A French School for Entrepreneurs

Burdensome regulations and risk-averse lenders make France a place that is, at best, challenging for tech entrepreneurs. The country’s biggest tech companies, such as Alcatel-Lucent and Vivendi, trace their roots back more than a century. In the U.S., it’d be as if the tech landscape were still dominated by IBM and Xerox.

Xavier Niel, 43, one of the few French Internet billionaires, seems to think he can change this by force of will. In recent years, Niel, the founder of one of France’s biggest broadband providers, has become a prolific supporter of young tech companies, investing about €50 million ($71 million) a year. Now he’s joined with two other French Internet moguls to start a professional school for Web entrepreneurs, scheduled to open this fall in the building that once housed the Paris stock exchange.