[madlag]

Wow, that's a great deal of french bashing in such a short comment. I agree that the immigration laws must be a real pain for some people. But for the rest, you must have been out of luck :

- tax reduction schemes are a no brainer, you just have to justify once a year that you are doing something in relation with R&D, and there are too lots of ways to get some government grant to help start your business

- french entrepreneurs are from a lot of different origins. Of course you will find and some rich people creating companies, but most of the people creating companies here are taking real risks and don't have large amount of cash to back them if they fail

- seed investment is not difficult at all, and government grants are here too to help save your shares, even better that seed .

I am telling this as a cofounder of Stupeflix, the company behind Replay, app of the year on the Apple App Store, and proudly based in Paris for 6 years now.

EDIT: sorry for my English, it's not my native language, but I am trying hard to learn it...

[patrickaljord]

> that's a great deal of french bashing

Can we stop with this? I'm tired of French people always responding to any kind of critics with the "French bashing" strawman. I'm French myself by the way.

> and government grants are here too to help

Most entrepreneurs don't want the government to help, they want the government to stay out of the way. A concept many of my fellow French have a hard time understanding the benefits.

[madlag]

I can assure you that you will want the government to help, especially when you don't have any money to start your business. You should ask a few entrepreneurs about this.

[patrickaljord]

I am an entrepreneur and I don't want the government's help. The government is the new Church here and I want out.

[madlag]

So you choose to suffer the bad sides of the government without taking any advantage from it ? You are free to do so, but is it really the wisest solution when you are just looking for a solution to survive ? And isn't it a form of church too, to refuse anything coming from the government ? (I am not from any church, if you're asking)

[patrickaljord]

> And isn't it a form of church too, to refuse anything coming from the government ?

I refuse help from any kind of church, I like to call this Freedom :)

> (I am not from any church, if you're asking)

Except for the government.

[Jacqued]

Tax reductions schemes are mostly abused AFAIK. Very few startups do anything resembling actual R&D, but they still use the tax schemes, which could be risky in case of tax audit. Anyway, most early startups won't benefit from that as they have no profit to show so it is mostly a moot point.

As for the other points from the parent, they're not specific to France. The "startups are a rich man's game" problem is universal, and financing is just as hard to raise anywhere. Of course you'll probably raise a much smaller amount in France than SV but that's to be expected.

However, I agree with you that we have a nice perk : anyone with a good plan & a few months of free time to write up the paperwork can get something like 50K in grants, without giving up any equity. That's not very useful for an Internet company but can be a tremendous help for dedicated teams in other fields.

[madlag]

You don't have to make some profit to benefit it, as you get employer taxes back for R&D employees, which can be very important, something like 40% of employee cost. It lowers a lot cost per employee.

[Yoric]

> - tax reduction schemes are a no brainer, you just have to justify once a year that you are doing something in relation with R&D, and there are too lots of ways to get some government grant to help start your business

Really? Have you spent time filing them? I have, and they were a big time waster for me. There is a way out, of course (i.e. pay some specialized company to file them for you).

Agreed on the other points, though.

[madlag]

Yes, of course, no paperwork at all would be perfect, you don't want to waste your time on anything but your job, but the benefits are really worth it. And to answer you, I had to do some reporting, yes.