Let me be the classical Frenchy (i.e. never happy) here and point out that as long as the tax code, red tape and overall overwhelming paperwork entrepreneurs in France have to deal with won't be reduced or greatly simplified, having big incubators will be a nice touch but the road to growth will still be paved with unnecessary hurdles.
The task at hand is HUGE, one that not so many developed countries have to deal with, that is allowing SME/SMI and entrepreneurs to grow without hassle while still preserving the quality of public service we've grown accustomed to (which has a cost that everyone contributes to or is supposed to contribute to).
I hope we find a good middle ground there, cause the startup culture in France is still a decade behind compared to that of the US or Canada speaking for examples I've experienced first-hand.
EDIT: Still an awesome prospect though, kudos to all the people involved.
In this startup incubator there will be a counter with administrative people to help us with all this paperwork. So less pain with all this formalities, we will just have to pay more as we are in France.
By the way, one more time, thanks Xavier Niel, he's the only one in France who invests so much money on things like this and taking so many initiatives to make things change.
He gave us the cheapest contract for mobile phone in the world, he offered us the 42 school (free school for computer sciences with an innovative learning method), he offers us the most efficient dedicated servers for a decent price (http://www.online.net/fr/serveur-dedie/comparatif-serveur-de...), and so much more.
Let me clarify something first: I am not an entrepreneur myself. I don't deal with said paperwork, the people I currently work for or have worked for in the past do. I've had the same feedback from a lot of them, in small and bigger companies.
Basically the complaints are always the same: it's not necessarily the amount of paperwork, it's the fact that when interfacing with the various agencies (regarding legal, financial, bank-related, employment or health issues) you usually have to provide the same documents OVER and OVER (and interfacing with people who are not always accountable to someone given the number of layers in the French administration, creating a system where some people have a job for life, don't understand that the "state" is all of us and don't give their all).
It sometimes feels that it never ends and doesn't make sense. Since the system in France is very centralized and since all the different agencies ALL depend from the state, this should be centralized to a given location and then dispatched to the agencies upon request.
The bigger problem anyway (if you call that a problem) is that your social contract in France is that of a mutual network of citizens taking care of each other through taxation. This is great when it comes to a lot of topics (health, education, social services), but it naturally has a cost when you're competing against the likes of the USA who have made a clear choice that the private sector tends to come first. I've yet to think of a good way to have my lunch and eat it but this more often than not puts our SME/SMI in a difficult spot.
Oh yes, I remember during first year in France. Every time I visited back home, I'd go to my local bureaucrats to get a few more birth certificates. It seemed that every single desk in France needs one, obviously no more than 3 months old (as if my birth data changed so often). And that was even without trying to start any business...
Here is one. You start a small startup and you have to pay all your social charges for the fiscal year in advance. Say you project you'll make $200000€ the first year and need to pay 80000€ (just an example) before you can retain your first client. That is a huge chunk of change a lot of people don't have.
And if your company doesn't reach it's target and collapses too bad, at least you have health care paid up.
All of it...The issue in France is politicians that create harsh constraints for entrepreneurs then architect "usines à gaz" for there friends to pretend they are helping entrepreneurs.
The task at hand is HUGE, one that not so many developed countries have to deal with, that is allowing SME/SMI and entrepreneurs to grow without hassle while still preserving the quality of public service we've grown accustomed to (which has a cost that everyone contributes to or is supposed to contribute to).
I hope we find a good middle ground there, cause the startup culture in France is still a decade behind compared to that of the US or Canada speaking for examples I've experienced first-hand.
EDIT: Still an awesome prospect though, kudos to all the people involved.