{"id":1912,"date":"2015-01-17T12:51:50","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T04:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.www.innovationiseverywhere.com\/?p=1912"},"modified":"2015-01-17T12:51:50","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T04:51:50","slug":"thoughts-las-vegas-frenchtech-reach-maturity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/thoughts-las-vegas-frenchtech-reach-maturity\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts from Las Vegas: the FrenchTech reach maturity"},"content":{"rendered":"

When my aunt did some research on our family tree a few years ago, we found only armymen from the early 1800s with a \u00ab\u00a0grognard\u00a0\u00bb serving Napoleon, up to my grandfather and my father who both served in the French army, although in different contexts.<\/p>\n

I’m not wearing the uniform myself, but I’ve been educated in a family where France and its image abroad has always been important. I ended up doing a Master’s degree in Paris well-named \u00ab\u00a0School for Economic Warfare\u00a0\u00bb, and part of my job is to observe how different countries project their technological might abroad to conquer new markets.<\/p>\n

\"FrenchTEch<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I’d like to share my opinion about the FrenchTech and how I feel the French presence at the Consumer Electronic Show<\/a> in Las Vegas shows it reached maturity.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

A possible history of the FrenchTech<\/h2>\n

If you follow our project at Innovation is Everywhere<\/a>, you know we’ve been to a lot of tech events around the world the last few months, from Malaysia to Nigeria, Chile, China, and the US.<\/p>\n

I’ve been increasingly frustrated to see my home country, France, under-represented, while the UK Trade and Investment<\/a> body (UKTI) was everywhere, from the Maker Faire of Shenzhen, China, to the Mobile Summit of Lagos, Nigeria.<\/p>\n

Each time, UKTI came, sponsored, got speaking slots, embedded a few startups, and promoted UK as the European destination for foreign entrepreneurs (even showing in one of its videos how good it was as a surfing destination).<\/p>\n

\"shenzhen

UKTI has been investing a lot on all the main tech hotspots, here at the Shenzhen Maker Fair in China, 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the same time, the French startup ecosystem lacked visibility, for several reasons ranging from our multi-layer administrative cake (city, department, region, state, add left and right to this and you have a good picture of the duplication and dilution of responsibilities for a lot of topics), up to a not so entrepreneur-friendly mindset, in a country who has long favored large corporations or civil servants. This has changed a lot.<\/p>\n

I’ve moved to Singapore two years ago, out of curiosity for Asia. Since this departure, the French landscape has evolved a lot. More tech media have emerged, such as RudeBaguette<\/a> in English, StartupBrics<\/a> focusing on Africa, and a few more generalist ones such as Maddyness<\/a> or Digital Business News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More accelerators and support organizations have been opening, from NUMA<\/a>, a big 6-storey building in the heart of Paris, to The Family<\/a>, a privately owned accelerator attracting a lot of attention. Community-powered organizations such as Hello Tomorrow<\/a> (community + event + startup competition for science-based ventures), Ouishare<\/a> (thought leadership on the sharing economy) or La Paillasse<\/a> (large biotech and open-science space in the heart of Paris) complete this picture.<\/p>\n