[axtn]

France has plenty of early stage startups, in fact the increase in size and quality in their ecosystem in just a few years has been very impressive.

What’s missing in France right now is an ecosystem of fast-growing mid-stage startups - series B and above. I think that’s caused by a combination of:

1) mindset (thinking globally from say one is easier said than done when nobody around you has done it before)

2) lack of late-stage funding. The seed money scene is not as bad as it used to be, and is in a virtuous cycle of early exits / successful entrepreneurs who want to give back. That is looking very good. However, the VCs still suck, with a few exceptions. They’re mostlt bankers, they’re risk-averse, ownership-greedy, and intrusive. Good luck growing a world-class business with them on your board and in your cap table.

3) The EU market is just weak conpared to US and China. So every european startup has to start outside their confort zone and attack foreign markets from day one... Which creates friction compared to growing at home for the first few years.

Here are factors that in my opinion are NOT to blame: taxes (comparable to California), salaries (yes they’re lower than in SV; that’s a good thing for startups), bureaucratic red tape (that’s what lawyers and accountabts are for, it’s not rocket science), lack of work ethic (in my experience French employees work very hard and are very loyal - although they do complain a lot), brain drain (sure French people leave the country. Plenty stay, or come back. It’s nothing like what third world countries have to deal with).

What I’m seeing more and more is French founders moving to SV, raising money there and keeping their engineers in France. Other international founders are doing the same. I think it’s the best available move at the moment.

[presscast]

Agree with the analysis of funding you provide.

Concerning mindset, I think there's an even bigger cultural trait that's holding back French entrepreneurship: a complete absence of a "culture of failure".

By and large, French culture is one of fixed mindset. Mistakes/errors/failures reveal one's limitations or flaws, and aren't perceived as an opportunity to learn and grow. This starts very early and is very much baked in to the structure of schooling.

On the flip-side, this seems to be slowly changing. At the very least, people are aware that the US does this differently, and there seems to be some interest in effecting change.

[mhjas]

I think the biggest challenge for France in regard to startup is that society is hierarchical. I think many of the other concerns stem from that. Hierarchies makes society about ranking, which kills startup since startups are essentially about climbing the class ladder as a company (from small business to fortune 500). Pretty much all startup "hubs" are either "new world" were there weren't necessarily a lot of established players already and/or relatively egalitarian.

[presscast]

>I think the biggest challenge for France in regard to startup is that society is hierarchical

Agreed. At this point, I usually like to point out that hierarchical societies have their advantages. A huge asset for France is it's elite schools -- the "Grandes Écoles".

These schools are outstanding in a way that few Americans can even fathom, and their students are educated to a point that I didn't think possible until moving to Paris.

If you want the best engineers in the world, hire out of those schools. As a bonus, they aren't the sort to hop between jobs.

[hrktb]

I have mixed feelings about the grandes ecoles. Brilliant people get there and you don’t get in and out without serious grit, a decent mind and a taste for effort.

But I tink that’s really what it is. The best engineers I have seen didn’t care for ‘burning’ years of their life in half military schools or old institutions, they went directly to CS courses to get a diploma faster and go abroad or start their own project.

Put another way, people who don’t care about prestige and having a super broad education don’t go there, and in our field I tink a ton of super talented people fit that description.

[presscast]

>I have mixed feelings about the grandes ecoles.

To be fair, so do I, and I think you make a good point. The profile you can expect from a GE is:

- Extremely well-learned. They know a lot of stuff.

- Solutions implemented by GE engineeres will be principled, rather than ad-hoc.

- Not self-starters. They very much have an employee mindset.

And to be faire, there are plenty of outstanding employees (not to mention freelancers or entrepreneurs) who haven't gone through a Grande École.

Let me put it another way: you may not need a GE-graduate to build the next iPod, but you certainly need them for the next EuroTunnel.

[thatfrenchguy]

"Put another way, people who don’t care about prestige and having a super broad education don’t go there, and in our field I tink a ton of super talented people fit that description."

But just like Americans go to ranked universities, as a student you learn how to play the game and go to the best (fit) one you can enter.

[arandr0x]

This is true, although in slight compensation, there is a true culture of dissent. It is common in the US to have to be an all-in cheerleader for whatever the current project is, until it fails, then everyone dusts themself off and hops back on. French people are quite bad at the dusting-off, but they also don't usually let their colleagues attempt to win a horse race while mounted on a pony.

Because French engineers are also more educated on average than US engineers, and French school ratings more predictive of the IQ of their incoming crop than of their "leadership" or whatever the current US proxy for socioeconomic status is, having a minority of French engineers in a team to point out obvious points of failures can be a definite advantage.

