Formation | 2017 |
---|---|
Purpose | Business incubator |
Location |
|
Key people | Xavier Niel, Roxanne Varza |
Website | www.stationf.co |
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] |
Station F is a business incubator for startups, located in 13th arrondissement of Paris, [8] near Bibliothèque nationale de France–Site François Mitterrand. [9] It is noted as the world's largest startup facility. [10] [11]
Situated in a former rail freight depot previously known as la Halle Freyssinet (thereof the "F" in Station F), the 34,000 m2 (370,000 sq ft) [12] facility was formally opened by President Emmanuel Macron [13] in June 2017 and provides office accommodation for up to 1,000 start-up and early stage businesses as well as for corporate partners such as Facebook, Microsoft and Naver. [14]
In the first five years of its existence, it supported more than 5,000 French startups with 92.4% still in operation. Hugging Face was its first unicorn company. [15] It is estimated that during these first five years, its companies raised more than 8 billion euros and directly created 47,200 jobs. [16]
Station F occupies a building designed by French engineer Eugène Freyssinet. First opened in 1929, the former rail depot has been extensively remodeled by architects Wilmotte and Associates to meet the needs of small start-up companies. [17] [18]
As well as 3,000 desk spaces and private meeting facilities, the incubator also hosts a 370-seat auditorium and dining facilities open to the public. [19] Facebook's own Startup Garage in the building will host up to 15 companies on a six monthly cycle and represents the company's first physical space dedicated to startups. [20]
The campus also houses La Felicità, the largest restaurant in Europe, with 4,500 square meters (48,000 sq ft) from the Big Mamma restaurant group. [21] This giant food court comprises five different Italian eateries. [22]
Through various partnerships, Station F has also accepted foreign startups, for example Swedish [23] [24] and Korean. [25]
Station F has a number of corporate partnerships for start up programs geared for entrepreneurs. Partners include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Zendesk. [26]
As of August 2020, the following partners were hosting startups programs within Station F: [27]
Station F awards different prizes each year to the startups on its campus :
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
The École Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales, more commonly known as ESSEC Business School or simply ESSEC, is a business school and grande école based in France. Founded in 1907, its principal campus is located in Cergy in the île-de-France region, but also has locations in La Défense, Rabat, and Singapore.
HEC Paris is a business school and grande école located in Jouy-en-Josas, a southwestern outer suburb of Paris, France. It offers Bachelor, MiM, MSc in International Finance, MBA, EMBA, executive education, professional development, professional certification, and PhD programs.
A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services, starting with management training and office space, and ending with venture capital financing. The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) defines business incubators as a catalyst tool for either regional or national economic development. NBIA categorizes its members' incubators by the following five incubator types: academic institutions; non-profit development corporations; for-profit property development ventures; venture capital firms, and a combination of the above.
The Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology is a private research university located in Topi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. The institute has a 400-acre (1.6 km2) campus that is located in the vicinity of Swabi District.
The University of Montreal is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on Mount Royal near the Outremont Summit, in the borough of Outremont. The institution comprises thirteen faculties, more than sixty departments and two affiliated schools: the Polytechnique Montréal and HEC Montréal. It offers more than 650 undergraduate programmes and graduate programmes, including 71 doctoral programmes.
Jean-Michel Wilmotte is a French architect.
Xavier Niel is a French businessman. He is involved in the telecommunications and technology industry and is the founder and majority shareholder of the French Internet service provider and mobile operator Iliad trading under the Free brand. He is also co-owner of the newspaper Le Monde, co-owner of the rights of the song "My Way" and owner of Monaco Telecom, Salt Mobile SA and Eir. He is chairman and chief strategy officer for Iliad, but also a board member of KKR and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.
Infobip is a Croatian IT and telecommunications company, founded in 2006.
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician who has been President of France since 2017. Macron is ex officio one of the two Co-Princes of Andorra. He previously was Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs under President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016 and Deputy Secretary-General to the President from 2012 to 2014. He is a founding member of Renaissance, a centrist political party.
In business, a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1 billion which is privately owned and not listed on a share market. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
French Tech is an accreditation awarded to French cities recognized for their startup ecosystem. It is also a name used by technologically innovative French businesses throughout the world.
Renaissance (RE) is a liberal and centrist political party in France. The party was originally known as En Marche ! and later La République En Marche !, before adopting its current name in September 2022.
Mathieu Gallet is a French senior civil servant and political advisor. He was the chief executive of the Institut national de l'audiovisuel from 2010 to 2014. He was the CEO of Radio France from 2014 to 2018. In 2019, he launched Majelan, a podcast distribution and production platform.
Sylvain Maillard is a French entrepreneur and politician serving both as the member of the National Assembly for the 1st constituency of Paris since 2017 and as the Renaissance group leader in the Assembly since 2023. A member of Renaissance (RE), his constituency encompasses the 1st, 2nd, 8th and part of the 9th arrondissement.
Jean-Noël Barrot is a French politician of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) who has been serving as the Secretary of State for European Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal since 2024. He previously was Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications (France) in the government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne from 2022 to 2024.
Roxanne Varza is Director of Station F, a startup campus, the world's biggest facility of its kind, based in Paris, France where she is recognized as one of the most influential figures in the French startup ecosystem. The French media have called Varza the "young empress of startups,", the "queen of tech" and "the new pope of high-tech and startups in France." An American-born French with Iranian origins, who grew up in Silicon Valley, Varza was formerly a journalist and startup ambassador before being personally selected by Free founder Xavier Niel to spearhead the development of Station F.
Cédric O is a French politician of La République En Marche! (LREM) who served as Secretary of State for the Digital Economy in the governments of successive Prime Ministers Édouard Philippe and Jean Castex from 2019 to 2022.
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Pascal Cagni, born on October 28, 1961, in Cernay, Alsace, is a French business executive. After participating between 2000 and 2012 in Apple's development as vice-president and general manager of Apple Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) region, in 2014 he founded the European venture capital investment fund C4 Ventures. In 2017, he was appointed chairman of the board of directors of the Business France French government agency and Ambassador Delegate for International Investments by French President Emmanuel Macron.