![\"French-Tech-service-startups-fran-aises-F\"](\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/assets\/French-Tech-service-startups-fran-aises-F.jpg\")
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Last month, Fleur Pellerin announced a government initiative to create a \u201cFrench Tech\u201d label in order to help French startups get more international recognition. The applause and criticisms came out from people for & against the initiative, and I\u2019ve been sitting, digesting the announcement, trying to figure out what exactly irked me about this announcement \u2013 something in my gut told me there was a problem, and it turns out, there are a bunch of problems with the \u201cFrench Tech\u201d label.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been keeping score at home, you\u2019ll know that \u201cFrench Tech\u201d was not the first name that Pellerin announced for such an initiative. Last year she announced \u201cParis Capitale Startup\u201d & \u201cParis Capitale Num\u00e9rique,\u201d which I quickly shot down as a \u201cbig mistake<\/a>\u201d \u2013 In fact, if you Google \u201cParis Capital Startup,<\/a>\u201d my article still comes up as the first result, so it isn\u2019t surprising that the name wouldn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n Between that article and the November announcement, I wrote one of my more supportive articles \u201c10 reasons to be proud to work in French Tech<\/a>,\u201d accompanied by #FrenchTechPride<\/a>. We\u2019ve since used the hashtag intermittently on Facebook & Twitter, and I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s become a defacto French startup scene hashtag, but it raised large enough awareness for, say, the cabinet of a Junior Minister to take notice.<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/RudeBaguette\/status\/385324739050631168<\/p>\n Of course, the label is generic, and could\u2019ve been thought up by anyone; however, the fact that it changed every time one of our articles about it reached peak Google positioning and that our positive title subsequently got chosen leads me to think that I may be doing more of the Minister\u2019s work than I originally thought<\/p>\n The \u201cFrench Tech\u201d label is very directly inspired by UKTI and the \u201cTech City\u201d label (also inadvertently invented by a blogger); however, the UK has a very different relationship to its private sector than France does. Take, for example, LeWeb, which saw three French expatriated entrepreneurs debating with a Minister over how the government is hurting France\u2019s international image.<\/p>\n When\u2019s the last time you saw Cameron, or even Boris debating with entrepreneurs about how the UK is seen abroad?<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t the startups \u2013 Dailymotion does a fine job when the government isn\u2019t involved, and Deezer is kicking ass by distancing itself from the public sector as much as possible \u2013 the problem is the government policy. And no label is going to change that. Smoke. And. Mirrors<\/p>\n The big success of the French government is convincing French people that, whenever there is opportunity in the private sector, there is a way for the government to improve said opportunities with \u2018free\u2019 initiatives. The truth is that French engineers don\u2019t need a reputation boost \u2013 they may need to learn a bit more about storytelling, but the French government is hardly the one to manage that process.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been trying since I arrived in Europe to adapt David Cohen\u2019s \u201cjust stay out of our way\u201d attitude towards government to a more \u201cEuropean\u201d relationship with the government, but I have yet to hear one solution that didn\u2019t make me think \u201cComplete waste of time.\u201d<\/p>\n I think my real problem with Fleur Pellerin up until this point has been that the startup scene had such high hopes for her, because she spoke of action; however, she continues to speak of action, against protectionism, for startups, for women in tech, for internationalization, for\u2026 it turns out, if you keep on promising, you never have time to deliver.<\/p>\n As someone who occasionally makes appearances at events & conferences, I know that there is an indirect relationship between how much work you get done and how much time you spend being a public figure. Pellerin is 100% public, which means she\u2019s 0% work.<\/p>\n French Tech feels to me like another \u201cyou\u2019ll see, you\u2019ll see\u201d initiative that is meant to run out the clock until the next election, or distract from the real problem. The government has work to do, and it\u2019s spending more time talking about the solutions than implementing them.<\/p>\n The more important message is that, regardless of what the government says about its relationship to innovation, or the initiatives it proposes in order to tie itself to the digital economy, none of this will stop French engineers from innovating \u2013 there is a persistence to the French culture that is undertold, undersold, and underappreciated as a result.<\/p>\n People often look to the Silicon Valley for tips on improving the culture of a startup ecosystem \u2013 I think the only solid point to take away is that no Californian startup is based in California (Delaware company, you say?) and no successful founder has ever said \u201cThank god for that government initiative and grant money; we wouldn\u2019t have succeeded otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n France will continue to see examples of startups succeeding despite the government \u2013 it doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be otherwise, and there are few great examples of successful government-startup relations (Ireland, maybe the UK).<\/p>\n Fleur, if you want our #FrenchTechPride label, you can have it \u2013 all we need are great French founders: and for that, we\u2019ve got plenty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month, Fleur Pellerin announced a government initiative to create a \u201cFrench Tech\u201d label in order to help French startups get more international recognition. The applause and criticisms came out from people for & against the initiative, and I\u2019ve been sitting, digesting the announcement, trying to figure out what exactly irked me about this announcement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":22202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2) The Government is the problem with French startups\u2019 image<\/h4>\n
3) French startups don\u2019t need a label.<\/h4>\n
4) They are just running out the clock\u2026<\/h4>\n
This will not stop French startups from succeeding<\/h4>\n