Station F Director, Roxanne Varza: How to Turn a Country into a Tech Superpower

Roxanne Varza is the Director of Station F: the biggest startup incubator in the world. Based in Paris, Roxanne is recognised as one of the most influential figures in the French startup ecosystem. The French media have called Varza the "young empress of startups," and even the “new pope of high-tech and startups in France." Roxanne was formerly a TechCrunch journalist and startup ambassador with Microsoft before being personally selected by Xavier Niel to spearhead the development of Station F.

Roxanne is a key reason why France became a tech superpower in less than a decade. In the first five years of Station F, it supported more than 5,000 French startups with 92.4% still in operation. Its first unicorn company was Hugging Face - most recently valued at $4.5 billion. It has been estimated that during these first five years, the companies from Station F raised more than 8 billion euros and created 47,200 jobs.

In this podcast we talk about the policies, political influence and funding that got France to become the superpower it is today, especially in AI - and how emerging ecosystems can replicate their success.

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Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

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