
With Station F, Paris will have the world’s biggest startup campus - programLyrique
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/05/with-station-f-paris-will-have-the-worlds-biggest-startup-campus/
======
pi-err
Kudos to the team who made it happen. I'm French and happy this comes to life.

I still have the feeling this is more of a stunt to bring attention on Station
F than on the startups themselves. Beyond the buzz, there is very little
vision. It's a giant intensive farm in a denser, currently-under-redevelopment
neighborhood.

In this super dense setting, they're piling up various talent for sort-of-low-
cost rents, hoping to raise unicorns thanks to nearby campuses, increased VC
flow in Paris and general attention towards startups. This strikes me as a
formula thought out by people who have never actually been in a successful
startup (Roxanne Varza has been successful at _talking about_ startups, never
at actually building things).

One outcome is that all those points successfully connect together. Another,
more probable outcome is that it will turn out impossible to keep focus,
talent and purpose in a giant, open space (also probably soon to be under-
maintained judging by French standards).

~~~
karambahh
If I may add a bit of context: while Station F is indeed a project of Xavier
Niel (Free/Illiad/Kima/42...), it is also a project with considerable public
support.

Several french regions have their (semi-)publicly funded equivalent of Station
F (Lille with Plaine Images & Euratechnologies, Nantes with La Cantine, ...)
and while there is a considerable quantity of startups in Paris, there is no
local de facto hub. I'd argue that Le Sentier area plays that role, but it's a
neighborhood where lots of startup happen to be located. In the early 00s it
was dubbed "Silicon Sentier".

Plaine Images & Euratechnologies have been built in former industrial
complexes with the aim of redynamizing local ecosystem as a whole. Anne
Hidalgo, the Paris mayor, hopes to do the same to the XIII arrondissement.

~~~
ekidd
_Nantes with La Cantine_

When I was in Nantes this summer, I kept seeing subtle little details that
made me think something interesting was going on. Compagnie La Machine (with
its multi-story robotic spiders
[http://www.lamachine.fr/](http://www.lamachine.fr/)) seems to be surrounded
by a maker scene, and even perfectly ordinary magazine shops carried Open
Silicium ([http://www.opensilicium.com/](http://www.opensilicium.com/)) a
really nice embedded systems magazine that covers advanced hobbyist and
professional concerns. This is a lot harder core and more specialized than the
Linux Journal, for example, and when I've shown it off to US booksellers
specializing in "maker"-related publications, they just about drooled.

Combine that with the French startups I saw at La French Touch in New York a
couple of years ago, and some of the recent legislative changes the government
was supposedly working on, and I kinda wanted to hang around and see what was
up. I have a sneaking suspicion that the French have all the raw ingredients
for an excellent startup scene, but that funding might still be something of a
struggle.

~~~
karambahh
Have a look at what Plaine Images is doing with their Imaginarium, coupled
with their incubator & accelerator:

[http://www.plaine-images.fr/en/services-2/](http://www.plaine-
images.fr/en/services-2/)

It's located in a former textile factory and combines both openspace/co-
working spaces, private offices in varying sizes. It also has a strong focus
on creative industries (gaming, VR, audio...). Several companies that have
started there have an excellent track record and several world-class leaders
are in talks with them.

If you mix public subsidies + good space design + integration in the socio-
economical fabric + specialization on a vertical, you end up with very high
potential and growth. That's exactly what's happening right now at Plaine
Images, even though it's not very well known outside of Europe.

Funding is not that much of an issue, tbh. As I stated elsewhere in this
thread, I raised little, but had I wanted more, London & Berlin are literally
next door and many large european VCs are familiar with the french ecosystem.
The business angels I chose have exactly that track record (early 90s-00s,
create company in France, raise a few hundreds k€ in France, large rounds in
the US, IPO on Nasdaq, get rich and become BA/VCs).

I'm not going to list the usual "french unicorns" such as Blablacar or Criteo,
but see Devialet, a hw "startup": they have closed a 100M$ round with a Korean
fund two weeks ago so access to capital definitely exist...

By the way, La Cantine unfortunately had a massive fire two weeks ago, so we
will have to wait and see if the phenix rise from the literal ashes :'(

------
Voodoo463
I am very happy this is happening, but I remain pessimistic about this. I have
been in Paris many times and even lived there for a bit. As far as cities go
with job infrastructure, Paris is non functioning. The city itself is
inherently flawed in job growth and management. There is a lack of variety in
jobs. There ARE a variety of jobs, but the disparity between amount and desire
is huge.

When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the
amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely
low. Why? Because the jobs just aren't there. Paris is and has always been a
hub for Money. People then majored and specialized in Money. It is where the
Money is; Money is where the jobs would be.

Don't let the media blitz carry you away at the announcement of Station F, it
is a media wave designed to tell people, 'look... we are diversifying our
economy' as Berlin and London have also been attempting (rather...
ineffectively for Germany). The media blitz is a way of telling individuals in
France (and all of Europe actually) that this is where tech jobs can be
found... so make the decision to major in tech.

What I imagine will happen is: many people from Eastern Europe (strong
scattering of micro tech scenes without sufficient exposure) will flock to
Station F to take advantage of it's proximity to all of the local funding that
can be found in Paris. Paris is a place like London and New York where people
park their money for expansion. Station F is just another place for these
people to park their funds.

We could be seeing the beginning of a rocking station F, or, we could be
seeing the beginning of a very large media hype designed to encourage
diversifying the economy that will be the beginning of a very slow 'meh'
Station F.

