Trade Fair

French Tech champions are coming to the Nordics

For the 3rd time, Business France will bring some of the most promising French Tech startups to the Nordics to help them meet the local demand with their solutions. This year, we will organize the French Tech Days on August 18th and 19th. We will present companies offering relevant solutions to meet the challenges accelerated by the COVID-19 situation. For example, the cloud-based PaaS proposed by FT120 ranked scale-up Platform.sh is a highly efficient way to help larger companies manage their fleet of web applications.

France is bailing out its startups to preserve its thriving tech scene

France is bailing out its startups more generously than most in Europe, to preserve its thriving French Tech ecosystem from the consequences of the crisis. From mid-March, the French government has opened a €4bn cash injection plan, shortly after the pandemic forced French people into lockdown.

The public bank for entrepreneurs, Bpifrance, assumes this strategy. Paul-François Fournier recently stated in an interview with Sifted that “the startup ecosystem is starting to have an impact on job creations, on the real economy, and startups play a role in helping more traditional industries accelerate their shift to digital. We’re guided still by our long-term ambition, we’ll do everything we can to preserve the work that’s been deployed so far and make sure everything doesn’t crumble”.

And indeed, 2019 has been an excellent year for French startups, with fundraisings peaking at €4,5 billion, a 40% increase compared to 2018. The number of rounds was similar (+8%), while the amounts raised grew by 42% on average to 6,8M EUR in 2019. These figures show the maturity of the French ecosystem that has now launched the French Tech 120 (FT120) national ranking for its best performing tech champions, of which the Next40 are a subset.

French Tech 120 mapping

The French Tech ecosystem is scaling up

Launched in September 2019, the FT120 ranks more than a hundred startups that receive personalized public support to help them achieve their growth objectives, and eventually evolve into the next French unicorns. This support encompasses many areas of startup development, such as finding and attracting talents, expanding internationally. Designed to integrate structures from every French region, it will also showcase the dynamism of the country’s ecosystem.

Business France brings French Tech startups to the Nordics

A delegation of French companies will come to Sweden and Denmark to create contacts with potential new partners on the 18 and 19th of August. One of them, the cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service Platform.sh, ranked at the FT120, will be in the delegation to present its most relevant solution for larger organizations.

Platform.sh is a second-generation Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) built especially for continuous deployment. SOC 2 certified, it allows hosting web applications but also microservices and other hybrid web-like applications on the cloud while making development and testing workflows more productive. Platform.sh covers not only all of hosting needs but also most of DevOps needs. It is a simple, single tool allowing up to 60% savings on the overall cost of deploying and running web applications.

In terms of organization, the work habits at Platform.sh are the same as before. Despite the lockdowns provoked by COVID-19, all 174 employees already work remotely since the creation of the company in 2014. The company even continues to recruit to meet the growing demand.

We will send invitations in the coming weeks, but feel free to contact us if you are interested in meeting with some companies. Contact pascal.lamorte@businessfrance.fr or via our contact page for more information.