France's "Silicon Sentier" Thrives as Web Hotbed
(Reuters) - A boom in French Internet startups, nurtured by an emerging class of homegrown Web-savvy investors, is providing a welcome jolt to a country often stereotyped as captive to tradition and hostile to innovation. A dozen executives and investors told Reuters last week that inter-generational coaching has been key to a budding Internet scene, clustered around the old Sentier garment district in central Paris -- now baptized Silicon Sentier. Entrepreneurs such as Xavier Niel, who created multibillion euro public company Iliad SA in telecoms, and Marc Simoncini, founder of France's biggest dating website Meetic SA, have graduated to the big league and are financing, mentoring and inspiring budding techies. Investors and executives also acknowledged the industry risked becoming a victim of its own success, as many of its best companies are snapped up by foreign competitors instead of growing independently to become France's own Google or Facebook. "Smart young people in France today no longer dream of going to work as ...
