Forbes Asia - May 2018

T

he world’s largest startup incubator sits inside the

bowels of a nearly century-old former freight station,

where 3,000 nascent entrepreneurs dart across the

366,000 square feet like cash-hungry ants. More than

30 venture capital irms, from Accel Partners to Index

Ventures, pay a $6,100-a-year membership fee for the privilege

of making investments on-site; Facebook and Microsot run pro-

grams to try out companies they might buy; Amazon and Google

focus on sussing out talent.

Walking around, you see a $20 million installation by Jef

Koons, loating meeting cubes and a blacked-out “relaxation zone,”

where overtired programmers leave their shoes outside. “Peo-

ple sleep in here sometimes,” says Roxanne Varza, a California na-

tive who runs the incubator, pulling back a curtain to ind a young

woman doing exactly that.

he most impressive feature, however, is the ground under this

complex, known as Station F. hat’s F as in France —the project

sits in Paris, the capital of a country known as much for constant

strikes, mandatory 35-hour workweeks and expensive labor as for

the Eifel Tower and tarte tatin. In France, the payroll tax sits at

42%, with labor laws so convoluted they’ve been inscribed in a red,

3,000-page tome called the Code du Travail. Over the years, few

western democracies have proved less hospitable to entrepreneur-

ship and growth.

Station F, which opened a year ago, has an ediice’s version of

a new-car smell, providing a big fat counternarrative. “he classi-

cal way for three or four decades in France to react to change is to

claim that we will resist the change,” says French president Emman-

uel Macron, in an exclusive interview with Forbes. he world took

notice last year when Macron, at 39, became the youngest president

ever elected in France. But his age is less important than his back-

ground: Before politics, Macron spent more than three years as an

investment banker at Rothschild and also tried to develop an ed-

ucation startup. French politicians, from Chirac to Hollande, have

blathered about reform for decades, only to succumb to pressure

from change-averse pensioners and myopic unions. Macron gets it,

and has staked his entire presidency on delivering. “Perhaps some

of them will want to organize strikes for weeks or months. We have

to organize ourselves,” the president says. “But I will not abandon

or diminish the ambition of the reform, because there is no other

choice.”

Using executive orders, he’s quickly pushed through a rat of

32 | FORBES ASIA MAY 2018

Take a centrist president with a mandate

and a private sector background, mix

in the country’s top tech billionaire

with the world’s best incubator, and

the potential is tantalizing: Can they

transform Europe’s perennial economic

underperformer into a tax-cutting, job-

creating entrepreneurial hotbed?

BY PARMY OLSON WITH ALEX WOOD

France’s

Big Pivot

The epicenter: Station F in Paris

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