In early 1995, life looked good for young Mathieu Nouzareth. He had just completed an MBA in the US on an exchange programme from university in Grenoble and had landed a job with a multimedia business start-up in New York. Then one day a new chief executive was appointed. By the end of the week Nouzareth and everyone else in the company had been fired.
"That's where I really got in touch with the American way of doing business," he says. So it was back to Paris with no job and no money - only a desire to sell the internet to a nation which regarded it as anything between a passing fad and another demonstration of American economic imperialism.
The 23-year-old 's first move was to join forces with his younger brother, Romain, 20. Together they set up a company, Web Concept, creating websites for others. It was an uphill struggle. "We had no money and for the first five or six months we used my brother's flat (the younger Nouzareth was still a law student) in Paris. The banks did not want to give us money, neither did the venture capitalists." Faced with a struggle against indifference, ignorance or outright hostility, the Nouzareth brothers got used to being seen as more than slightly crazy. But they persevered. "It was only in 1997 that things really took off for us. For two years it was really tough; not having any experience we made lots of mistakes." He recalls working 80 to 100 hours a week.
Although Nouzareth does not put a precise moment on the breakthrough, he notes that in 1997 the company was beginning to drag in orders from some of corporate France's biggest names. The brothers were on their way. Within two years the business had been sold to the Swedish firm Icon Medialab. Nouzareth will not disclose the purchase price but acknowledges that, though he continues to run the business for Icon, he has no need to work again.
"But what would I do? I am 28 years old. If I did not work I would grow bored very quickly." But in the new France is money, the making of money - even in large quantities - still a taboo subject? Nouzareth, a big, friendly, slightly shambling man with still the hint of a schoolboy air, grows reflective.
When Web Concept was sold to Icon, Nouzareth said he was afraid people would be very negative. After all, the French attitude to someone who makes a lot of money is that it cannot have been earned honestly. "In fact, every one was very happy for us. People said we had worked hard and that we deserved it," he says. But since the dot.com world has run into turbulence Nouzareth detects a change in some attitudes. "It's not that cool any more."
But does that mean France is locked in a world where money-making remains a cause for suspicion? Nouzareth thinks things are changing, though slowly. "The older generation are still of the old mindset: that money is bad. But the younger generation thinks much more about making money. A lot of young people see themselves as being entrepreneurs or, if they are not going to be entrepreneurs, then they will work in an entrepreneurial environment."