Personally I prefer American managers though, I feel the can-do culture is just better for management. Plus French people tend to have a lot of respect for older people or people further up in the hierarchy so in a mixed hierarchy (with the Americans at the top) usually your French guys will move towards becoming self-starters in their bosses' images, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true and American underlings tend to perceive a French boss's nitpicking or challenging of their strategy as micromanagement and undermining.

I think this last part is one of the great remaining challenges of France as a nation of great enterprise. It is very, very difficult for non-French people to feel comfortable in a company born of French senior management and culture. They just don't get some of the tone and French management can be very backwards compared to the commonly accepted leadership forms today. Hopefully, French children today are seeing a very different picture of what it means to be in charge thanks to exchange programs, higher education and a greater involvement from the EU, and they will grow to be leaders who are not afraid of hiring whole teams from other countries and letting them have autonomy and who do not make their teams afraid of them.

[FooBarWidget]

Sigh, ditto for the Netherlands. It seems lack of culture of failure, and fixed mindset, is all over Europe.

[maneesh]

Nassim Taleb would agree -- in Black Swan he writes: "American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma and embarrassment. America’s specialty is to take these small risks for the rest of the world, which explains this country’s disproportionate share in innovations."

[johnomarkid]

Low salaries are not a good thing for the startups!

Here's an article from a French engineer that is currently on the front page of HN: https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcr...

tldr; he moved to SF because salaries are much, much higher than in France, even considering the social benefits that you get in France.

Other threads on HN have French engineers saying that they love living in France while working remotely for American companies.

I've lived in Paris, Berlin, NYC and California. I'll never understand how European founders can keep saying that 40k euro salaries for engineers is a benefit while they watch so many great engineers leave to American companies.

[relyio]

>I've lived in Paris, Berlin, NYC and California. I'll never understand how European founders can keep saying that 40k euro salaries for engineers is a benefit while they watch so many great engineers leave to American companies.

This. I have tasted the fruit and I'm never going back. The social benefits feel largely like gimmicks compared to the standard of living + social recognition you get working as an engineer in the US or even Canada.

[mhjas]

What do you mean by "standard of living" though? I know plenty of Europeans who have access to things even rich Americans barely have access to. Once you want to, or have, kids many benefits that are hard to come by becomes less gimmicky. The main problem in Europe, and in most countries, these days is the housing market. Your position in the housing market has really come to determine your position in society.

[oh_sigh]

What things are you specifically talking about that 'even rich Americans barely have access to'?

[mhjas]

For example it is pretty common in the Nordic countries to have a vacation home where you spend summers and holidays with friends and family. And between saved parental leave, standardized vacation periods and public holidays there is time available to do so. There are certainly people who do have that in the US, but once you or your family relocates it gets a lot more tricky.

In general I just think it is a lot easier in, at least some, European countries to set yourself up for a good life. Day to day, year to year, to not endure a long commute or stressful work environment. Having time to spend with your kids while they are young, your parents before they get too old and your friends so you don't lose touch. Not having to worry about the future, managing your kids lives, the financial losses of getting sick or your career.

Once you start wanting to do things that aren't universal or the default in any country, and especially with other people in your life, you can end up paying a large premium to do so.

[2trill2spill]

> For example it is pretty common in the Nordic countries to have a vacation home where you spend summers and holidays with friends and family. And between saved parental leave, standardized vacation periods and public holidays there is time available to do so. There are certainly people who do have that in the US, but once you or your family relocates it gets a lot more tricky.

That's also common in the United States or at least in the Upper Midwest. Just here in Minnesota there are around 124,000 seasonal properties and the average household income for the owners of these properties is $58,000 which is not rich in the United States. It's also a similar story in Wisconsin next door and other Upper Midwest states like Michigan.

[1]: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/05/29/good-question-cabi...

[linkmotif]

> Not having to worry about the future, managing your kids lives, the financial losses of getting sick or your career.

How does this encourage anything but complacency? Who wants to start anything when everything is a utopia with no consequences? I’m not even being facetious because that is basically what you’re describing. This is why Europe barely innovates: extreme comfort and security. These aren’t bad things. But it’s odd to me that people look for more complicated answers when this is plain as day.

[arkh]

> The social benefits feel largely like gimmicks

Until they or their wives become pregnant. Then suddenly those immigrants feel the need to come back for some years.

[dagw]

Yup! I've met so many people who moved back to Norway/Sweden from the US just before their first kid was born.