~~~
kentiko
What you are saying makes me really sad. I live in Paris and I just graduated
(CS). I am currently working as a java developer in a large company, the job
is incredibly boring and I feel like I am not learning anything. Interesting
jobs seems out of reach of a junior developer. I don't think Station F is
going to improve things much. I am now thinking about moving somewhere else to
find a better job.

~~~
pyrale
There are good places ; if you aren't happy, move. Just don't pick a
contractor job, and make sure you don't pick a job where people just expect
you to move dirt around.

~~~
user5994461
There are good places in Paris but they can be counted on your fingers. That's
not enough jobs even if we only consider the population of 3lite 10x
developers.

------
vonnik
Station F is a well-meaning project that may succeed. The French government
plays a large, interventionist role in the nation's economy, and
infrastructure projects like this are one way it can express itself. I lived
in Paris for over a decade, and I happen to disagree with both the hype and
some of the criticisms in this thread.

While Paris is the economic center of France, it is _not_ where the money is.
That would be London, NYC or Shanghai. Maybe Brexit will drive finance back to
France, but France started driving them away with the early 80s
nationalizations of Mitterand.

I think Station F could present a great, regional hub for EMEA. France and
other European countries turn out amazingly talented technologists. But those
same countries don't always provide an environment for them and their
businesses to thrive. That is partially due to how people invest in Europe,
partially due to how governments regulate, and finally to a discomfort with
marketing in France itself.

There are holes in the European funding ladder moving from pre-seed to IPO
that drive European entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley. Those holes are due to a
lack of investors who are willing and able to identify opportunities at every
stage and take a risk. Most European money is old, and it prefers real estate.
If that money allots a percentage for VC, a lot of it will end up with Silicon
Valley firms, because the top ones have unrivaled track records and the money
does require a plane ticket to travel. And the SV VCs see all the best
European entrepreneurs come through to pitch anyway.

The second problem is regulation, and something close to that which I don't
quite have a word for. The best analogy would be to compare the Napoleonic
code, which attempts to legislate for all contingencies from the beginning,
with common-law systems, in which a body of precedent rulings and thought
develop in response to the world. My impression of France is that it creates
analytically rigorous and often misguided policies, and seeks to apply them to
quickly evolving situations. I believe that thinking also infects many
decision-makers who affect tech, who aren't responding and creating as quickly
as they might in another cultural context.

Finally, tech needs hustlers and hype. New things must be sold. France has a
history of inventing amazing technology before other countries, and not
marketing it well (Minitel).

With luck, Niel's Station F will address and mitigate those risks.

