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This Thursday evening, \u2018Startup Minister\u2019 Fleur Pellerin will welcome members of the French tech community as she gives her\u00a0voeux<\/i>, a tradition in France akin to New Year\u2019s Resolutions, during which she will talk about what she wishes for the French tech community in 2014. In addition to plaisanteries, Pellerin will officially announce La FrenchTech, an initiative & a label inspired by UK Tech City that will look to accomplish three goals:<\/p>\n This all sounds pretty standard for government support, so I sat down with LaFrenchTech\u2019s director David Monteau & pressed him about whether this was the same old game with a new name, or whether this would actually produce different results. Speaking with Monteau, the word that continued to come up was suivre<\/i>, that is \u201cfollow.\u201d<\/p>\n The FrenchTech initiative is not<\/i> France’s attempt to grab the ecosystem by the reins and steer it \u2013 at least, not in theory. Instead, the initiative creates a set of criteria, and those who check the boxes are enabled to do more of what they are doing.<\/p>\n Specifically for Attractivity, we can expect to see less Pellerin, and more entrepreneurs taking the microphone to talk about what it means to be in La FrenchTech<\/i>.<\/p>\n Up until now, France\u2019s policy around communicating its attractivity to the private sector has revolved around 1) promoting its strengths and 2) avoiding any mention of its weaknesses. The following result has produced:<\/p>\n Journalist<\/b>: \u201cCan you tell us about the difficult employment & taxation issues that startups face in France?\u201d<\/p>\n Gov. Rep.:<\/b> \u201cOur R&D is fantastic in France \u2013 companies have access to hundreds of millions of euros in funding for R&D. Here\u2019s a list of people who use it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Journalist<\/b>: \u201cYes, but\u2026 heavy taxation and burdensome employment?\u201d<\/p>\n Gov. Rep.:<\/b> \u201cR&D!\u201d<\/p>\n You can imagine how, in any other context, one could easily come to the conclusion that the person(s) responding to this question are actually insane \u2013 it’s as if there had been two discussions going on, like you crossed telephone lines and overheard another conversation while having your own.<\/p>\n The private sector doesn\u2019t react well to people dodging questions; everyone has something to hide, but the key is to paint a different picture of the situation, not to turn the lights off in the room where the painting is.<\/p>\n It\u2019s pretty easy for France to combat the two most common attacks; however, you won\u2019t hear a Minister say the following:<\/p>\n On Taxation<\/b>: You can essentially reduce your taxation to nothing just in R&D reimbursements. Set up an office in France with anywhere under 50 employees (it gets complicated after 50) who are all engineers, and the French Government will essentially pay for your office. Hell, bring international talent over if you\u2019re worried that French Engineers will give you trouble<\/p>\n On Employment<\/b>: In France, all employment contracts come with a renewable trial period that lasts up to 3 months \u2013 that is, you have 6 months to decide whether you want to keep your employee. If your startup needs more than 6 months to decide, then your issue isn\u2019t employment, I promise you that.<\/p>\n The Other <\/i>France<\/b><\/p>\n Here we\u2019ve got the Government on the defensive \u2013 not in a position of strength. France\u2019s cultural distaste for talking itself up has put it at a big disadvantage in the past; however, LaFrenchTech<\/i> represents an opportunity to give the voice back to the private sector (remember: the government \u2018follows\u2019). In the private sector, here\u2019s what people say about France:<\/p>\n Ya, that\u2019s not an hyperbole. There\u2019s a reason Apple\u2019s original European headquarters were in Paris \u2013 because Jobs loved French engineers, French designers. If you\u2019re a mathematician, you get pretty good at pronouncing French names because every theorem up until the 20th<\/sup> century comes from the French \u2013 and beyond that, Americans & Germans just joined in the game. In the valley, French engineers are a currency of their own \u2013 France teaches its engineers to take existing parts and imagine the next logical step given those parts. That is, innovation is built into the way engineers are taught.<\/p>\n When given the option between sitting on a bus from San Francisco to Mountain View for 3 hours a day in order to live in a city and work in a tech company, and walking through the Marais to my office as I do every day, I choose Paris every time. In San Francisco, six figure salaries for engineers means they can just barely afford to go out to a French restaurant in the city and pay 170$ for a bottle of wine \u2013 in France, every corner has a Nicolas<\/i> selling better wine for about 5% the cost \u2013 paying 9\u20ac for a bottle of wine in France calls for celebration, and my favorite bottle is 7\u20ac and is sold next to the bakery, butcher, and hipster market that is 100 meters from my apartment. When\u2019s the last time you had real meat in the valley?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing about France: people want<\/i> to live here, but they assume that there\u2019s a catch. No jobs, or no companies, or little salary. My best friend works at Mozilla in Paris \u2013 their office is a former palace built by the Austrian Empire in the middle of Paris\u2019 startup district \u2013 he commutes about 15-20 minutes by metro in the morning, and makes a \u201ccompetitive salary.\u201d During his evenings and weekends, he\u2019s in Paris. Not Mountain View, but Paris.<\/p>\n In the US, money buys culture, art, finesse, class, luxury, and anything else. In France, it comes with the package \u2013 the buildings are art, the women are luxury, the lifestyle is finesse, and the food is class.<\/p>\n If France stopped trying to sell its attractivity between 9 to 5, and started selling its attractivity during the other 70% of the time, I think it would be easy to convince Silicon Valley engineers to come work for Dailymotion, Deezer, Criteo, Blablacar or any of the multinationals \u2013 Paris is the \u201csemester abroad\u201d for adults. Attracting international talent isn’t about convincing someone to pick up their life and commit to lifetime aboard; it’s about making a clear enough elevator pitch that people say “I’ll try it out – what do I have to lose?”<\/p>\n We’ll see if\u00a0LaFrenchTec<\/em>h\u00a0<\/em>manages to embody this message, or a message of similar pull, but one thing is for sure: the French Government is making mistakes, learning, reiterating, and trying again. Most startups don’t even get that right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This Thursday evening, \u2018Startup Minister\u2019 Fleur Pellerin will welcome members of the French tech community as she gives her\u00a0voeux, a tradition in France akin to New Year\u2019s Resolutions, during which she will talk about what she wishes for the French tech community in 2014. In addition to plaisanteries, Pellerin will officially announce La FrenchTech, an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":23100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23098","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=23098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Aligning the conversation with the discourse<\/b><\/h4>\n
French Engineers are the smartest on the planet<\/b><\/h4>\n
Eiffel Tower, Red Wine, Fashion, Art, les Fran\u00e7aises<\/i>
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