It's a buzzword, but it's also a reality. “Unicorns” – a term used to designate a company valued at more than $1 billion and not listed – are the dream of all investors and young entrepreneurs. Including in France, and it's rather new. Between the odyssey of Business Objects at the end of the 1990s and the IPO of Criteo two years ago, very few French start-ups have managed to rise among the world stars (Meetic, since bought by its American competitor Match, PriceMinister taken over by the Japanese Rakuten, or Vente-privee.com).

In recent months, the pace has accelerated, with record fundraising in France (70 then 100 million euros for Deezer, 100 million for Sigfox, 177 million for BlaBlaCar, 256 million for Showroomprive.com on the stock market.. .) which caused valuations to explode in French Tech. Especially since, behind it, around ten companies are seriously eyeing this unicorn status, which could allow France to catch up, at least compared to its European neighbors, Germany and the United Kingdom.

“There is always a question of maturity and flow,”  notes Stéphane Distinguin, founder of the Fabernovel consulting agency.  The French ecosystem started a little late but we are now starting to see start-ups emerge which are between seven and ten years old and are reaching valuations already reached a few years ago by our neighbors. Without forgetting that the ecosystem is much more qualitative today. »  French engineers, in particular, recognized worldwide, no longer hesitate to launch their own project.

The Criteo model

A model is emerging, inspired by the previous Criteo: in Paris the R&D, in the United States the bulk of the sales and marketing teams. Almost all high-growth French start-ups have adopted this approach, from Talend to Scality, based in California, via Algolia, Mirakl or the HR software publishers PeopleDoc and TalentSoft, which last year welcomed Goldman Sachs to its capital. Even Deezer, which long believed it could do without the American market, has established a foothold across the Atlantic. To these names, observers add the luxury goods site Vestiaire Collective, the online poker site Winamax, and the video advertising platform Teads, as potential future unicorns.

Philippe Collombel, associate president of Partech Ventures, is banking on Kantox, a marketplace for peer-to-peer currency exchange.  “This company has no American competitors. This is a phenomenon that we find in Europe, with Spotify in Scandinavia and Soundcloud in Germany for example. These are companies that have the capacity to impose global leadership,  he explains.  Many French firms are in the making and are all the more interesting because they do not copy models already seen in the United States. »  Same story with Jean-David Chamboredon, of the Isai fund and co-president of France Digitale.  “Those who succeed in Europe are those who have positioned themselves in sectors that the Americans did not believe in: streaming with Spotify, or targeting like Criteo. This is why, whatever happens, the number of European unicorns will remain limited. »

Nicolas Rauline and Guillaume Bregeras