At Viva Technology 2025, we spoke with Julie Huguet, director of La French Tech mission for an exclusive video interview.
Here is a slightly edited transcript of the conversation:
Chris O'Brien: Hello everyone, and welcome to VivaTech. I'm Chris O'Brien, founder and editor of the French Tech Journal, the leading Anglophone guide to the French tech ecosystem. And we're especially honored today because we have Julie Huguet, the director of La French Tech mission with us, joining us for our first podcast of VivaTech. Welcome, Julie.
Julie Huguet: Thank you for inviting me.
CO: So just to introduce yourself a little bit and La French Tech mission, because it is a very important pillar of the French ecosystem. Tell us a little bit about your background and define for our listeners, what is La French Tech mission?
JH: Yes, sure. So first, I'm an entrepreneur. I founded my company from Annecy, France. I used to organize matchmaking between large corporations and freelancers through a platform, and then I raised money, sold my company, and finally sat on the board of the company. It was a listed company, so I had this full experience of what it is to be an entrepreneur in France and to create a company from a different area from Paris because I was in the Alps. And during this period, I was also involved in French Tech, because I was president of French Tech in the Alps during three years. That's when I really realized that there are a lot of things we can do to help French entrepreneurs to scale and to have more businesses. That's when I decided to join Mission French Tech as director last October.
CO: And so I moved to France 10 years ago, just not long after la French Tech mission was originally created. And obviously the ecosystem is very different today, as you know, than it was 10 years ago, 11 years ago now. So tell me about the agenda today for La French Tech mission. What is the role? What is your priority as director?
JH: Mission French Tech is a public organization that supports startups, all the startups in France. We have 25,000 startups in France, and what we want to do is help entrepreneurs to have the best ecosystem to create, to scale and to go abroad. So it's true what you said at the beginning, when the mission started, the first objective was to create the ecosystem, attract funds, find talent, create the perfect ecosystem to start a business. And then it was how to start a business everywhere in France. So that's when we created the communities of French Tech. Now we have 48 communities in France everywhere, but also 66 communities abroad in 52 different countries. And our objectives now, it's obviously not the same as from the beginning, because we already have startups. 25,000 of these startups are mature. They generate revenue. They employ 40,000 people. Now what we have to do is help them to be real leaders, international leaders, and that's what we try to do through different programs. We design our own programs, and we work closely with our communities of entrepreneurs everywhere to be sure that all these programs really help and support entrepreneurs everywhere in France.
CO: I know that one of the themes is about putting corporates and startups together. What are the challenges you see there? When I meet entrepreneurs in the French ecosystem, this is one of the things they really bring up. Should I stay in France? Will it be easier to find first clients or corporates in the US? So tell me a little bit about the challenges and the program Je Choisis La French Tech.
JH: Of course. We have three main objectives. The first objective of every entrepreneur is to find business. Then it is to find funds. Because when you innovate, you need also to invest. And then what we also have to work on is competitivity, because we face very [tough] competition, international competition. So we have to prove that French Tech is excellent. So to work on the first part, which is the main part, finding clients like you said, we developed and designed two years ago a program called I choose French Tech, so Je Choisis La French Tech. This program was created because, for years, large corporations used to say, I want to innovate with startups. For years, startups said, we want to find clients like large corporations. This program brings together clients, large corporations, but also institutional partners. We have more than 600 large corporations who joined the program, 90 institutional partners, and all together, we decided to make a real cultural change. First, we organize matchmaking events. So 12,000 events were organized everywhere in France by our partners, and by the clients themselves. We also create training. So, for example, we launched two months ago the I Choose French Tech Academy dedicated to entrepreneurs, to help them to understand how public procurement works. We also work on the cultural shift by communicating through the press about real use cases and about contracts.
CO: So do you feel like that's making progress and making a difference in terms of bringing those two groups together and resolving some of the differences, getting rid of some of the barriers to them working together?
JH: Yeah, the mindset is changing. Large corporations are engaged. We have also eight large corporations who decided to invest more than €600 million in French startups. So for us, it's still the beginning, and I think the next step is to grow the pie at the European scale. That may be the next step. But for France, for us, it's a real success.
CO: Now, the French Tech mission also just announced the French Tech Next40/120. So, tell us a little bit about that program and some of the new developments you saw this year with the group of startups that were chosen.
JH: This program was designed to support our future tech leaders. In this program, you have the next 120 companies in different sectors. These startups, we really think that they have everything to be international tech leaders. During one year, we will add them, and we will support them, and we will link them to administration, to clients, and we will make sure that they have a lot of visibility. The new promotion was launched last week, and we are very proud because it's a reflection of what we said before, the companies are very mature. For example, half of the next 40 companies are making €100 million in revenue per year. So for us, it's very interesting, because at the beginning, the companies were in the program because they raised a lot of money, but now they are here because they are very mature.
Chris O'Brien: Great. Well, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate your time, and best of luck for the rest of VivaTech and the rest of this year.
