The Wake-Up Call

The dot-com crash of 2000-2001 hit France differently than Silicon Valley. While American tech hubs experienced dramatic boom-and-bust cycles, France's more cautious approach meant less spectacular failures—but also fewer breakout successes. As companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon emerged from the rubble to dominate the global internet, France had no comparable champions.

The statistics were sobering. By 2005, France ranked 20th among OECD countries in broadband penetration. E-commerce adoption lagged behind the UK and Germany. Most tellingly, young French engineering graduates increasingly headed to London or Silicon Valley rather than building companies at home. The brain drain was real and accelerating.

"We had brilliant engineers, world-class mathematicians, but no ecosystem," recalls Frédéric Mazzella, who founded BlaBlaCar in 2006. "When I pitched investors, they'd ask why I wasn't in London. When I tried to hire, engineers wanted to know about stock options—a concept that barely existed in French startups."