The French Kiss Business Hello
France isn't known as a hotbed of entrepreneurship, but that may be changing.
July 11, 2008 — -- The entrepreneurial impulse is awakening in the land of liberté.
Let's face it, when you think of entrepreneurship and high technology start-ups, the one country that probably never comes to mind is France. It is, after all, the philosophical heart of the European Union (with its genetic distrust of human individuality), the home of the weekly transportation or farmer strike and the nation where philosophy always trumps practicality.
Eastern Europe maybe. Ireland for sure. But France? Impossible.
And yet, a recent trip to Paris, to attend a conference in — of all places — the Louvre, shocked me out of my prejudices. If France, that once-archetypical example of a "nation of shopkeepers," can re-awaken its entrepreneurial spirit, then it can happen anywhere … and the desire for human economic liberty is indeed universal.
I didn't start out so optimistic.
The occasion was the first annual conference of the French-American Society of Entrepreneurs (FACE). And when I heard that it was to be held in the Louvre and I was to be the emcee, I could hardly say no.
Nevertheless, I expected it to be more of a boondoggle than a success — partly because of the distraction of the surroundings, but mostly because I had a hard time believing that there were enough French technology entrepreneurs to fill a small café on the Rue de Rivoli, much less a convention hall.
I had, in fact, met a couple French entrepreneurs. But one of them, Renaud, is an old neighbor of mine in Silicon Valley who had been infected with the entrepreneurship virus while living in Sunnyvale and then gone home to Paris.
He is now in the midst of quitting his corporate job and starting his own company specializing in helping U.S. companies navigate through the minefield of European value-added taxes (VATs). A brilliant idea for a business, but whenever Renaud enumerated all of the regulatory obstacles in his way — paperwork, taxes, the fact that you can't fire anybody, etc. — I found myself wondering why he even tried.
