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Paris is home to the largest startup incubator in the world
The city of Paris is well-known for its beauty, elegance and fashion, but also its charming cafés, monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum, Panthéon, Sacré Coeur… Alongside these cultural and gastronomic highlights which everyone wants to visit, the city is also famous for its innovative, tech and entrepreneurial scene.
France is now one of the world’s leading countries in terms of startup companies which is growing very fast especially in the capital city of Paris.
Paris is constantly investing in the development of start-up infrastructure which has created many new business opportunities in the city and has attracted a large number of people who are interested in discovering what Paris has to offer.
The amount of investments has reached €1 billion, and many big companies are now looking forward to investing in startup businesses around the city including Microsoft, which is launching one of its corporate incubators in this city.
In 2020, Paris has ranked the third biggest startup hub, because of the city’s innovation ecosystem and new technologies which make the city extremely attractive for anyone interested in this industry. In Paris itself, there are more than 4,000 startups, and in the Paris metropolitan area, there are three times as many – 12,000.
In 2017, tech billionaire Xavier Niel, funneled €250 million into building the largest startup incubator in the world, Station F.
This monumental space has more than 34,000 m2, over 4,000 desks, multi million dollars art installation, and a whole bunch of success stories.
Station F is located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, and it is noted as the world’s largest startup facility.
The location was previously known as La Halle Freyssinet railway depot, and since the opening of Station F, it has welcomed more than 1,000 startup companies. This superhub offers entrepreneurs the access to a variety of different incubation programs, upscale events and coworking space to work on their projects.
“When people need to associate Paris/France with startups, now they can easily think of Station F, it resonates way beyond what we could have imagined, what a joy!”, said Xavier Niel.
This huge startup incubator partnered with some of the world’s biggest companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Zendesk.
When talking about financial support, there are a few French funds that support entrepreneurs in their early stages. French foundation, Elaia, focuses on the early stages of development projects in the fields of DeepTech and e-commerce. There is also Eleven, which has funded more than 130 startups, but there are many more.
One of the main government priorities and focuses for the last few years has been supporting innovative businesses in the country. A special visa program for technology entrepreneurs has been created in 2017, which is a simplified fast-track scheme for non-EU startup employees, founders and investors to obtain a residence permit for France. People who live outside the European Union can obtain, with this visa, the right to live for 4 years in France, with the possibility of extension which is also a major thing which draws so many startups to the city of Paris. (photo credit: Patrick Tourneboeuf)
