French unicorns make babies. More and more employees of French start-ups valued at more than a billion dollars are leaving to create their own company. A well-known phenomenon in Silicon Valley with the « PayPal Mafia », which gave birth to LinkedIn, Tesla or even YouTube. “Silicon had this advantage over Europe for several decades. Now the european unicorns are real start-up factories. This shows that the ecosystem is mature”, analyzes Harry Nelis, partner at Accel, an American venture capital fund which is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
French Tech is a good example. According to a study by Accel in partnership with Dealroom unveiled exclusively by “Les Echos”, 25 tricolor unicorns have created 142 start-ups.
Criteo and Blablacar are the biggest providers with respectively 31 and 24 start-ups created. Note that the French Ministry of Economy and Finance no longer considers Criteo as a unicorn since it is listed. Next comes Doctolib (11), some of whose former employees founded Faume (greentech), Uncle (insurtech) or Motto (mobility).
The majority of the 142 start-ups (80%) were founded in France and, unsurprisingly, in Paris. “France plays a big role in the European ecosystem and can now compete with the United Kingdom and Germany,” said Harry Nelis. “In London, we have a predominance of fintechs, in Berlin e-commerce but in France it’s a big mix,” adds the investor.
Nearly 60% of these new businesses have raised funds, between 1 and 10 million dollars. Founders’ move into a unicorn — which has typically experienced hypergrowth — is appealing to venture capital funds. “It’s brand recognition. Coming from a very good company with good engineers, a good product, they have the right practices”, emphasizes Harry Nelis.
French Tech: who are the founders of the French “mafias”?
Classic profiles
The study reveals that these second-generation startuppers have on average spent almost three years with a unicorn and that more than half of them (58%) have founded their own start-up within a year of leaving.
A phenomenon made possible by the lowering of barriers to the creation of a start-up in recent years (more funding, rise of the cloud, etc.) but also the BSPCE (kind of stock options) which allow certain ex-employees to pocket a good sum when they leave the company.
Almost three-quarters (73%) of former employees of French unicorns had five or more years of professional experience before founding their start-up, and almost a third (30%) had worked for more than 10 years.
The profile of these founders is quite representative of the French ecosystem. I’median age is 31, 81% of them have a master’s degree, 39% have a technical diploma. The main schools where they obtained their diplomas are: HEC, ESSEC, CentraleSupélec and Polytechnique. Good news for these schools which, ten years ago, were not reservoirs for start-ups. On the other hand, this is less good news for French Tech since this homogeneity of profiles does not make it possible to create more diversity, one of the big weak points of the French ecosystem . “There are more and more diverse talents coming from unicorns. But it’s going to take time before it really changes, ”says Harry Nelis.
It is to change this paradigm that the British fund NoLabel Ventures was launched a few weeks ago. Created by a former KKR, Ramzi Rafih, it invests in pre-seed and seed in young shoots created by immigrant founders settled in Western Europe. With a big focus… on France.
Methodology
All data was collected before February 28, 2023. The start-ups listed are technology companies founded by former full-time employees of a unicorn who worked for the unicorn for five months or more and founded a company in the six years following their departure. Consultants, trainees and part-time employees are excluded. Consulting firms and agencies were excluded. The list also includes acquired companies
2023-05-28 06:02:00
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