France Has The World’s Largest Startup Campus

11 March marks international startups day. On this occasion, we chose to focus on STATION F, the world’s largest startup campus based in Paris.

Opened in 2017 and privately funded by the French businessman Xavier Niel, Station F welcomes more than 1.000 startups and gathers all the services entrepreneurs could need to grow their businesses under one roof.

A personalized support

STATION F is focused on early-stage startup (between 1 and 4 people when arriving, around 15 when leaving). In order to offer a personalized support to all startups, STATION F and its partners have designed 30 different acceleration and incubation programs. Each of them is focusing on a specific vertical. 1/3 of these programs is run by corporates (Microsoft, Ubisoft, LVMH…), 1/3 is done by schools (HEC, EDHEC, INSEAD…) and the last third is by entrepreneurs networks (Entrepreneur First…). STATION F also runs two in-house programs: the Founders Program and the Fighters Program dedicated to people coming from underprivileged backgrounds.

Services for entrepreneurs

Companies based at STATION F benefit from multiples services that go from a maker space to prototype their projects to 30 public administrations (Cnil, BPI, URSSAF…) in French Tech Central and mentorship offices of Apple, Google, AWS and OVH to help them use their solutions. An investor community of more than 100 funds from France and from abroad is also part of STATION F to help entrepreneurs raise funds.

A very high success rate

STATION F is selecting 9% of the companies which apply to join the campus. Currently, 1/3 of the entrepreneurs are from abroad and 40% of the companies are founded by women entrepreneurs. Only 3% of startups failed since the opening.

French startups rank first in the European Union in terms of fundraising

France is now the new investment champion in Europe. In 2019, according to EY European Investment Monitor, France was the leading host country for foreign investment in Europe, attracting 19% of all job-creating foreign investments in Europe. Since he became President, Emmanuel Macron has been committed to making France more investors and business friendly through a series of reforms. France has a pool of dynamic startups which can pride themselves to rank first in the European Union in terms of fundraising for transactions under 100 M€. There are currently more than 12 unicorns in France.

Among them, we can highlight some success stories : Blablacar, an online ride-sharing company that pairs people travelling between cities with drivers who have empty seats in their car (market valuation of 1,6 Mds), Mirakl who helps businesses to build innovative marketplaces (1,5 Md$) and Dotolib, an online booking platform that helps to find a specialist doctor nearby and make an appointment (1 Md$).

On 23 March 2021, 5 startups from the French ecosystem will pitch their project in front of Kuwaiti investors on the occasion of a webinar organized by Paris Europlace, with the support of Capital Market Authority. Save the date.

 

SOURCE  TIMESKUWAIT

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