One movie at a time, I think we’ll be able to make a virtual world tour of startup ecosystems! We Love Entrepreneurs is about the French tech ecosystem in 2015, its journey so far, the new generation of entrepreneurs, and, overall, a lot of good signs and stories that even in a very centralized, big corporation loving country, things change.
The movie itself is powered by a few big companies such as BNP Paribas (a bank which has quite a track record on innovation through its subsidiary L’Atelier, both a digital and innovation agency) and Orange, on an original idea of Richard Menneux, founder of Frenchweb, arguably the “historical” resource on the startup world in France and in French.
It’s also powered by the sheer reality of what the digital economy brings to France. The revenues of French startups in 2012-2013 jumped by +43%, and jobs by +22%.
We Love Entrepreneurs – a documentary about… par We-Love-Entrepreneurs
The country is also reputed for its high level of education, especially engineers, the ease of starting a business there, and a large natural market of 66 million, and a broader one of 75 million native speakers, and 220 million French speakers in the world.
We love entrepreneurs: sharing the energy of a new generation
The first few minutes of the movie make a tough assessment: among the top 40 French companies, non was born in the 21st century.
The new generation of entrepreneurs think in a global ecosystem (people going in China at Haxlr8r, or in Chile for Startup Chile), French people are not afraid of that.
Being in a global ecosystem also helps acquire, or be acquired. Recent big acquisitions include women lifestyle newsletter MyLittleParis by women portal AuFeminin to go global, productivity startup Producteev by Nasdaq listed Jive, and Deezer and Orange to reach new customers on both sides).
Support organizations like incubators (there are about 200 in France) also help connect, bring entrepreneurs to the Silicon Valley, and put them overall in an environment with people and skills around them.
Two parts of the movie also show that French entrepreneurs have now the mindset many in the Silicon Valley deem important:
- They manage to pivot. Mathieu Nazareth, CEO of FreshStart shows how he tried a first startup in 2009, and “all went wrong. In 2012, we only had a few weeks of cash-flow”. He then shares how during a walk under the Golden Gate bridge, he got the idea of Songpop. 2 months and a half later, he releases the game, with only 3 weeks of cash-flow left, “not even enough to close down the company”. After Mark Zuckerberg shares a status saying, on Facebook, it was one of the best games he played, they became #1 on the Appstore in almost all countries. Today, SongPop has 100m players all over the world. Pivot is key, rapid pivot upon assessing a first failure.
- They turn into mentors, and bring skills, experience, advice and money after their initial success. Marc-Antoine Granjon, CEO of Vente-Privee, says it’s like “paying back a social tax. my father gave me some seed money when I was young, it was a lot of money at that time, so if I can give $25k to 100 entrepreneurs, it can help”. Since then, Jacques-Antoine has partnered with Xavier Niel, often thought to be France’s leading tech entrepreneur, and Marc Simoncini, founder of European dating leader Meetic, to launch 101 Projets, where they collectively granted €25,000 to 101 projects.
Startups and France? A good match for the years to come
The latest moves from the French startup ecosystem are also very encouraging. Two of them deserve a special mention.
The first one is the FrenchTech umbrella brand, set up by entrepreneurs and supported by the government, not reputed in France to have a very good knowledge of what entrepreneurship is.
We showed how during the CES in Las Vegas in early January 2015, this brand reached maturity, as even The Economist recognized you could hear and see French startups all over the place.
More importantly, the FrenchTech brand has been able to embrace the regional diversity of French entrepreneurs, which is a second surprise in a highly centralized, Paris-centric nation.
The second one, yet to be open in 2016, is the Halle Freyssinet project, which self proclaims to be “the world’s largest digital incubator”, with enough space to host some 1,000 startups, as well as a few of France’s best known tech companies. The project is supported both by the government (through its sovereign wealth fund la Caisse des Dépôts et Consignation and Xavier Niel, whose net worth is assessed at $6.6bn).
We love entrepreneurs is now also a website with news & tips about the French ecosystem.