Requests for French Startups - Summer 2025

In 2025, France and Europe face systemic challenges of unprecedented scale: aging populations, the ecological transition, mental health, professional disorientation, the digital divide, disconnected institutions, and more.

And yet, technological tools have never been more powerful. Never have so many talented people wanted to get involved. Never have citizens been so aware that solutions won't come from the top down, but from civil society and entrepreneurship.

At swanbase, we've identified 14 areas for action that are urgent, concrete, and scalable, where startups can deliver solutions that are powerful, useful, and profitable, in 6 months rather than 10 years.

We're calling on French founders to take them on.

⚡ TL;DR: 4 observations for 2025

1. Software hasn't eaten the institutions yet.
   Public systems (healthcare, employment, pensions, housing, training, and more) are poorly suited to real-life journeys. We need to rebuild the interfaces, not wait for reforms.

2. European sovereignty is an entrepreneurial opportunity.
   Cloud, currency, AI, cybersecurity, energy: the needs are exploding, the regulatory frameworks are clear, and European solutions are still scarce. Now is the time to act.

3. Psychological distress and social disorientation are intensifying.
   The crisis of meaning affects the young, the working-age, and seniors alike. Millions of people are "between two statuses," isolated, and adrift. We need to build the tools that restore confidence, structure, and connection.

4. The impact market is ready to be transformed.
   Climate, agriculture, autonomy, public health: these sectors long stayed off the startup radar. With AI, they're becoming the new startup-compatible frontiers.

⚠️ This list is neither exhaustive nor restrictive.

It reflects the problems we consider urgent, structural, and under-addressed.

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We fund plenty of startups outside these topics: deeptech, SaaS, tools, AI, industry, finance, climate, and more. If you're building something ambitious and well executed, you're in the right place.

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📄 Summary of the 14 key opportunities

1. 🧐 Specialized & sovereign LLMs
   General-purpose AI models are ill-suited to European regulatory, cultural, or industry-specific needs. We need vertical LLMs (legal, health, public administration) that are GDPR- and AI Act-compliant, interoperable, audited, and locally controlled.

2. ⚕️ Access to healthcare & prevention
   The system is overwhelmed. We need to anticipate, prevent, and support, not just treat. Mobile clinics, screening AI, self-service health checkups, and health-coaching apps can save lives and budgets.

3. 🚀 Digital euro & euro stablecoins
   Europe is absent from monetary web3. Faced with the dominance of the digital dollar, startups can build euro stablecoins that are sovereign, useful, interoperable, programmable, and GDPR-native.

4. ⚡ Energy transition & distributed generation
   Our grids are rigid, our solutions too centralized. Startups need to deploy local storage, microgrids, energy-efficiency assistants, decentralized hydrogen, and AI-driven optimization.

5. 🌾 Agriculture & food security
   Farming is in crisis but also full of potential. Accessible, low-tech, field-ready solutions can transform the profitability, sustainability, and food sovereignty of local areas.

6. 🔐 Digital sovereignty & cybersecurity
   Europe has no real cloud to match the hyperscalers. We need trusted, sovereign building blocks: storage, encryption, auditing, embedded security, and vertical clouds for healthcare, local government, and education.

7. 🚌 Mobility & sustainable urbanization
   Cities are gridlocked. Too much congestion, not enough adaptation. Mobility needs to become modular, intergenerational, and inclusive again. Startups can smooth traffic flows, logistics, and urban social ties.

8. 🔧 Administrative simplification
   Public administration is an opaque wall for citizens and freelancers alike. Rights chatbots, eligibility simulators, and management tools for freelancers and local authorities: all to be rebuilt starting now.

9. 🌿 Ethical luxury & export
   French luxury has meaning, but it lacks technology, transparency, and a cultural connection with younger generations. Startups can export that meaning, digitize that heritage, and tell those stories.

10. 🎓 Education & adult upskilling
    School is no longer enough. Careers are non-linear. Training needs to be modular, hybrid, and job-ready. Adults want to learn, but they need the right formats at the right time.

