France’s Unique Opportunity

European Straits #21

Dear all,

After ten days on the US West Coast and a few more back home in London, I just had a full day of discussions and meetings in Paris, where the excitement is clearly palpable. President Emmanuel Macron now has a firm grip on the French government. His new party, “République En Marche”, is poised to win a large parliamentary majority in next Sunday’s general election. And while Donald Trump is turning the US into a (very bad) global joke, Britain is slowly sinking into Brexit chaos. This, I think, is a major opportunity for France to emerge as a key global tech hub, provided it tackles three challenges.

The first concerns the regulatory environment. Too many French startups have been thwarted in the past because of toxic regulatory frameworks. Some startups can’t grow because they don’t fit in the box of existing rules. In other cases, the rules are changed under the pressure of incumbents who want to avoid competition from entrepreneurs. This situation explains why France hasn’t…