France Launches French Tech Ticket, a Startup Visa for Foreign Entrepreneurs
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Great place to live, bad place for working. Worse if the people that decide on your visas and conditions are Communist people. Central planning(communism) is the opposite of startups.
In the US people(the culture and society) admire people that makes money, in my opinion too much. When Americans talk about people they say things like "he is worth X thousands dollars", implying that people is worth the money they have in the bank.
In France it is the polar opposite, the culture hates successful people, envy is endemic and taxes are on the roof, and will only grow higher when the German money stops flowing.
France is one of the natural wealthiest countries I have ever lived, but French people are not very efficient at exploiting it. They believe in eternal rights, but not on duties.
The same way than when you live in China you feel the Cultural revolution, in France you feel the French Revolution at every corner.
Most french LEAVE france because of how byzantine and insane the laws are towards companies (let alone startups).
If you want to set a business up and live in France forreals, then don't do that, and read below.
tl;dr - france is not a culture celebrated for its high risk profile. it celebrates its past and culture, things it wishes to preserve. everything else suffers because of this.
Moving from US to France all of your costs are going to go up. It's really hard to get French people to adopt the latest trends. Historically things are very conservative with the benefit of the doubt erring on the side of the status quo.
Any legal, gov't, or bureaucratic issues you think you have in the US, you can multiply by 20 if you set up in france.
The whole taxation system in France was never designed to deal with risk-heavy entreprises. If you employ someone, you must budget for paid vacation. To employ them at all, you need to draft either a CDI (Contract Duration Indeterminée)which means basically that you're employing them for life, or CDD (Contract Duration Determiné) which means you employ them on short term contract only. So either you marry them or you can't promise them much upside.
Basically US is very employey/corporation-centric, while EU puts a lot more importance on employees (that are the majority of people by the way)
In my experience, tech workers in the US generally have fewer job stability problems and have a much easier time finding decent work in the first place.
In the vast majority of Western countries the notion of at will employment is considered an ancient, socially unacceptable practice.
The US is the outlier in the civilized world when it comes to labour protection.
Also, funny how every time people start to bitch in general terms about entrepreneurship in a European nation, it always comes down to one thing: you can't treat employees as expendable assets.
BTW, "It's really hard to get French people to adopt the latest trends." The place must be a horror for the fashion industry...
Also, if you don't think that companies like Orange (which has an infamously high suicide rate) doesn't treat its employees like expendable assets, you're kidding yourself.
Lastly, I dunno if you're being sarcastic, but actually France is a terrible place for new fashion trends and has been since the late 60s.
A huge part of the large French fashion brands appeal is based on tradition and capturing that lost time / place when style was timeless (ie Chanel, Hermes).
Most of the best young fashion designers leave France to London, NYC etc.
As one of the other commenters said, the primary reason I wouldn't start a company in France is the "Byzantine and insane laws" that you have to deal with. For starters, how about all of the employment laws that make it difficult to fire poor performing employees.
But beyond that, look at the tax rates. As someone who has been through starting a company before, it's just not worth it without the chance of a good return in the future. A quick internet search reveals that as a non-French citizen, I would be liable for around 56% in taxes if my company ever exited. Compare that with the qualified small business rate of about 15% here in the states...
It's almost offensive to me that the French government thinks that the only thing standing between a successful tech scene and where they are now is the ability to get a visa and some seed capital. Hubris much?
I'm not even going to get into the laws debate, but just keep in mind, just like the taxes, it's not at all how you think it is :)
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/30/sacrebleu-french-pride-kil...
As an entrepreneur, that is not enticing to me.
It is probably true that if you're looking to disrupt how employment markets function, France is probably not a great place to focus your initial efforts. But there are lots of ways to make money outside of that.
If your business model is "bypass the law and hope you can get big enough before anyone notices", this kind of setbacks are bound to happen. It happened in France, it could have happened anywhere.
On the other hand, there are thousands of people creating startups without trying to hack the law, and they are doing just fine in France.
Interesting. I expected speak French or English..
Yes french could still be mentioned but it may not make much difference.
- Unless you're doing a hyper-local product, you're competing on the global scale.
- The ratio of active investors versus serious entrepreneurs is far, far worse in France than in Silicon Valley.
- Getting good people in France to join your startup is very easy. Getting the absolute best people in the world, that's tough. Not because they don't exist in France. It's because the absolute best people want to leave France. Top talent wants to move to the #1 best place in the world for their industry, no less.
The lifecycle of a (non-lifestyle) startup anywhere in the EU is far harder than it is in Silicon valley, at every stage.
If the government continues to add serious benefits, and many other changes happen though, the balance could maybe start to shift.
Top talent wants to move to the #1 best place in the world for their industry, no less.
Are those definitions or observations?
It's like the crackdowns on online gaming in the US for example.