11. 🧓 Demographics, aging & autonomy
    France is aging. And the system can't keep up. Housing, health, social connection, remote assistance, information, prevention: everything needs to be rethought to guarantee dignity and independence for older people.

12. 🧠 Mental health & psychological well-being
    A surge in burnout, anxiety, and isolation. A shortage of professionals, prevention, and tools. We need solutions that are accessible, hybrid, human, and destigmatized. For everyone, everywhere.

13. 👔 Guidance, employment & career transitions
    Millions of people are caught between two statuses, without a clear framework or stable rights. We need to smooth transitions, make hybrid career paths visible, and offer simple, continuous, motivating compasses.

14. 🗺️ Tourism (and health tourism) in France
    Reviving the world's number-one destination with a focus on quality: premium tourism, health, well-being, overlooked regions, and a digitized experience.

15. 💰 Finance, insurance & risk management
    The sector is under strain: climate, cybersecurity, regulation, claims, everything is accelerating. We need insurance tailored to new risks, digitized customer journeys, a structured sustainable-finance market, and hybrid tools at the intersection of tech, data, and capital.

16. 🏭 Industry, reshoring & modernization
    Europe is deindustrializing faster than it is transforming. We need to rebuild a competitive, connected, low-carbon industry. That means automation, digital twins, circular supply chains, next-generation ERPs, and the strategic reshoring of key sectors.

🧐 Specialized & sovereign LLMs

❗ The problems

Large language models (LLMs) are reshaping the global economy, but France and Europe are underrepresented in this revolution. The dominant models are American, closed, and poorly adapted to European realities (languages, regulations, specific sectors). Public administrations, regulated companies, and sensitive professions can't use these tools without putting their compliance or their sovereignty at risk. And yet the needs are exploding across every sector.

• Today's LLMs are incompatible with European regulations: neither OpenAI, Anthropic, nor Google currently offers a model that is truly compliant with the AI Act or GDPR, which blocks their deployment in the public sector, healthcare, finance, or law.

• A lack of LLMs specialized in regulated professions: a French lawyer, a hospital physician, or a chartered accountant can't use ChatGPT to produce content or support their practice without risking serious errors or data leaks.

• Poorly integrated language, context, and culture: the subtleties of French law, public administration, medical texts, or even local social interactions are poorly understood by global, English-centric models.

• Integration, control, and customization tools that are still too complex or missing: there's a lack of simple, ethical, audited tools that would let SMEs, local authorities, or subject-matter experts build and deploy their own specialized agents or LLMs.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build open-source or sovereign LLMs adapted to European languages, corpora, and professions.
• Train vertical models for the public, legal, medical, and educational sectors.
• Develop tools for fine-tuning, auditing, monitoring, or controlled generation.
• Let every company or local authority deploy LLMs that are useful, safe, and traceable.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• Europe has the best regulations for data and AI ethics (AI Act, GDPR): a unique opportunity to take the lead on safe, responsible use.
• France is home to major technical players: HuggingFace, Mistral, Inria, Etalab.
• The needs in the public sector and regulated professions are immense and urgent.
• There's a strong European culture of open-source software, transparency, ethics, and linguistic diversity.

⚕️ Access to healthcare & prevention

❗ The problems

The French healthcare system, long seen as one of the best in the world, is now under strain. Medical deserts, overwhelmed emergency rooms, overworked doctors, late diagnoses, and more. Inequalities are widening, chronic diseases are exploding, and prevention remains marginal. And yet the technological tools exist to act upstream, support patients, and make the system more fluid, human, and sustainable.

• Difficult access to care, especially outside major cities: in some rural or peri-urban areas, you have to wait 6 months to see a specialist. Medical desertification already affects 30% of the country.

• Diagnostic wandering and chronic underdiagnosis: nearly one in two French people has already experienced diagnostic wandering. It causes suffering, anxiety, delayed treatment, and avoidable costs for society.

• A curative rather than preventive healthcare system: today, prevention represents less than 3% of healthcare spending. The system is designed to intervene too late, often in an emergency, with poorly coordinated care pathways.

