A French lesson for entrepreneurs: Station F eliminates continental bureaucracy

You know the old joke: France doesn’t have a word for “entrepreneur.” The country is traditionally associated with bureaucracy and strong state intervention.

But Station F in Paris is trying to change that by providing a space for a thousand startups under one roof, with all the support they need to thrive.

Station F was founded by tycoon Xavier Niel, best known on this side of the English Channel for his involvement in Vodafone and his attempt to buy out its Italian interests.

It is located in a former freight train station, hidden between trees and residential buildings, in the 13th district, southeast, near Austerlitz station. Outside is a huge sculpture, 36 feet high, called L’Arc.

This symbolizes the bridge between art and entrepreneurship, says Niel, married to Delphine Arnault, daughter of Bernard Arnault, founder of LVMH and fifth richest man in the world.

The interior of the building is so long that the flat Eiffel Tower could fit inside it.

This vast space is divided into three zones: a “shared” zone for networking, a “creative” zone for working, and a “relaxed” zone for dining and socializing. The latter is open to the public.

As soon as you enter, a feeling of excitement is palpable.

The shared area hosts more than 600 events a year. When I arrive, a large business-to-business marketing conference is underway, and a group of startups has set up booths to “speed up the date” with a queue of potential investors from venture capital firms.

There are organizations with a permanent base in this shared area, such as Tik Tok For Business and La French Tech, which help startups eliminate the famous bureaucracy. More than 30 public bodies can be accessed here, helping with issues such as employment law and taxes.

Here I meet my first French businessman. Alexandre Duval is co-founder of Entalpic, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to devise new materials that improve industrial design.

It hopes to follow in the footsteps of other successful AI companies that have already graduated from Station F, including Mistral, which raised a record €105m (£87.5m) in a seed round.

“Startups here have different areas of expertise,” he says, “so they are not isolated, but benefit from this ecosystem.” We also get help with administration, hiring, all the things that are difficult when you’re a new company.’

Next is the creative zone, the middle terminal of the complex, called “the concrete cathedral.” Thin reinforced concrete vaults contributed to Station F being classified as a protected building.

The name Station F comes from the original depot, built in the 1920s, called La Halle Freyssinet, in honor of the engineer who built it, Eugene Freyssinet.

The superstructure was abandoned in 2010 and after that it was only occasionally used for street fashion photo shoots. But in 2017, its 365,000 square feet were reinvented by billionaire Niel, owner of mobile phone and internet service provider Free, and co-owner of Le Monde newspaper.

Known as the ‘Richard Branson of France’, he invested 250 million euros in the project with the aim of inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs.

These are people like Station F member Anais Garnier, who is behind an online publishing platform for fiction authors called WeInk.

He loves chance encounters at Station F, where 3,000 businesspeople rub shoulders. It helps him solve problems he “didn’t even know he had,” he says.

“I’m hiring for the first time,” he adds, “and this morning I met someone who told me about insurance I need, which I didn’t know anything about, so he put me in touch with the person he uses.”

She also found out about an EU grant to register her trademark, something she also didn’t know about.

This in-between creative zone is surprisingly quiet, like a library. Here, startup teams are working hard. Big companies like LVMH, beauty firm L’Oreal, Meta, owner of Facebook, and Microsoft have “incubators” here that support startups they have carefully selected.

Business schools, including EDHEC, also have campuses here, where they support both students and entrepreneurs.

All of these institutions pay to be close to the action. An interesting feature of Station F is that it is itself something of a start-up and not a charity or state institution.

The idea is that if you bring many startups together in one place at this dramatic scale, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Big companies with deep pockets will pay to access this creativity and energy brought together under one roof. Station F also supports its own startup groups.

There is a “fighters” group for aspiring entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds.

Another area is ‘graduates’: companies that ‘graduated’ from Station F. None of the core group of startups are allowed to stay longer than two years (and some will stay only for three or six month rotations ).

The rest area is full of disused train cars, decorated with colorful graffiti. There are a variety of restaurants here, also open to the public. But there are no French waiters. You sit at your table and order directly from a QR code.

Nikolai Fomm is a German entrepreneur who works for a startup called Corma, which helps companies manage their software applications.

“Being at Station F gave us a seal of quality,” he says. “Your reputation makes it easier to get your first clients, persuade your first employees, and find your first investors.”

London shouldn’t have much to fear… for now. The influential Global Startup Ecosystem Report has consistently placed the British capital second alongside New York, behind Silicon Valley, when it comes to vibrant, well-funded startup ecosystems.

But the latest report shows that Paris is quickly moving up the rankings.

Paris, however, is just a short trip away and you don’t need to be a startup registered in France to work here.

You don’t even need to have a French national on your team to qualify. The place is full of Americans thanks to the Meta and Microsoft incubators.

Does anyone fancy traveling on the Eurostar?

Dougal Shaw is Senior Correspondent at Business Leader businessleader.co.uk