France Attempts to Attract Talent Back from Israel- By Stacy Meichtry
http://www.wsj.com/articles/france-attempts-to-attract-talent-back-from-israel-1441712304
Government fears brain drain could leave the country deprived of future business leaders and investors.
HAIFA, Israel—When French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron visited Technion, the Israel Institute for Technology, this past week he asked a group of students originally from France if they would ever consider returning home.
“For the holidays,” one student quipped. Another, a computer-science major, questioned whether France was doing enough to address a recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks.
The remarks point to an uncomfortable reality for the French government. Israel has become a nesting ground for precisely the kind of talent the eurozone’s second-largest economy needs: budding tech entrepreneurs.
However, a confluence of forces—from Israel’s prowess at incubating technology to the perceived rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment in France—is driving French Jews to relocate to Israel. Frustrated with the chronic rigidity in France’s education and labor systems, many of them are launching job-generating startups in Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel.
Last year, 6,961 French Jews moved to Israel, more than double the number who relocated in 2013, according to Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. More than 36% of those emigrants hold college degrees, 17% in engineering alone.
The surge in departures is eroding France’s nearly half-million-strong Jewish population, Europe’s largest. It is also depriving the country of future business leaders and investors while the economy struggles with meager growth and double-digit unemployment.
Mr. Macron visited the DLD tech conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, wrapping a three-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. A large part of his mission was aimed at luring Jewish investors and talent back to France.
“A lot of these people have energy, vitality,” Mr. Macron said in an interview. “They want to create jobs, startups, and innovate here. They can innovate as well in France.”
Meeting with parents of high-school students and courting Israeli investors, Mr. Macron talked up the raft of government measures—from tax incentives to streamlined labor courts—that his ministry is implementing. In the interview, however, Mr. Macron said the French business world is in need of a “cultural revolution” that no single piece of legislation can bring about.
“In France we are largely based on status, which means that when you have a position, you respect the position. It means people are less keen on taking risks,” he said.
Israel has become a model for governments world-wide in its generous backing of startups and the research and investment incubators that foster them. France has followed suit by setting aside €200 million ($223.22 million) in funding for local startups and incubators. Paris has also exempted new entrepreneurs and their investors from paying taxes on up to 85% of their capital gains if they remain owners for more than eight years.
But French entrepreneurs who have put down roots in Israel say their new homeland offers them something France can’t: peace of mind.
Though Israel is in one of the world’s most volatile regions, Jews have been jolted by violence in France.
Last year, vandals targeted several Jewish-owned businesses in France as the conflict between Israel and Hamas flared in the Gaza Strip. Fears reached a fever pitch in January after a gunman drew an AK-47 on shoppers in a kosher supermarket, killing four people.
In the immediate aftermath, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Paris, inviting French Jews to emigrate to Israel.
The violence has exacerbated feelings of alienation that some émigrés say has become part of being Jewish in a country meant to embody the values of a secular republic.
“I was asked to choose: ‘Are you Jewish or French?’” said Mickael Bensadoun, who co-founded Gvahim, a Tel Aviv-based nonprofit that helps immigrants professionally integrate in Israel, after moving from France to Israel 15 years ago. Twenty percent of people involved in Gvahim’s startup accelerator are French.
Being Jewish in France “is like being part of a soccer team, and no one wants to pass you the ball,” said Jeremie Brabet-Adonajlo, the 32-year-old co-founder of Pzartech, a startup that advises manufacturers on how to fully exploit 3-D printing technology.
Mr. Brabet-Adonajlo dreamed of starting his own business in France, like his father, but when it came to striking out on his own he relocated to Tel Aviv. He hasn’t given up on forging business ties with French manufacturers and other potential clients in France, but he complains about the grueling pace of decision-making and bureaucracy there.
“It’s been something like nine months that we’ve been trying to set up a call with them,” Mr. Brabet-Adonajlo said.
‘[Being Jewish in France] is like being part of a soccer team, and no one wants to pass you the ball.’
—Jeremie Brabet-Adonajlo, co-founder of Pzartech
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Budding entrepreneurs also fear the heavy stigma in France that comes with failure. The country’s top schools steer graduates toward careers as civil servants protected by cradle-to-grave labor contracts, a bias that émigrés say runs counter to the risk-taking involved in launching a startup.
In Israel, employers and investors view early failure as a valuable learning experience, émigrés say, while it can be viewed as career-ending in France.
After moving to Israel three years ago, 31-year-old Noémie Alliel struggled to find funding for Wekast, a startup focused on developing technology to allow mobile phones to run PowerPoint-style presentations.
But that difficulty didn’t deter her from landing investors to back her second venture: an app called Nosolo that connects people in search of pickup basketball games and other activities.
“In France, if you fail at something you’ll be stigmatized for life. In Israel it’s the contrary,” she said.
The French government has worked hard to remove the stigma. In addition to “rebound” programs aimed at teaching the value of failure, the government has ordered France’s central bank to end the practice of marking the records of entrepreneurs who have gone bankrupt, making it easier for them to get new loans.
While in Tel Aviv, Mr. Macron met with parents inside a crowded French high school. The government, he reassured them, had recently mobilized thousands of police to protect Jewish synagogues and other sensitive sites.
The French government wasn’t standing in the way of Jews who choose to live in Israel, he said, adding: “Our responsibility is to make sure it’s a choice.”
Looking on was Alison Redler, a 27-year-old who moved to Tel Aviv in November to cofound happyintlv.net, an online entertainment guide, after years of working at cosmetics giant L’Oréal SA in France.
“What he said is pretty strong, because he understands what’s going on,” she said, noting: “I’m Israeli now, but I’ll always be French.”
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