• The digital divide and overloaded professionals: teleconsultation and remote monitoring tools exist, but they're poorly integrated, poorly used, or poorly understood by patients. Meanwhile, professionals are buried under paperwork.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Deploy tools for prevention, early screening, and continuous monitoring of fragile patients.
• Integrate simple, reliable, and ethical digital tools into care pathways.
• Create decentralized healthcare formats: mobile, local, digital, and collective.
• Strengthen the connection between insurers, professionals, and patients around a prevention-first approach.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇫🇷 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• The French social model, built on universal healthcare, is at risk without innovation in prevention.
• France has a solid health ecosystem: powerful mutual insurers, public hospitals, and digital-health startups (Alan, Qare, Nabla, and others).
• The regulatory framework is clear (HDS, DMP, Ségur numérique), the needs are urgent, and public opinion is ready.
• Europe is actively funding innovation in prevention through EU4Health and regional funds.

🚀 Digital euro & euro stablecoins

❗ The problems

The digital euro is being prepared by the ECB, but its centralized model is a concern: it's moving slowly, offers few concrete use cases, and risks being seen as a rigid digital version of today's euro. Meanwhile, the entire crypto and web3 ecosystem runs on dollar-denominated stablecoins, creating massive strategic dependence. Europe, though a pioneer in financial regulation (MiCA, GDPR), still has no simple, programmable, sovereign solution for its own citizens, businesses, or institutions.

• No credible European alternative to the digital dollar: USDT, USDC, and DAI dominate 90% of payments and exchanges in decentralized applications. The few euro stablecoins that exist are controlled by American entities.

• A centralized, controlled model for the digital euro: the ECB imposes strict usage limits, such as a €3,000 cap, with no native interoperability with web3 protocols or B2B applications. This severely limits innovation.

• No wallet or GDPR-native infrastructure: citizens and businesses alike lack access to a compliant, simple digital wallet that's usable in real life. No sovereign wallet is standard in Europe today.

• Technological and legal dependence on American platforms: Stripe, PayPal, MetaMask, Circle. All the rails for fast, mobile, or programmable payments are dominated by non-European players subject to the CLOUD Act.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build a reference euro stablecoin: MiCA-compliant, open source, transparent, and integrated into the major web3 protocols and payment tools.
• Develop sovereign European wallets: self-custody or hybrid wallets that are GDPR-native and compatible with both the digital euro AND euro stablecoins.
• Infrastructure for AI / autonomous-agent payments: tomorrow, agents will interact with APIs to book a ticket, sign up for a subscription, or buy a service. That requires a currency that's programmable, compliant, and local.
• Reducing dependence on American infrastructure: offer infrastructure building blocks (on/off ramp, custody, audit, analytics) operated from the EU, on European servers, with local governance.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• A solid technical ecosystem:
  • In France: Angle, Kaiko, Ledger, Mimo, Arianee, and more.
  • In Europe: Monerium, Circle EU, DAI Euro, and others.
• A recognized need for sovereignty: in the post-CLOUD Act / war-in-Ukraine / generative-AI context, demand for sovereign solutions is strategic.
• Talent + infrastructure: France has a strong crypto/web3 talent pool, a few sovereign cloud hubs (Outscale, Numspot), and growing public support for financial innovation.

⚡ Energy transition & distributed generation

❗ The problems

France and Europe are at an energy turning point. Between the demand for sovereignty, the ecological transition, soaring prices, and aging infrastructure, the current system is showing its limits. Despite the acceleration of renewables, their intermittency, chronic underinvestment in the grids, and dependence on gas imports expose citizens and businesses alike to energy that's expensive, unstable, and inequitably distributed.

