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It’s no secret that France likes a bit of state interventionism — and unemployment benefits are no exception. Among all the good reasons to support a strong allowance scheme for job seekers, one stands out: a decent financial safety net is the push many individuals need to start a business.

Today, I dig into how transformative this has been for France’s startup scene. The answer, it seems, is very. Launching a tech company while on unemployment benefits is practically the norm. It’s for that reason founders are worried about the consequences of the government’s proposed cuts to the scheme. More on that below.

Elsewhere today: 

• The 10 fastest growing UK startup teams
• Early-stage industrial tech market map: 61 startups to watch (Sifted Pro subscribers)

— Daphné Leprince-Ringuet, French tech reporter

Building your dream finance team

↗️ Recruiting and retaining a solid finance team is no mean feat for any company, let alone startups. So how can budding CFOs tackle turnover and build a robust team to boot? Tune into our upcoming Sifted Talks midday, June 12th to find out.

French tech’s favourite business angel

It’s a trend I first noticed among my friends. After a few years working for a company, many of them left to freelance or launch a startup, supported by rupture conventionnelle — an amicable agreement between employer and employee that lets employees leave a company and still benefit from unemployment allowances.

It got me wondering if we were all going through an existential crisis symptomatic of our generation’s rejection of salaried employment. Or — more likely — if this was a case of France’s ‘startup nation’ plugging into the country’s unemployment benefits scheme as a means to get businesses started.

France’s chômage (unemployment benefits scheme) is generous compared to some of its neighbours. Job seekers can expect, on average, to receive about two-thirds of their previous salary for up to 18 months. Until last year, when the government reduced the duration of the scheme, allowances could stretch up to two years.

Job seekers who want to start a company in France can either get monthly payments or ask to receive 60% of their total allowance in two separate lump sums, which are typically used to inject capital into a business.

It means that founders-to-be often get both the time and the money to get their startup rolling.

“Out of the non-representative sample of my 50 founder friends… absolutely everyone knows about it,” says Fabien Cazes, who founded insurtech Neat while au chômage, after leaving his job as a general manager at a startup in 2021. “Being an entrepreneur also means being smart. If you miss this kind of support, it’s not a great start.”

Official data shows that around a third of companies created in France in 2021 were supported by unemployment allowances. Data isn’t granular enough to get a precise picture of the tech sector — but a poll carried out by startup incubator Euratechnologies among 200 early-stage startups found that 80% of its founders were on benefits.

“It’s clearly an integral part of the ecosystem,” says Jen Schradie, a sociology researcher who specialises in the digital economy at French university Sciences Po.

It’s not the same picture across the board though. Schradie says those most likely to take advantage of unemployment benefits to launch a company are population groups that can afford to take more risks — not those who tend to be more precarious.

“Populations like women or people from the working classes can take less risk than others,” says Euratechnologies’ chair Koussée Vaneecke. 

This gap is set to widen, according to Vaneecke, with the French government proposing to reduce the length of the benefits scheme from 18 to 15 months. “This will discourage [those groups] even more,” says Vaneecke. 

Many founders who benefitted from the unemployment scheme tell me they fear the government’s proposed reform will put off more entrepreneurs from launching their businesses — with a direct impact on the state itself.

“I employ 14 people, and what I pay to the state today in one month is probably equivalent to what I earned while on benefits in one year,” one founder tells me. “The return on investment is stratospheric.”

“We need to give founders the full freedom to keep founding.”

Read the full piece here. 

— Daphné Leprince-Ringuet, French tech reporter

💪 US e-commerce software giant Salesforce has announced it will open its first “AI centre” in London as part of a $4bn investment package it unveiled last year. The company says it will be a physical space to “foster collaboration by bringing together industry experts, partners and customers to advance AI innovation while providing critical upskilling opportunities”.

• Salesforce described the move as “the latest vote of confidence in the UK,” following the news that other big US companies like CoreWeave and ScaleAI are investing in the country.

🎓 The German government has selected 15 projects for its ‘Startup Factories’ programme. It aims to create 5-10 startup factories (modelled on startup lab UnternehmerTUM) across Germany that have links to universities with a strong spinout culture, are financed at least 50% by private funds and are embedded in the regional startup ecosystem. The aim is to get more research commercialised in Germany.

• The next step: the selected candidates — including the Free University of Berlin, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Dresden — will have eight months to develop a detailed concept of their startup factory. The final selection will be made in the first quarter of 2025.

🤝 German GenAI startup Aleph Alpha has announced a joint venture with auditing and consulting firm PwC’s German arm. The new entity, creance.ai, will aim to support companies dealing with complex regulatory issues, combining PwC’s experience in compliance with Aleph Alpha’s GenAI expertise.

• Creance.ai’s first product will focus on companies implementing risk management systems, following the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act.
• The partnership represents an interesting new route to market for GenAI companies, which are working hard to commercialise their costly technology.

🏭 Early-stage industrial tech market map: 61 startups to watch. (Sifted Pro subscribers)

🔥 The 10 fastest-growing startup teams in the UK.

📣 Readers, we want to hear from you. What’s the best thing on European tech you’ve read recently? Drop us a line.

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June 12 | Online. Fintech reporter Tom Matsuda will bring together a panel of experts from Omio, Tipalti, Vestiaire Collective and Eight Roads to discuss how to build, nurture and maintain an airtight finance team to improve your bottom line, RSVP.

June 12-13 | UK. Editor Amy Lewin is at Founders Forum. Get in touch if you'll be joining her.

June 25 | Online. Join us for a showcase of the ultimate list of B2B SaaS startups featured on Sifted's upcoming Rising 100 report, sponsored by Sapphire Ventures, at our next Conference Call — exclusively for Pro subscribers. RSVP. 

June 11-4, 2025 | Paris. Vivatech, the startup and tech event, is set to return to Paris next June. For more information or to book your pass visit here.

London-based Amber Therapeutics, which develops neuromodulation therapies to treat mixed urinary incontinence (MUI), raised $100m in Series A funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round and was joined by investors including F-Prime Capital, Lightstone Ventures, Intuitive Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises and 8VC.

Ghent, Belgium-based Qargo, which develops transport management software for the trucking industry, raised €12m in Series A funding. Balderton Capital led the round. 

Copenhagen-based EvodiaBio, which uses fermentation to develop natural aromas that recreate the taste of hops, raised 50m DKK (~€7m) in funding from investors including Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, The March Group, Nordic Foodtech VC, Symrise AG, PINC, Thia Ventures, Newtree Impact and Ananke.

Limerick, Ireland-based Eventmaster, which provides e-commerce solutions for event ticketing, membership and fundraising, raised €4m in funding from Business Growth Fund.

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