More than half if you consider taxes on the company. A 30k salary costs the company about 80k. Sure, there are loads of social services, but still. In the company I created we did the work ourselves, and sometimes hired freelancers for certain things we're not familiar/experts in, but without external funding taking one single employee is a major blow to the accouting of a small company.
With 20 people you'll soon need to have a comité d'entreprise :P
> Most startup in France don’t have « all employees as associate », that makes no sense to me.
That's the only way to operate if you don't get external funding.
> I actually don’t see French startups moving there HQ somewhere else, so I wonder where that affirmation came from...
I'm sure Paris is different, but that's a common pattern for companies founded around Sophia Antipolis, the "Silicon Valley" of France. The startups that tend to stay it's because they have local clients, the rest often leave or die, with notable exceptions (LivePepper comes to mind).
> Aren’t you just repeating some stereotypes you heard elsewhere? If France were as hostile as you pictured it, how would it have such a dense startup ecosystem and even (God forbids!) some very successful ones?
Nope, I insist, I'm sure Paris is different, but most people don't live in Paris. Also dense compared to where? The Netherlands or Belgium are denser.
