Fleur Pellerin Works to Make France Safe for Tech Startups

The 12 guests of honor might have felt out of place as they sat down for lunch in October at the Elysée presidential palace in Paris. With its crystal chandeliers, gilded walls, and manicured gardens, the palace is a more natural setting for foreign dignitaries and heads of state than for the technology entrepreneurs who assembled for a three-hour meeting with President François Hollande. Seated next to the president was the person who’d persuaded him to clear his afternoon: a petite, 40-year-old woman of Asian descent named Fleur Pellerin. As deputy finance minister for digital innovation, Pellerin’s mission is to turn France into one of Europe’s premier hubs for tech startups. Doing so will require galvanizing not just entrepreneurs and investors but France’s political leaders as well.

As the others dined on fish, cheeses, and wine, Pellerin made her pitch to Hollande: In order for France to revive its economy, the country must overhaul a business culture that too often stifles innovation. “It was a deep dive,” says Marie Ekeland, a partner at the Parisian venture capital firm Elaia, who was at the lunch. “To have the president of France spending three hours trying to understand what’s going on with the digital economy is totally new. And a lot of that is thanks to Fleur Pellerin.”