Tax reductions schemes are mostly abused AFAIK. Very few startups do anything resembling actual R&D, but they still use the tax schemes, which could be risky in case of tax audit. Anyway, most early startups won't benefit from that as they have no profit to show so it is mostly a moot point.
As for the other points from the parent, they're not specific to France. The "startups are a rich man's game" problem is universal, and financing is just as hard to raise anywhere. Of course you'll probably raise a much smaller amount in France than SV but that's to be expected.
However, I agree with you that we have a nice perk : anyone with a good plan & a few months of free time to write up the paperwork can get something like 50K in grants, without giving up any equity. That's not very useful for an Internet company but can be a tremendous help for dedicated teams in other fields.
You don't have to make some profit to benefit it, as you get employer taxes back for R&D employees, which can be very important, something like 40% of employee cost. It lowers a lot cost per employee.
As for the other points from the parent, they're not specific to France. The "startups are a rich man's game" problem is universal, and financing is just as hard to raise anywhere. Of course you'll probably raise a much smaller amount in France than SV but that's to be expected.
However, I agree with you that we have a nice perk : anyone with a good plan & a few months of free time to write up the paperwork can get something like 50K in grants, without giving up any equity. That's not very useful for an Internet company but can be a tremendous help for dedicated teams in other fields.