important, something like 40% of employee cost. It lowers a lot cost per employee.

Most French people don't speak english. Younger generations do, but not very well. Hopefully, the average will rise to netherlands/scandinavian levels with time.

In professional settings, I think you would be hard pressed to find someone you cannot communicate with in english. It has been a requirement for most higher ed degrees for years now.

But come on, blasting a country because the average citizen doesn't speak your language well seems a little entitled in my book. If you're going anywhere to settle down (not for vacation), learning the local language should be high on your list.

Edit: no comment about your other points though. You actually have more experience dealing with them than I do.

Tax reduction schemes for R&D (JEI and CIR) are indeed a no-brainer for most people that are serious about it, given that:

- The form-filling part is better left to your accountant, as part of your annual tax return.

- The R&D specific part is a no-brainer if you actually do R&D and know what it means.

English is not a native language there, it should be obvious that most people can't/won't speak English and English can be used only when you can't speak the local language. It's not unique to France but also the case of Spain, Italy and most non-English speaking countries to be fair, the world is not only made of English speaking countries.

Disclaimer: I am not french.

I happen to be in Paris in these days in order to have a look at the startup and tech scene there.

So far I am surprised how well most french people speak English. Not perfect, of course, but they do not mind switching to english in a meetup presentation.

I can not say much about the points you mention, though, as I have not been long enough in the city of Paris to get relevant data.

I don't know if it's pride or lack of mastery of the English language. Even though it's the most taught one after French, it's still not well imprinted in people's mind.

Be careful highlighting government inefficiency around here - apparently it's a hackneyed cliché.

All major startup hubs have those problems, especially as a foreigner.

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