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by hme 4647 days ago
Any serious entrepreneur in France can double the company income or raided funds with the help of national and local R&D grants, funds and tax credits (Crédit Impot Recherche). Add to that two years of salary for the founders paid by the agency the help unemployed people. It's super easy to get ramen profitable in France, and you don't really need to get angel funding. This is huge and often undervalued.
2 comments
hartator 4647 days ago
If you start just out of college your don't get unemployment.

Tax Credits comes with a lot conditions that a lot of startup can't afford. For example, you have to hired university PHDs to do mainly abstract research, startups don't have this kind of money.

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hme 4647 days ago
You don't need to hire PHD at all. Engineers are fine, and not even mandatory. You can do a lot of tasks on tax credits, even graphic design or testing.
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hartator 4647 days ago
From the CIR (The structure in charge of this tax credit), you can only do: applied science, pure research and experimental development. Sounds more PHD tasks than regular designer or regular engineer tasks.
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hme 4647 days ago
Nope, it's totally ok. Tested for 4 years with a control from a government agent lately with 2 engineers and a 3D artist without any engineering degree. CIR is way broader than what people think, and it has been made even broader this year (you can now include tasks from pilot programs). This is really super undervalued, CIR and other grants is totally a game changer in assessing if France is a good country to start a tech business.
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jefm 4645 days ago
Totally agree, I've been leading our R&D program for 4 years. No PhD at all, a product owner, 4 engineers (some with an engineering degree, some without) and a UX designer. Design and testing are eligible as far as it is related to R&D operations. Some of the support costs, such as accounting, technology watch or hardware requirements, are eligible.

We also obtain the JEI status that allows huge tax discounts.

The fact you can't innovate in France is a myth.

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kakoni 4647 days ago
Interesting. So you can get unemployed benefit and run a company at the sametime?
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hme 4647 days ago
Absolutely. It's not a trick, it's an official system to help entrepreneurship. You need to have worked at least 2 years to have unemployment right though. So as hartator said, you don't get it straight after college.
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