Start-up capital

Paris is becoming increasingly appealing as a location for innovation

- HANNAH BRANDLER

My arrival in Paris was well timed, it being the first cool evening after the capital’s recordbreaking 42-degree heatwave – a relief for the Tour de France cyclists making their final sprint to the Champs-Elysées. There was barely a bike to be seen, though – instead, what caught my eye was the vast number of trottinettes (electric scooters) propped up along the city’s boulevards.

It’s estimated that there will be about 40,000 of these vehicles in the city by the turn of the year, thanks to companies such as Bird setting up here. This is just one sign of Paris’s new chapter as a start-up capital, with the city currently ranked as the ninth start-up ecosystem in the world, according to Startup Genome, up from 11th place in 2017.

LOOK OUT, LONDON

It was in 2017, shortly after he won the election, that President Emmanuel Macron spelled out his vision for France’s tech future to a room full of start-ups and digital professionals at the Viva Technology conference. Macron urged the country to “think and move like a start-up”, concluding with the rousing statement: “Entrepreneur is the new France.” This year’s event attracted 124,000 people, playing host to 450 speakers and almost 13,000 start-ups, a 24 per cent increase on last year.

To take the title of European tech capital from London, Paris will rely on poaching foreign talent – a task arguably being made easier by the Brexit saga. Julie Ranty, managing director of Viva Technology, stresses that Brexit won’t be “a game changer” but “might represent an advantage”.