Not just for the baguette— the evolution of the French tech ecosystem

When we first came to Paris to work with startups 5 years ago with Axis Innovation, investors were happy to join us — mainly because everyone enjoys an excuse to visit the beautiful city, but not because of its thriving ecosystem. Today, it’s safe to say things have evolved in an exciting way and Paris has become a hotspot for tech innovation. Big funds and investors have opened up offices in Paris, big startups like Bla bla car have attracted over $100M in investment, and huge conferences like Vivatech attract 50,000 people and the likes of Eric Schmidt from Alphabet. After our fifth annual Axis Cap Digital Paris event last week — and experience meeting over 500 French entrepreneurs and working with more than 100 — here is how I’ve seen the French ecosystem evolve:

1. French entrepreneurs are ready to go global: 5 years ago, most startups were building businesses to scale in France, and getting them ready to go abroad and attractive to international investors was a challenge. Today, almost all of the 20 companies we worked with this year have customers outside of France and are built from day 1 to scale internationally. Take Adok, a software/hardware company developing interactive surfaces, was incubated at a French university and already has customers and pilots in 3 European countries.
2. French fintech is competitive with the best: For the first time this year, I saw French fintech startups that rival what we see in fintech hubs like Tel Aviv, London and New York. Companies like Spendesk are revolutionizing expenses for SMB’s and Monaize is creating a completely digital bank.
3. Paris is an attractive destination for foreign startups: This year we worked with 5 non-French startups who came to present in Paris, because Paris has positioned itself as a key hub for startups globally. Zify, a ridesharing application from India, BugLab, a cyber startup from Morocco and Bitwage, a bitcoin and payment startup from the US, have all moved to Paris to build their startups. This is thanks to the new French tech ticket, a government program which funds entrepreneurs from all over the world to develop their startups in France.

It’s been a good journey so far, and let’s see where Paris can go from here.