[toomuchtodo]

> The social benefits feel largely like gimmicks

Get back to us the first time you have a medical emergency putting you on the hook for 5 or 6 figures (after insurance); at least you're lucky enough to be able to flee the jurisdiction back to a home country.

[kcorbitt]

> Get back to us the first time you have a medical emergency putting you on the hook for 5 or 6 figures (after insurance)

Is that a thing? Obviously there are lots of people in the USA who don't have any good health insurance options. But as an engineer in San Francisco all the companies I've worked at or interviewed with have had gold-plated health insurance plans with maximum out-of-pocket expenses in the low 4 figures. And of course, most people won't hit those maximums most years, that's just an upper bound.

This is of course limited to my personal experience, but my impression is that good health insurance is table stakes for highly-paid engineering roles.

[toomuchtodo]

~1 month ago

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/08/27/6408918...

HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17859897

> but my impression is that good health insurance is table stakes for highly-paid engineering roles.

Hit or miss. Definitely depends on the company.

[kcorbitt]

That's a very unfortunate story. As I mentioned, I recognize that many people in the US don't have any good healthcare options, which is something that we as a society ought to fix.

However, I don't think we can learn much about the health insurance typically provided to engineers in San Francisco from the poor insurance plan available to a teacher in Houston. Those jobs have very different compensation profiles.

[axtn]

They are a benefit... if you pay people above market! That allows you to attract top talent that otherwise would be locked in at Google etc.

The whole point of low salaries, for smart companies, is to be the one increasing them! Obviously that makes it a temporary advantage, as salaries start to increase... But all great advantages are temporary.

The people you are talking to, who like low salaries because they want to enjoy lower costs in perpetuity... that’s just mediocre thinking by mediocre companies.

[lazyjones]

Good luck getting the top talent that has moved to the US, UK or Switzerland years ago.

[achamayou]

There’s top talent graduating all the time though, you don’t necessarily need to go abroad and drag people back.

[axtn]

Exactly. France has extremely strong engineering schools, and almost no software industry. You wouldn’t believe the talent being wasted in banking IT desks and consulting conpanies... Not only can a well-funded startup pay them better, the work is 10x more interesting. And unlike Silicon Valley engineers, French employees won’t ditch you after a year. Once they’re on board, they tend to stick around (sometimes even too long for their own good...)

[lazyjones]

> French employees won’t ditch you after a year. Once they’re on board, they tend to stick around (sometimes even too long for their own good...)

You forgot to mention that you can‘t fire them at will either... It‘s such laws and excessive taxation that makes many european countries unattractive for startups.

[craigsmansion]

MIT used to be the dream, now it's Inria where all the magic seems to originate.

(I blame the switch from scheme to Python)

[user5994461]

That. Definitely that. There is zero software industry in France. The best talents are incredibly easy to hire and retain because they have nowhere else to go.

[jogjayr]

There's always people that want to move back home to be closer to family or their culture but are put off by the lower salaries.

[wakey86]

I couldn't agree more!

[oh_sigh]

Low salaries also mean it is hard for normal people(ie people not from rich or well connected families) to save up enough money to self-fund a startup.

[jeandejean]

I do agree that low salary is an issue, but it's improving. On the other hand, it's very hard to compare everything, when you're young, single and healthy, it's a no brainer that you should take your chance in the US. But if you have a family, suddenly are diagnosed with a costly disease of whatever kind, I bet you wish to be in Europe.

So articles that say "you should go west" just applies to their authors, everybody has their own set of parameters to evaluate, and the answer isn't so obvious. I personally have kids and a wife that earns a lot of money. I've done the maths, it's a no brainer for me financially to stay in Europe...

[thatfrenchguy]

The Numeo cost of living is bullshit though, SF is not 46% more expensive than Paris, it's much more.

That said, salaries are still much better in SV... Up until the point where you have kids.

[wowzerhn]

What everyone is missing is.

In Europe, why would an entrepreneur work hard? There is strong safety net provided by the Welfare state, it's simply not worth the risk.

No risk of going homeless if you fail. It's easier to give up.

Remove safety net, remove free healthcare, increase wages, remove payroll taxes, remove immigration restriction, add property rights so that foreigners can buy land and see the startups blossom.

It is as simple as that.

But pretty sure, most European will not be voting for this.

[dang]

We've banned this account for trolling.

[apeyrard]

Yes, we're certainly not voting for that. No single payer healthcare ? No thank you. What an horrible idea.

[tobltobs]

What a bullshit. You don't have to be a neo-liberal hellhole to attract successful entrepreneurs.