A French lesson about entrepreneurs: Station F cuts through the continental red tape

You know the old joke: France doesn’t have a word for ‘entrepreneur’. The country is traditionally associated with red tape and heavy state intervention.

But Station F in Paris is trying to change that by offering space to a thousand start-ups under one roof – with all the support they need to flourish.

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

It is housed in a former freight train depot, hidden by trees and residential buildings, in the southeastern 13th arrondissement, close to the Gare d’Austerlitz. Outside is a huge sculpture, 11 meters high, called L’Arc.

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

Inside, the building is so tall that the Eiffel Tower lying flat would fit in it.

This enormous space is divided into three zones: a ‘share’ zone for networking, a ‘creative’ zone for working and a ‘chill’ zone for eating and socialising. The latter is open to the public.

As soon as you walk in, there is a palpable sense of excitement.

More than 600 events take place in the subzone every year. When I arrive, a major conference on business-to-business marketing is taking place and a group of start-ups have set up booths to ‘speed date’ a line of potential investors from venture capital firms.

There are organizations with a permanent base in this shared space, such as Tik Tok For Business and La French Tech, which help start-ups cut through the infamous red tape. More than 30 government agencies can be reached here to help with issues such as labor law and taxes.

Here I met my first French entrepreneur. Alexandre Duval is co-founder of Entalpic, a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to invent new materials to improve industrial design.

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

“Startups here have different expertise,” he says, “so you are not isolated, you benefit from this ecosystem. We also get help with administration and recruitment, all things that are difficult as a start-up.’

Next comes the creative zone, the middle terminal in the complex, called ‘the concrete cathedral’. Thin, reinforced concrete vaults helped Station F retain its landmark status.

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

The superstructure was abandoned in 2010 and subsequently used only occasionally for gritty urban fashion shoots. But in 2017, the 30,000 square meters was redesigned by billionaire Niel, the owner of the mobile and ISP provider Free, and co-owner of the newspaper Le Monde.

Known as the ‘Richard Branson of France’, he invested €250 million 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.

She likes chance encounters in Station F, where 3,000 entrepreneurs meet. It helps her solve problems I didn’t even know I had, she says.

“I’m recruiting for the first time,” she adds, “and this morning I met someone who told me about the insurance I need, which I knew nothing about, so he put me in touch with the person with who he works for.’

She also heard about an EU grant for the registration of her brand, which she also knew nothing about.

This middle creative zone is surprisingly quiet, like a library. Start-up teams are hard at work here. Large companies such as LVMH, beauty salon L’Oréal, Facebook owner Meta and Microsoft have ‘incubators’ here, which support carefully selected start-ups.

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

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

The idea is that when you bring many startups together in one place on this dramatic scale, the whole is greater than the sum of its 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 cohorts of startups.

There is a ‘fighter group’, for aspiring entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds.

Another area is for ‘graduates’: companies that have ‘graduated’ from Station F. None of the core group of start-up companies may stay for more than two years (and some will only stay for a three- or six-month rotation).

The chill zone is filled with disused train carriages, decorated with colorful graffiti. Here you will find a variety of restaurants, also open to the public. 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 start-up called Corma, which helps companies manage their software applications.

“Being in Station F gave us a stamp of quality,” he says. ‘Reputation makes it easier to win your first customers, convince your first employees and find your first investors.’

London doesn’t have too much to fear for the time being. The influential Global Startup Ecosystem Report has consistently ranked the British capital joint second, along with 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.

However, Paris is just a short drive away and you don’t have to be a French-registered start-up to work here.

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

Fancy commuting on the Eurostar, anyone?

Dougal Shaw is a senior correspondent at Business Leader businessleader.co.uk