After weeks in political limbo, France now has a brand new prime minister, former EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. However parliament stays bitterly divided, producing uncertainty for a lot of financial sectors — together with the nation’s dynamic startup ecosystem, which had to date benefited from public help.
La French Tech isn’t only a time period referring to France’s 25,000 startups; it’s also an initiative supported by a public administration, the French Tech Mission, whose director, Clara Chappaz, is departing this month as her three-year contract ends, she advised Les Échos. The timing is coincidental, but additionally noteworthy. Her alternative, she advised TechCrunch in late August, ought to hopefully be somebody who’s “not afraid of change” and sees it as a chance.
The position is undoubtedly distinctive. It’s connected to the Ministry of the Economic system and Finance, however with a lean group understanding of Station F and with a giant mission: to help the structuring and development of the French startup ecosystem of startups, in France and overseas. It requires somebody who’s equally in a position to speak to public officers, politicians, huge corporations and journalists.
It’s now too late to use, however seeing the way it has been described as a “dream job,” there ought to be sufficient candidates on the ranks; Chappaz, who gained’t be a part of the jury, mentioned once we talked in August that she was taking a number of calls a day from potential candidates. She possible advised them just about the identical as she advised TechCrunch and her LinkedIn followers: That France is “extremely fortunate” to have its French Tech Mission and that her expertise at its helm was “distinctive.”
However what occurred up to now isn’t indicative of the longer term, and whoever succeeds Chappaz will function in a state of affairs that’s very totally different from when she took cost in 2021. That’s as a result of La French Tech itself has modified throughout these years, pushing new priorities for the French Tech Mission.
Chappaz skilled her justifiable share of change during the last three years, too, and never solely as a result of there have been three totally different secretaries of state for digital affairs over that very same interval; that’s widespread in quite a lot of public administrations. The primary change needed to do with tech itself, and with the macro context: 2024 is sort of totally different from 2021.
Similar to elsewhere, French startups went by way of the ebbs and flows of the pandemic and the fundraising hype that ensued, solely to come again to earth a couple of months later. Geopolitical unrest adopted, and alongside got here the conclusion that nations wanted industrial champions to depend on.
For the French Tech Mission, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2023, this meant aligning with the strategic France 2030 agenda. There got here French Tech 2030, with much less deal with unicorns, and extra on deep tech spinouts and financial impression. Not that it was answerable for the previous: President Emmanuel Macron was the one who set out “25 French unicorns” as a purpose to achieve by 2025. (After reaching that milestone in 2022, he went on to name for 100 unicorns by 2030.)
That France now has scaleups like BlaBlaCar and Doctolib is not any small feat, and telling the world definitely did favors to its picture. However 10 years after the “unicorn” moniker was coined, world tech has moved on. It was time for France to acknowledge that its startups have modified, too, with the rise of corporations like Mistral AI and Pasqal (and the autumn of others, like Luko.)
The France Digitale affiliation, which represents startups and traders from the French digital ecosystem, has been nicely positioned to witness this evolution amongst its members since its creation in 2012. “There are 1725823419 startups in all sectors, in manufacturing, in healthcare, that are additionally sectors that I feel are strategic priorities for the competitiveness of France and for the sovereignty of France and Europe,” its CEO Maya Noël advised TechCrunch.
According to this evolution, Nöel mentioned it is perhaps fascinating for Chappaz’s alternative to return from one in every of these strategic sectors, however that’s no jab at her background (Chappaz joined from Vestiaire Collective, a second-hand trend market) or at her predecessors. From our dialog with Noël, it transpired that the 2 constructions are “pretty aligned” and have been in “fixed dialogue.”
A number of initiatives adopted underneath Chappaz’s management mirror what the sector has been lobbying for. One instance is “Je Choisis La French Tech,” an initiative that noticed 300 corporations and 80 institutional gamers decide to serving to double the variety of public contracts and purchases from startups. “We have now been asking for this for 10 years,” Noël mentioned.
If something, France Digitale wished issues might go quicker, as an illustration on the new matter of exits (or dearth thereof). Somebody with first-hand information of scaleups and worldwide growth might add worth at its helm, however a brand new director with a public service background may be capable of pull strings on the administration facet if La French Tech have been to lack governmental help, Noël mentioned.
La French Tech Mission has arguments that would play nicely with totally different sides of the political help: that startups are immediately and not directly answerable for 1.1 million jobs, and for serving to reindustrialize France. Many individuals additionally dedicated to the Parity Pact promoted by Chappaz and her group to foster gender equality within the tech trade. Her successor should play these playing cards nicely, and we want them “bonne likelihood.” That additionally goes for Chappaz, too, who’s anticipating her second baby and says she hasn’t determined but what she’s going to do subsequent, however that it’ll must do with tech innovation.