------
dreistdreist
Renting a desk in an open office full of random people? Sounds like a horrible
work environment.

~~~
SwellJoe
I've been renting at a co-working space for the past few months, in the city
I'm currently parked in (Fertilab in Springfield, OR). It's actually not so
bad. Kinda like a coffee shop, only everyone else is also working. I'm
historically very much opposed to open offices, but if there aren't phones
ringing, and there's not a lot of "hey, can I ask you about X?" cross-talk,
it's not so bad.

I've turned down jobs in the past because they were in open offices, and I
might still do so today. I basically agree with you that it's a bad idea to
work full-time in an open office. But, for a three days a week kinda work
place, just for a change of pace and an excuse to take a walk out of my house,
it's been really nice. I plan to start checking for co-working spaces when I
first get to a new city. It gives me some much-needed variety in my work day,
gets me communicating with other people in tech in the city I'm in, and
provides some other benefits (some of those benefits: there are distractions
but they're different than at home and at coffee shops, the internet is faster
than my home internet or most coffee shop WiFi though this may not be true for
everyone, quieter than coffee shops, not home so I can fixate on work and not
whether dishes or laundry needs doing, etc.).

I'd like to visit Paris one of these days, maybe once my French is stronger. I
could see signing up for this for a while.

~~~
wslh
I like the social part of talking to random people but in startupland there
are much more wannabes that real entrepreneurs, so at the end the
conversations are very naive. And with entrepreneurs I mean people who can
build a real business not the next Facebook.

~~~
SwellJoe
Yes, that's one of the negatives, probably. I kinda like where I am now,
though, as most of the people working out of this space are not "startup
entrepreneurs", they're small business owners. The Eugene location might be
different, since there's more of a tech scene there, but the folks in this
branch are pretty no-nonsense, just here to get some work done, not try to
sell me on their poorly thought out, poorly researched, derivative ideas.

That said, I also spent some time at the ATX Hackerspace which did have a
bunch of startuppy types, and it was mostly free of bullshit, too, because so
much of the focus there was on the hacking and not the "I just need to raise
$x million and this thing's gonna explode!" mindset. So, conversation in that
space were about laser CNCs, 3D printing, and electric cars, rather than
everybody trying to give their (too-long) elevator pitch to as many people as
possible.

------
Heraclite
For French entrepreneurs reading this: make it extremely easy and painless to
start/run/shutdown a company in France.

I dream of being able to start a company by completing a form and sending a
copy of my French ID. And all the rest (accountants/HR/law) would be handled
by online third party services smoothly. Same should go for banking services
associated with the company.

I think France has great potential but it needs simplification of processes.
I'm not expecting the government to do it, hence my desparate call to other
French entrepreneurs.

~~~
renaudg
As someone who created a small business in France then did the same in the UK,
I wholeheartedly agree.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot entrepreneurs can do, it's up to the
authorities to be brave and reform the infamous "Greffe du Tribunal de
Commerce". Simply changing your registered address required, last I checked :
filling out a 10 page or so form, amended company formation documents,
mandatory publishing of an expensive ad informing of the change in one of the
government-sanctioned newspapers, and writing out a cheque (!) for 47.52€ or
something.

This is insane. Emmanuel Macron, as an economy minister tried to dismantle
this whole craziness but faced strong lobbying. Here's hoping he's more
successful as a presidential candidate.

~~~
tajen
> Emmanuel Macron, as an economy minister tried to (...)

Besides that Emmanuel Macron absolutely made things worse for companies, it's
the Politics Detox week on HN, so please refrain from talking politics:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

~~~
renaudg
Sorry, I didn't catch that. However, you also just failed to follow your own
advice :)

------
wrren
While I think that supporting startups is a good idea, creating a campus
without a nearby network of rich investors is like sowing seeds in sand. I've
been part of more than one startup in Europe and it is far more difficult to
secure early-stage investment than in SF. Until Europe has an equivalent VC
presence, SF will always have the edge. I hope that this campus will attract
that sort of attention from investors but we have a long way to go.

~~~
trendia
The lack of VC funding might change the incentives for startups for the
better.

Rather than build a startup to raise funding, they might build a startup to
sell products.

~~~
wrren
There are plenty of SF startups (and full-sized companies like Twitter etc.)
that never make a profit. But startups in SF that can make a profit will still
win out over European equivalents since they're granted such huge runways to
perfect their product before they're under pressure to go to market.

