Take a centrist president with a mandate and a private sector background, mix in the country’s top tech billionaire with the world’s best incubator, and the potential is tantalising: Can they transform Europe’s perennial economic underperformer into a tax-cutting, job-creating entrepreneurial hotbed?
The world’s largest startup incubator sits inside the bowels of a nearly-century-old former freight station, where 3,000 nascent entrepreneurs dart across the 366,000 square feet like cash-hungry ants. More than 30 venture capital firms, from Accel Partners to Index Ventures, pay a $6,100-a-year membership fee for the privilege of making investments on-site; Facebook and Microsoft run programmes to try out companies they might buy; Amazon and Google focus on sussing out talent.
Walking around, you see a $20 million installation by JeffKoons, floating meeting cubes and a blacked-out “relaxation zone”, where overtired programmers leave their shoes outside. “People sleep in here sometimes,” says Roxanne Varza, a California native who runs the incubator, pulling back a curtain to find a young woman doing exactly that.
The most impressive feature, however, is the ground under this complex, known as Station F. That’s F as in France—the project sits in Paris, the capital of a country known as much for constant strikes, mandatory 35-hour workweeks and expensive labour as for the Eiffel Tower and tarte tatin. In France, the payroll tax sits at 42 percent, with labour laws so convoluted they’ve been inscribed in a red, 3,000-page tome called the Code du Travail. Over the years, few western democracies have proved less hospitable to entrepreneurship and growth.
This story is from the June 22, 2018 edition of Forbes India.
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This story is from the June 22, 2018 edition of Forbes India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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