Criteo and BlaBlaCar: two unicorns leading Paris' revival

In October 2013, in what turned out to be a seminal moment, Criteo raised $250m when it listed on the Nasdaq. It is now valued at over $2bn, confidently taking on Google on its core competency of online performance advertising. It employs more than 500 employees, many of them engineers, in a flamboyant contemporary building in the heart of Paris.

Just one floor below, in the same building as Criteo, is BlaBlaCar, a ride-sharing company that raised $100m, one of the largest funding rounds in Europe, to expand its services beyond the 12 countries it already served, and connect the rest of the world to its next-generation transportation network.

From the ground up: entrepreneurship is the new politics

While exceptional in many respects, these two companies are representative of a broader entrepreneurial movement coming from the ground of French society. In a country historically governed from the top down, and where the state tends to identify itself with civil society as a whole, it has been easy for outsiders to overlook this grassroot phenomenon. But, while nobody was watching, France, and Paris at the heart of it, has quietly emerged as a tech powerhouse.

Come to TheFamily

With highly skilled engineers, artists and business students aplenty, a growing cohort of wealthy and experienced repeat entrepreneurs, and a steady supply of capital from local and international funds, stars have finally aligned for the take-off of a long under-hyped ecosystem. Now is the right moment to invest time and money in Paris. This definitive guide will help you get started.

Welcome to Paris!