I agree that the incentive system for startups right now is broken, as so many
are simply aiming for an IPO before they're exposed as jokes but there's an
inherent advantage to being in SF for any type of fledgling tech business.

~~~
pj_mukh
"perfect their product before they're under pressure to go to market."

This maybe the wrong way to think about it. Outside of hard-tech I see very
few companies that are benefitted by building in a void.

Though your larger point still stands, once you have product market fit, the
funding regime in SF gives an unfair advantage to companies that know how to
use it for their particular domains.

------
kbart
I can't imagine myself programming in such huge, open space full of people and
distractions. Maybe it might work for sales, marketing or costumer support,
but not for a type of work that requires concentration.

~~~
jstoja
In 42, the school presented in the article too, is constant open-spaces full
of people. It's noisy but students get the habit of working in that kind of
environment and get in the flow even with distractions. Some other French IT
schools, like Epitech or SupInfo are the same (or close to). Even if I agree
that it's not ideal, it can work. Although, I assume that most of people are
not used at all to this kind of environment.

~~~
kbart
Well, you can do programming with one hand tied to your back too, but that
doesn't mean it's an optimal or encouraged practice. There are multiple papers
proving that noisy environment impairs cognitive abilities, so it seems
logical to me to avoid working in such places when concentration is required.

~~~
fnord123
It depends on the type of work you're doing. If you're bit fiddling, then sure
maybe you need an office or some noise cancelling headphones. If you're an
application developer in a team, the communication benefits of sitting in an
open plan group can overcome the cognitive issues (which aren't so bad since
you're just gluing components together).

------
staticelf
Why would a startup with 1-5 people (as an example) even rent a place at all?
I understand if you do any kind of hardware stuff, but for software companies
it makes zero sense to me.

They could just as well be at home, saving that money and putting it in the
startup instead?

~~~
louhike
I have friends who are in this case. They worked in their flat first to save
money, it is true.

But they grew tired of working in their apartment and started to rent a place
as soon as they had sufficient funds (after 2 years).

Their problems were:

* Lack of separation between worklife and the rest.

* Living and working with the same persons. They are really good friends but it was still hard apparently.

* Having to dedicate a big part of your apartment to the work (desks but also hardware, documents, etc.).

~~~
MiddleEndian
They don't need to all work in the same apartment though, they can work in
their own.

~~~
louhike
In their case, they lived in the same apartment.

------
throwaway1892
Nowhere on the Station F website was indicated the adress of the actual
building, which is a glaring omission, for someone working near Paris and
wondering where it is.

~~~
tener
Just Google for it?

[https://goo.gl/maps/UBXAndEsCUP2](https://goo.gl/maps/UBXAndEsCUP2)

~~~
throwaway1892
Thank you, I could not have done it on my own. /s

It's what I did in the end.

It was a critic against the website missing an important piece of information.
And also a bit of a complaint since I spent five min looking for the address
on the site before resigning myself to Google it, thinking that such piece of
information could not have been omitted.

------
fermigier
It used to be called an "incubator" (see:
[http://www.wilmotte.com/fr/projet/411/Station-F-Halle-
Freyss...](http://www.wilmotte.com/fr/projet/411/Station-F-Halle-Freyssinet-
Incubateur-de-start-ups)) now it's a "startup campus". This is probably more
reasonable.

~~~
pzh
I guess when you say 'incubator' nowadays, most people would imagine something
like Erlich Bachman's house from 'Silicon Valley'.

~~~
yoz-y
I have been working in incubators for half of my professional life (in France)
and I have never seen anything like Erlich's couch surfing sweatshop.

------
jstoja
Even though it just seems like a big open-space with less services included
(people mentioning no free coffee), I would presume that more "startup
oriented" services will be available. Paris has a super vibrant startup
community and some small incubators are already in the city center, providing
awesome followup.

------
Animats
3000 people in one room in an old train shed. With occasional shipping
containers. This is is their idea of a startup campus?

Someone else mentioned [1] Nantes' La Cantine. That looks more usable; it's a
big collection of little shops under one big roof. Looks like a repurposed
mall. Repurposing an unused mall for this sort of thing might make sense.
Rentable spaces of different sizes, good HVAC, power, and sprinklers, plenty
of parking, not much heavy construction required.

[1]
[http://jonathanwinandy.tumblr.com/post/3198051103/ouverture-...](http://jonathanwinandy.tumblr.com/post/3198051103/ouverture-
de-la-cantine-num%C3%A9rique-de-nantes)

