(Adds FSI investments in 17th paragraph.)
April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Jacques-Antoine Granjon, the long- haired founder of Paris's Vente-Privee.com, says French presidential candidates are missing the point when it comes to creating jobs.
"Tax, tax, tax, that's all I've heard," Granjon, the 49- year-old creator of Europe's biggest online flash-sale retailer, said in an interview. "The Web is a goldmine for jobs, but politicians just don't get it."
While a 12-year-high jobless rate has prompted French candidates to make cutting unemployment a top priority, they've said little about encouraging the creation of the next Facebook Inc. or Google Inc. in France. Entrepreneurs like Granjon say they have little hope the winning candidate will replicate Silicon Valley's flourishing ecosystem of ideas, investment and education in Paris's Internet district, dubbed Silicon Sentier.
Slapping more taxes on entrepreneurs and Web companies may push startups away from Paris's nascent technology hub. The next president should take a leaf out of the playbook of Google, Microsoft Corp. and Facebook, which foster French startups, say businessmen such as Dan Serfaty, who started Viadeo, a European version of LinkedIn Corp.
The French units of the U.S. companies identify local initiatives, support them with funds and technology and export their ideas outside their home market.
Taxing Efforts
"France has a very promising ecosystem; it's packed with seed companies, innovative startups, engineers and talent," said Olivier Esper, Google's policy counsel in France, where the Mountain View, California-based company has more than doubled its staff in the past 18 months to 400 people, mostly engineers. "The country's definitely at a turning point."
The first round of the election will be held on April 22, with the top two contenders in that vote squaring off on May 6. As election campaigning has heated up, the two frontrunners' efforts have turned into a race to tax the most.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has revived proposals to tax companies like Google, Amazon and EBay Inc. for revenue they make in France, accusing them of "fiscal dumping" in a speech on April 5. Socialist candidate Francois Hollande plans to slap a 75 percent tax for all personal income exceeding 1 million euros ($1.31 million), drawing criticism from entrepreneurs.
"Entrepreneurs get hit by more stray bullets," Marc Simoncini, founder of the French dating site Meetic, said in a Twitter post after Hollande's "millionaire tax" announcement.
What Entrepreneurs Want
Technology startups had expected more from Sarkozy, who created a National Internet Council in April 2011 to advise him and hosted the likes of Google, Facebook and EBay at a Paris Internet conference dubbed the e-G8 in May. Google and Microsoft opened more than 40,000 square meters, or about 431,000 square feet, of research space in the city in the past three years.
Entrepreneurs said they want politicians to talk more about the Web in the campaign, recognizing it as a vector of growth and jobs.
They want enterprise creators to be put at the center of jobs plans with fiscal measures that induce investors to fund innovative startups and lower charges on young companies.
Meetic's Simoncini, who in May agreed to sell 16 percent of the company to IAC/InterActiveCorp, was among French "business angels," to invest more than 350 million euros in about 300 companies last year, including 120 startups, according to Eric Harle, president of France's Venture Capitalist Association.
'Greatest Adversary'
France can create the next Facebook or Twitter if it can keep deep-pocketed investors happy and attract even bigger financial fish, said Serfaty, whose Viadeo is the world's second-biggest social network for professionals behind LinkedIn.
Candidates have instead fueled populist hostility toward finance. Hollande, who leads in the polls in the decisive second round of the election, said in his first major speech in January that finance is his "greatest adversary."
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