Blog them all

Fabien Penso’s blog

Archive for the ‘france’ tag

L’administration Française : créer une entreprise

3 comments

J’avais créé CONOVAE (SARL) il y a quelques années avec mon ami Laurent, dans le but principal de facturer mes prestations de développeur indépendant. Suite à deux passages à San Francisco, j’ai décidé de fermer cette entreprise qui me coûtait chère en charges alors que je voyageais autour du monde, et que je souhaitais migrer aux U.S.A.

J’ai donc fermé cette entreprise vers septembre 2009 (il y a donc plus de 18 mois environ). Plusieurs mois plus tard la RSI (Régime Social des Indépendants) dont le site web vous rappellera les sites web du siècle dernier me demande des charges pour le dernier trimestre 2009, que je n’ai pas à payer. Le Kbis de la dissolution de l’entreprise ne suffit pas, j’attends un papier de l’URSAAF que j’obtiens finalement tant bien que mal et que j’envoie à la RSI.

Je me considérais tranquille… et bah non. Je viens de recevoir une demande de paiement de 2,000 euros environ (avec frais supplémentaire dû au retard) pour le dernier trimestre 2009. Ma maman appelle de Paris, la RSI dit pas de soucis on vous rappellera dans une semaine sinon vous rappelez. Évidemment ils n’ont jamais rappelé, et en rappelant le service recouvrement RSI demande maintenant ma déclaration d’impôts 2009 (qui leur servira à rien dans ce cas précis).

Bienvenue en France, le pays où on vous fait chier 18 mois plus tard parce que vous avez eu le malheur de créer une entreprise. Note: le jour de la création de votre entreprise il n’y a jamais de retard sur vos charges que vous aurez à payer manu militari avant même d’avoir généré le moindre sous. P’tain…

Written by Fabien Penso

May 4th, 2011 at 8:35 pm

Posted in conovae

Tagged with , , ,

California: love it. San Francisco: even better.

leave a comment

I had the chance to travel to California from last April to July. As any computer geek I had always dreamed about going to California, and mostly around Mountain View. Thanks for my friends, I had the chance to visit Google few times, Yahoo!, Six Apart, Google Android, Apple, some smaller private startups. I’ve got beers with the guys from GitHub (thanks Tom, it was nice meeting you), LightHouse, Twitter, LinkedIn, AfterShock (thanks James!). Orange Lab told me on Twitter I could call 1014 (A French phone number for customer support) to meet them (ahah). I’ve met many more people which I can’t list here, and I’ve also finally met Phil Jeudy (twitter).

I’ve attended the Rails Conf 2009 in Vegas, and the WWDC 09 in SF. The rails conference was very high level, Vegas had the cheapest hotels I could imagine for the room we got. On the other side the WWDC conferences were not as high level as I would imagine, but someone said 60% of the attendees never attended before. I would recommend going to both if it’s you work in those domains, meeting people in real is a big boost for your projects.

Something I did not have in mind, is the good general vibe you have in San Francisco. I had the chance to meet Shane Vitarana (blog), who published DrumKit on the Appstore (it’s featured in Apple ads, on Union Square on top of buildings, etc). He introduced me to many people, and we had a lot of fun together (I have to confess, I don’t go out much while I’m in Paris, but did almost every day in SF). Thanks Shane, you made my trip.

I’ve learned a lot being in San Francisco for that long, on iPhone projects as much as on Rails projects, and on web projects in general. If you work on ideas, make them happen in California. It won’t take longer than anywhere else, but the general impact might be much bigger for you. Raising funds is much easier too. I’ve met so many independent developers in San Francisco making lots of money (>$200K a year) without working much (but worked hard in the past, or had a good idea).

You have two kinds of people in San Francisco, the ones working 20 hours a day, or doing 2 hours commuting a day going from downtown to Mountain View and working for the big players. And you have the ones not working as much and enjoying life. I’d suggest going for the 2nd option if you plan to go to SF.

So would I go back to San Francisco ? Hell yeah ! But surprisingly I would go again not for work, but for the good vibe. Of course there are tons of IT companies there, and even the average level of software developers ain’t better than France (or other countries), you have way more people, way more companies. That operates like a magnet. At the end, you have way more projects happening there. San Francisco makes projects possible. My only concern is time does not run the same way in SF, and a one year stay would pass like a week in other cities.

See you soon San Francisco (my flickr California set).

Written by Fabien Penso

July 21st, 2009 at 11:01 am