
“Can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur?” – France responds - liam_boogar
http://www.rudebaguette.com/2014/02/06/frances-startup-scene-tackles-question-can-teach-someone-entrepreneur/
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GuiA
France really wants to be the next big place in tech startups (like any
country really). It's a noble initiative, but speaking as a French citizen who
moved to SV roughly 3 years ago (and to the US 5 years ago), I don't believe
it has any chance of doing so.

Between the backwards government (cf. the dumb stuff that Fleur Pellerin
regularly does/say) and the structures that are impossible to work with (a
friend of mine, still in Paris, has been fighting for weeks to just get a
~bank account opened~ for his startup), France will not have its Google or
Facebook (a catchphrase often used by the politicians) anytime soon.

It's a shame, because there is real engineering talent in France (you can
thank Napoleon for that), and those who don't want to move abroad (typically
England/Germany) end up working for shitty consulting/outsourcing companies
("SSII"), or work in small local web dev agencies. There are programmers from
my small French university that I would hire over Stanford students any day of
the week for a startup. (this is not a jab at Stanford or anything- I've
tutored Stanford undergrads, and many of them are brilliant, but surprisingly
not crazily moreso than the top students from my small no-name public
university.)

People at the top just don't get it, and they come from old school élitiste
backgrounds (HEC, Sciences Po Paris, ENA, etc.) that are at the complete
opposite of what building an entrepreneur friendly environment would require.

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jotm
Seriously, what is up with opening a bank account in Europe? They will soon
require cavity searches just to let you into the damn building. Just give me a
checking account without overdraft and other risky options so I can start
working. It's amazing how disinterested they are in new (business!)
customers...

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marcosdumay
From the way they act, looks like modern banks get no marginal return from a
client that just puts money in them. Instead, they are botlenecked by the
amount of people they can lend to.

I have no idea if that's the real case, or just a bad case of the right hand
not knowing what the left one is doing. If it real, I don't understand how
it's even possible, since governments are all eager to get loans from
anybody... But they do act as if it was true.

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jotm
But more clients = more potential customers for their credit lines. Unless
it's a huge drag on their resources (doubt it), opening a simple checking
account for a new business should be a no brainer - they should take some
ideas from US banks...

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seancoleman
I'm a faculty member at Arizona State University and teach an entrepreneurship
course. I don't believe you can teach someone to be an entrepreneur. Business,
management and leadership skills are teachable (all of which certainly
contribute to the success of a startup).

I believe being an entrepreneur is a combination of certain personality traits
and temperaments. It's a maker's passion and drive that defines an
entrepreneur.

So why do I teach entrepreneurship? Simply to show 40 young adults a worldview
which most have not yet been exposed, with the hope that those innate
entrepreneurs will choose this different path in life, a path which most
parents, professors and friends discredit. I would be fulfilled if just one of
my students took the entrepreneurship route and made a large impact on the
world over the typical route of accepting a corporate job.

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sentientmachine
The maker's passion and drive can be re-ignited in some extreme circumstances.
For example, drop the critter down on a deserted island where their only way
off is building a boat. Will the boat get built or will they call for help
until they die of thirst?

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seancoleman
In that case there will certainly be a drive to build a boat, but just in
order to survive. It's the innate drive to build that boat without the
survival instinct that makes the entrepreneur IMO.

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flyinglizard
Very nicely put, and describes the difference between people who can excel in
a corporate environment (resourceful, adaptive, survivalists) and the risk
takers that go out to build stuff just because they feel it needs to be built.

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Grue3
Who would want to be an entrepreneur in a country with 75% tax? If I lived
there, I'd rather live on welfare and code some open-sourced stuff all day.

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crazyfrenchy
As a Frenchman, I registered on hackernews just to reply to this comment. I'm
tired of this BS propagated by conservatives politicians.

There's no 75% tax in France. It never existed, and I don't think it will
exist any day soon.

There's a 75% tax for income over 1 million euros per year. This means that if
I earn 1,000,001 €, I pay the normal rate on 1,000,000 € (I don't know what it
is, it might be around 30%, so let's say 30k) plus 75% (meaning 0.75
eurocents), the total being 30,000.75 cents. For 2 million euros, you'll pay
30,000 € + 75% × 1,000,000 = 105,000 €. It's the concept of tax brackets, and
I know you have this in the US. Are the US a socialist country?

Moreover, France has a lot of billionaires, and the richest woman in the world
– at the time I type this comment – is French.
<[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liliane_Bettencour...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liliane_Bettencourt&oldid=593808470#Forbes.E2.80.99_rankings>)

In addition, there's a job in France called “tax optimizer”, I can't find a
link, but in 2011, Liliane Bettencourt paid as much tax as a single
Frenchwoman on minimum wage.

So I don't think tax is a problem in France for those who wants to be
entrepreneurs. And do entrepreneurs really deserve to make that kind of money?
Do they really work 300 times harder than their workers?

My 2 cents on it, the problem in France – and this is why Germany and the US
are succeeding where France is failing – is the lack of support from the
government towards small companies. Any labour law, tax law is made for giant
groups like Dassault, Orange, Dannon, and so on...

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c_plus_minus
300k on the first million...

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rikacomet
Teach someone who wants to be a entrepreneur - Yes

Make someone to take up entrepreneurship - Maybe

Yes inception is possible, parents do it all the time.. kids don't realize it
many a times. But it doesn't work that way for entrepreneurship. One has to be
able to think for himself, everyday.. its not a end to means like other things
to be exact, it is creating means with ends everyday.

One of the key attitude towards it is the situation where you can't see
yourself as anything, except for, as an entrepreneur.

Lastly, the method of the teacher should be not to put someone on the track
only, but to prepare them to stay there. Its not one night of inspiration,
like in writing a song, but multiple nights of cycles of struggle and success.

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6cxs2hd6
Individually in one thing. But usually people care about the aggregate: "How
can our city/region/country have moar entrepreneurs?"

Just like America today has a STEM deficit because being good at math or
science isn't as cool as it was back in the send-a-man-to-moon 60s, some
places have an entrepreneur deficit because starting a company isn't a
positive social signifier.

Although government programs aren't always a total waste, I suspect the main
point of leverage is a critical mass of "rock star" examples that people want
to be like.

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liam_boogar
Interestingly enough, these initiatives are all private

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6cxs2hd6
I see. Well actually I didn't mean to sound like I was arguing on the public
vs. private axis. In fact my put-a-man-on-the-moon example was, of course,
hugely about government.

What I mean is I'm skeptical of the impact of efforts (public or private) to
"teach entrepreneurship". Yes you can teach that, one by one. But if the
desired outcome is to have many more entrepreneurs, you don't get there one by
one. You get there by changing the culture to elevate the social status of
entrepreneurs. Any efforts -- whether public or public -- need to focus on
_that_ , first and foremost.

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kendalk
"Can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur?"

Can a government? No.

Can an impersonal bureaucracy? No.

Can a major corporation? No.

Can a committee? No.

Can you? Yes.

People can do wonderful things. Inspire others. Open eyes. Light fires.
Imagine. Dream. Leave them alone and they can do great things.

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return0
As always, the answer is No. However, teaching people to become entrepreneurs
is a moderately bad startup idea.

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a3voices
I believe you can teach anyone with an IQ over 100 to be proficient at
anything, if they have enough time and interest.