~~~
xutopia
But that is in Nantes. Paris is (sadly) where business happens in France.

~~~
Animats
Well, just outside Paris. Many big companies moved to La Defense, which is
just outside the city limits and allows skyscrapers. The result looks like
this.[1]

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/la-defense-office-district-
rebou...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/la-defense-office-district-rebounds-in-
paris-1471348803)

(Alternate link to picture only:
[https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
PK039_LADEFE_J...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
PK039_LADEFE_J_20160814185149.jpg))

~~~
contingencies
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%20D%C3%A9fense](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%20D%C3%A9fense)

I've stayed there... it's not so bad, and not far from the center of Paris
either.

------
kriro
I hope they play "My Way" when it officially opens :D

~~~
homarp
if they do, it would be "Comme d'habitude" and not "My Way"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comme_d'habitude#.22My_Way.22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comme_d'habitude#.22My_Way.22)

------
gadders
I always thought the things that prevented Startups in France would be more to
do with employment laws - rules about weekend working, very hard to fire
people, etc etc.

~~~
pyrale
The real killer is late investment rounds ; employment laws are not really a
problem in a tech startup afaik.

------
readhn
Is 195 euros/desk their solution? Really? Its going to bring in 1000 startups
somehow? And why do they keep bringing up facebook? Its not a start up and
could care less about other start ups succeeding (rightfully so).

Weren't a bunch of high profile French actually leaving France because of HUGE
taxes in france?

Any French here can answer this question?: for a start up making 5000 euros a
month - how much would you pay in taxes?

~~~
karambahh
Corporate tax is 30%

But corporate tax alone is not a good way to evaluate the opportunity of
creating your company in France.

As a startup you are supposedly doing innovative stuff and R&D so you actually
get tax credits[0]. Crédit Impôt Recherche &Crédit Impôt Innovation brings you
up to 30% of your R&D investment.

As a startup in France you are eligible to the Jeune Entreprise Innovante
status which basically means you pay nearly no social contributions on the
salary of your R&D personnel (which is a huuuge amount: as a rule of thumb,
total cost of 1 salesperson is roughly twice his/her net salary. Paying half
of that for your engineers is...cool).

As a startup in France you also get grants from BPI (Banque Publique
d'Investissement) and colateral for your private loans.

As a startup in some regions of France you can get local grants which can be a
huge amount as well (and Paris is not one of them).

If you want to try to get into the French Tech Ecosystem, there is a program
similar to Startup Chile, French Tech Ticket[1], but the grant is only 25k€

To give an anecdotal example, I raised south of 1M€ of private equity (which
is obvious a very small amount by US or european standards), but I got almost
as much public grants/tax credits/local help. My colleagues/competitors
located in the Paris region got substantially less local help for the same
amount of money raised and comparable market/R&D programs.

[0] [http://cache.media.enseignementsup-
recherche.gouv.fr/file/CI...](http://cache.media.enseignementsup-
recherche.gouv.fr/file/CIR/18/1/CIRanglais08_33181.pdf) [1]
[http://www.frenchtechticket.com/](http://www.frenchtechticket.com/)

~~~
CaptainZapp

      which basically means you pay nearly no social contributions 
    

Doesn't that cut into the social security accounts of your engineering staff?

~~~
maattdd
No ! You still have full (health -including dental-, unemployment, retirement)
social security for the engineering staff.

~~~
CaptainZapp
merci

------
ungzd
> startup campus

> with companies like Facebook and TechShop opening offices there

Is Facebook still a startup?

~~~
conradfr
Yeah I don't really know why, Facebook already have a brand new office in
Paris near Bourse (former stock exchange).

~~~
exhilaration
So they can poach the best, of course.

------
ju-st
Great idea, but no free coffee? And do the desks include monitors?

------
vmorgulis
For those who are near Paris, there is a new HN meetup in january:

[https://hn.silexlabs.org](https://hn.silexlabs.org)

------
agumonkey
Funny how quickly things change
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=halle+freyssinet&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=halle+freyssinet&ia=web)

------
ldom22
is it actually a train station? that would be awesome for the commutes of
people that will work there

------
LeicaLatte
'Startup campus' is a new marketing low.

