1. The difference with the US is that you also have a lot of powerful private investors you can approach. In France, its all government money and almost nothing else. My point is valid in that regard.
5. That does not solve the problem of flexibility of hiring and firing. If the context becomes unfavorable and your company bleeds money, you will not be able to get rid of some of your workforce easily, so your business will bleed even faster. Its as simple as that, and its not like startups face no competition huh?
6. Totally disagree. Baidu in China. Gree in Japan. I can find other examples if needed.
1. There are also private investors in France ... Are there less than in the US ? Yes for sure, but saying there is none is totally wrong (and I can give you example if necessary).
5. Protection against firing at will is different than not being able to fire at all. It happens everyday, and no, it does not always end up in court.
6. I have no clue what Gree is. Baidu is famous yes, but have you ever used it ? I haven't. It's used exclusively in China.
For the other points, I'm happy to see you didn't find anything to say.
My point is not that some things could nto be better done in France, just that there is a lot of half truth (that's an understatement) lying around.
1. since when "almost nothing" = none ? I never said there was none. There are very few, and I would be very surprised if they are not linked to government agencies somehow. Feel free to provide examples, and also in what projects they invested in. That would be interesting.
5. I did not say it is impossible to fire someone, I said you have to go in great lengths to do so, and you may end up in court as well to justify your actions. This happens more often than not in France. You know the "Prud'hommes", right ?
6. I mentioned high profile startups in the first place. Not used at international level. My aim was to show that there were very few local competitors in France to the Internet giants. Baidu is a clear competitor of Google in China (and larger than Google, anyway). Gree is the number 1 provider of online games in Japan. I could also mention Mixi, a social network in Japan at least as big as Facebook in the country, if not more (while I am not aware of the latest share).
For the other points, I did not answer because I was writing from my phone and could not spend time to answer everything. Anyway, it should be obvious that in France, the PME (small and medium companies) sector is minimal compared to other developped countries. Startup belong in that field, and it is clear that if the climate for small companies was more favorable, there would be more of them. Hence my claim "not the best place to fund a startup" in my original post.
There are probably worse places than France, but clearly better choices outside as well, that's why you have a "fuite des cerveaux" going on for several years: those who are ambitious do not want to deal with useless administrative obstacles. They want to focus on their business, full time.
They got venture capital by Innovacom (not a government agency) and then just got bought by Ubisoft (not a government company).
As for big startups known in France (and not necessarily internationally), well, Meetic is one of them for instance. Or vente-privee.com. I guess you could even put OVH in there.
Chinese startups do well in China because they don't get blocked (as they either have "connections", or just know the rules better), and Chinese is hard for most people to work with.
The same could be said about Japan (while government connections are certainly more critical in China, I reckon). But Google has been pretty successful in Japan, for example. They are now market leaders in search here, whereas it used to be Yahoo Japan still a few years ago (note that Yahoo Japan was a different company than the global Yahoo - they operate separately and are purely local).
Comments
1. The difference with the US is that you also have a lot of powerful private investors you can approach. In France, its all government money and almost nothing else. My point is valid in that regard.
5. That does not solve the problem of flexibility of hiring and firing. If the context becomes unfavorable and your company bleeds money, you will not be able to get rid of some of your workforce easily, so your business will bleed even faster. Its as simple as that, and its not like startups face no competition huh?
6. Totally disagree. Baidu in China. Gree in Japan. I can find other examples if needed.
1. There are also private investors in France ... Are there less than in the US ? Yes for sure, but saying there is none is totally wrong (and I can give you example if necessary).
5. Protection against firing at will is different than not being able to fire at all. It happens everyday, and no, it does not always end up in court.
6. I have no clue what Gree is. Baidu is famous yes, but have you ever used it ? I haven't. It's used exclusively in China.
For the other points, I'm happy to see you didn't find anything to say.
My point is not that some things could nto be better done in France, just that there is a lot of half truth (that's an understatement) lying around.
1. since when "almost nothing" = none ? I never said there was none. There are very few, and I would be very surprised if they are not linked to government agencies somehow. Feel free to provide examples, and also in what projects they invested in. That would be interesting.
5. I did not say it is impossible to fire someone, I said you have to go in great lengths to do so, and you may end up in court as well to justify your actions. This happens more often than not in France. You know the "Prud'hommes", right ?
6. I mentioned high profile startups in the first place. Not used at international level. My aim was to show that there were very few local competitors in France to the Internet giants. Baidu is a clear competitor of Google in China (and larger than Google, anyway). Gree is the number 1 provider of online games in Japan. I could also mention Mixi, a social network in Japan at least as big as Facebook in the country, if not more (while I am not aware of the latest share).
For the other points, I did not answer because I was writing from my phone and could not spend time to answer everything. Anyway, it should be obvious that in France, the PME (small and medium companies) sector is minimal compared to other developped countries. Startup belong in that field, and it is clear that if the climate for small companies was more favorable, there would be more of them. Hence my claim "not the best place to fund a startup" in my original post.
There are probably worse places than France, but clearly better choices outside as well, that's why you have a "fuite des cerveaux" going on for several years: those who are ambitious do not want to deal with useless administrative obstacles. They want to focus on their business, full time.
You want an example : here is one : http://owlient.eu/
They got venture capital by Innovacom (not a government agency) and then just got bought by Ubisoft (not a government company).
As for big startups known in France (and not necessarily internationally), well, Meetic is one of them for instance. Or vente-privee.com. I guess you could even put OVH in there.
Chinese startups do well in China because they don't get blocked (as they either have "connections", or just know the rules better), and Chinese is hard for most people to work with.
The same could be said about Japan (while government connections are certainly more critical in China, I reckon). But Google has been pretty successful in Japan, for example. They are now market leaders in search here, whereas it used to be Yahoo Japan still a few years ago (note that Yahoo Japan was a different company than the global Yahoo - they operate separately and are purely local).