Why innovation should be a key topic in the French Presidential election

As many of you already know, the French ecosystem is on fire. The target that France set for itself of having 25 unicorn companies by 2025 was actually hit 3 years before the deadline in January of this year. Investment, including international investment, is booming with French startups having raised a whopping €11.5 billion across 784 deals in 2021. Company creation has been on a continual and dramatic rise since 2016, pointing to a major underlying cultural shift. And even entrepreneurs themselves have changed - while many startups may have opted to sell quickly in the past, this is no longer the case. We are starting to see French companies acquire their competitors and even had 2 local tech IPOs last year.

With all this momentum, France is starting to emerge as an up and coming ecosystem - which translates to a huge positive impact on the economy. That said, almost all candidates have given priority to other topics, which is of course understandable. Yet, given the importance of innovation when talking about the future, my guess is that it will become an increasingly important topic in the upcoming weeks.

No innovation, no future

When talking about France’s future, innovation should be front and center. It impacts education, breeds jobs, drives competitiveness. When candidates have mentioned the topic, it has often been in the context of sovereignty and regulation (with a few exceptions) - which is great - but there is much more that should not be overlooked.

Many groups and independent organizations have called for more attention to be payed to the topic, and have even proposed measures and ideas for candidates. France Digitale, for example, published a very comprehensive manifesto, including various measures and ideas to improve funding, data protection and sovereignty, education, equivalents of Buy American Act and more. With digital having an increasing presence in everyday life, the Conseil national du numérique (CNNum) has called many of the candidate’s proposals “old world” and has asked for more attention to be paid to the impact - both positive and negative - on education, democracy and truth, and even attention and dependency. And many others have chimed in to share their ideas and thoughts as well.

Where do we stand at STATION F?

At STATION F, we support many of the proposed measures we have seen, including those proposed by France Digitale and CNNum. Without reiterating what has already been published elsewhere, we did want to share a few additional elements that we find important to highlight.

Protect and improve international talent schemes

Tomorrow’s leading companies are international companies - which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone - and being able to recruit and hire international talent is going to be more and more key. The ecosystem has done an incredible job with attracting foreign talent and La French Tech and the government at simplifying the administrative procedures for foreign founders and employees alike. We believe that we need to protect and improve the current talent scheme, and also believe that any anti-immigration policies would be harmful to our ecosystem as a whole. Entrepreneurs and talent so desperately needed by our startups can and will come from anywhere.

Funding for impact & marginalized founders

France Digitale’s manifesto outlines some excellent ways to reinforce and strengthen the entire investment landscape - from encouraging more early-stage investment through tax breaks to improving various tax schemes that startups use (for R&D, etc). We fully support all of it. However, we’d like to encourage incentives in order to increase investment into impact-driven companies as well as “marginalized” founders that are often overlooked or underserved by the current funding landscape. We don’t need more charity-style funding for these projects and founders, but incentives to push investors to invest where they aren’t going today.

We absolutely need to talk IPO

With all these unicorns that we are creating and a strong desire for our digital companies to modernize the CAC40, it seems crucial that we start talking about IPOs. More importantly, we need to ensure that our own stock exchanges are sufficiently attractive so that these companies don’t decide to list in foreign exchanges. And while IPOs may still be a ways out for STATION F companies, it will benefit the entire ecosystem and be relevant for select STATION F alumni in the upcoming years.

Education & regulation for more online protection and inclusion

This is less directed at startups and more directed at the general population and the use of technology. When it comes to the risks and impacts of digital, it’s hard not to be in agreement with the CNNum. And while I’m often quite hesitant when it comes to encouraging regulation, I do increasingly feel that it will be part of the solution to the issues we see today. GDPR, while many initially shunned it, placed Europe as a leader in terms of data protection. There is no reason that can’t be the case with other topics. That said, regulation is only part of the solution. We also need to make sure that the risks associated with digital are taught in schools - and to the greater population. This will better equip the future generations to deal with the current issues we are witnessing, and ensure that other parts of the population are not left behind.

Job opening + job opening = reduced unemployment

Well, truth be told there is reduced unemployment - a 10-year all time low and an especially noticeable decrease for the population under 25. I’m not saying there is any direct correlation, but with startups recruiting massively (especially heavily-funded scale ups), we are seeing more job openings and more competition for companies to attract and retain talent. In other words, pay and packages are becoming more attractive. Which is why we absolutely need to orient more of the workforce in this direction, whether it be education in school, specialized institutions for highly qualified jobs, or even reorienting and training those who may currently be outside of the ecosystem - or unemployed.

These last 2 measures are perhaps much more of interest to the general public. Also, there are a lot more measures and ideas we support, but these are a few that we wanted to highlight.

Candidates, are you listening?

We are looking forward to welcoming a majority the Presidential candidates to STATION F on February 21st to hear their different economic propositions - and hope that innovation will not be overlooked.

By Roxanne Varza, Director of STATION F