Forbes Asia - May 2018

34 | FORBES ASIA MAY 2018

same time, the competition is heading the wrong way: As it stum-

bles toward Brexit, Britain continues to deepen the largest self-in-

licted wound in modern economic history. Merkel remains polit-

ically hobbled by her weakened coalition. And while Trump crows

about the strong U.S. economy, his protectionist trade policies have

more in common with Smoot and Hawley than with Reagan and

Clinton.

Macronomics is already having an impact. As soon his labor re-

forms passed in January, the French retail giant Carrefour and the

carmaker Groupe PSA announced 4,600 job cuts. Strikes ensued,

naturellement. But in the same time period, foreign entities an-

nounced up to $12.2 billion in new investments, Macron’s econom-

ic advisors say. Disney is budgeting $2.4 billion to expand Disney-

land Paris; Germany’s SAP is putting $2.4 billion into R&D centers

and startup accelerators; Facebook and Google are scouring the

French capital to hire 150 new specialists in artiicial intelligence.

Startup life here is improving too. While uncertainty around

Brexit undermines London venture capital, French funds, for the

irst time ever, were outraising the rest of Europe last year, accord-

ing to the most recent data from market intelligence irm Deal-

room. In January, French startups had the biggest foreign represen-

tation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, falling just

six shy of the U.S. total.

Perspective remains important. In 2017, France had only three

startups valued at $1 billion, versus 22 unicorns in the U.K. and 105

in the U.S. Dec ades of cultural anti-entrepreneurship can’t be in-

stantly turned of. But the ingredients for change are here. “Coun-

tries that we think are very slow are now moving ten times faster

than we are,” says John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco, who

pushed through $200 million in investment in French startups be-

fore leaving that role in 2015, adding that France now has “the right

leader at the right point in time.” London investor Saul Klein, who

recently invested in a spinout of British startup success Deliveroo

that went on to chase the burgeoning French market, notes that he

sits within walking distance of the Paris-bound Eurostar rail ser-

vice: “It’s closer than Edinburgh or Dublin.”

IN THE TECHNOLOGY ERA, FRANCE has endured a series of

Lost Generations. As Gates and Jobs and Ellison begat Musk and

Bezos and Zuckerberg, France’s best entrepreneurial minds looked

at their domestic opportunities and then booked a ticket to Califor-

nia to work for the Americans. here are some 60,000 French citi-

The leader: Can France’s first

entrepreneurial president top

the forces of inertia?

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