• Persistent dependence on imported gas: despite ambitions to phase it out, imports of Russian gas rose in 2024. Market volatility, worsened by the war in Ukraine, weighs on electricity prices and threatens energy security.
• Grid stability tested by the intermittency of renewables: the rise of solar and wind creates new needs for storage, flexibility, and demand response to avoid outages or uncontrolled price spikes.
• Aging, underinvested grids: modernizing electrical infrastructure is lagging behind the needs. Current investment isn't enough to integrate renewables efficiently or support the electrification of transport, industry, and housing.
• Energy affordability: households and SMEs are hit by price volatility. Energy is becoming a driver of social exclusion and lost competitiveness, especially against countries like China or the United States where costs are lower.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Accelerate the deployment of microgrids, local storage systems, and assisted-efficiency solutions.
• Digitize the energy management of buildings, neighborhoods, and cities.
• Take part in modernizing the grid with smart-grid, AI, and IoT solutions, tariff flexibility, and consumption/generation forecasting.
• Build viable business models around citizen energy, local cooperatives, and shared generation.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• The EU expects a record 89 GW of renewable capacity additions in 2025. The market is ready, but the infrastructure isn't keeping up yet.
• France is a potential leader in smart grids (e.g. Linky) and energy storage (TagEnergy, Banque des Territoires).
• Regulations are evolving to boost the profitability of storage and encourage grid flexibility (see incentive tariffs, the ENTSO-E strategy).
• Europe is seeking to guarantee energy security while decarbonizing. That's a vast field of technological and economic innovation to structure starting now.

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🌾 Agriculture & food security

❗ The problems

European agriculture is going through a multi-factor crisis: rising costs, an aging workforce, foreign competition, regulatory pressure, and climate unpredictability. And yet it remains one of the economic, social, and ecological pillars of France and Europe. To guarantee farming that's profitable, sustainable, and resilient, it needs simple technological tools, accessible financing, and on-the-ground support.

• Exploding production costs: input prices (fertilizer, energy, animal feed) keep rising. In France, agricultural production prices climbed 4% year over year (February 2025). Investments in sustainable farming (e.g. regenerative) can reach €2,000 to €5,000/ha, often not covered by current subsidies.
• Regulatory pressure and uncertainty around standards: the environmental requirements of the European Green Deal (CSRD, CS3D) are complex to implement, with a lack of clarity and support. Compliance timelines and extra costs create operational uncertainty for producers.
• Labor shortages and difficult generational renewal: half of French farmers will retire by 2030. Only 12% are under 40. The obstacles: administrative burdens, low incomes, and lack of recognition. France is easing its visa policies for seasonal workers, reflecting growing dependence on foreign labor.
• Unfair competition and market standardization: food imports aren't always subject to the same production standards as European products (pesticides, animal welfare). This drives prices down, weakens local production, and makes "made in France" less competitive.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Equip farmers so they can take back control of their profitability, their soils, and their transition.
• Develop accessible solutions for regenerative agriculture, supply-chain optimization, and traceability.
• Accelerate the AgriFood Tech transformation: alternative proteins, food-waste reduction, personalized nutrition, circular economy.
• Reconcile competitiveness and food sovereignty in Europe.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇫🇷 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France is an agricultural powerhouse, but the current model is running out of steam. We need to reinvent it without giving up its diversity or its competitiveness.
• Europe has a strong framework (CAP, Green Deal) and available public funds, but the tools to make them accessible and effective still need to be built.
• The French AgriFood Tech ecosystem is growing: Alvie, FarmLEAP, Toopi, DigitalFoodLab, with dedicated international events (SAI Platform, the regenerative summit, the organic farming show, and more).
• Young people want to farm differently. It's up to us to give them the technical, financial, and educational means to make their transition a success.

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🔐 Digital sovereignty & cybersecurity

❗ The problems

Europe still depends heavily on non-European players for its digital infrastructure: cloud, AI, storage, cybersecurity, collaboration. This dependence creates legal risks (CLOUD Act vs GDPR), economic risks (market concentration), and strategic risks (cyberattacks, espionage, service outages). In an unstable geopolitical context where data has become a lever of power, controlling digital tools is no longer optional: it's a matter of national security.

• Dependence on American cloud providers: more than 90% of the cloud infrastructure used in Europe is in the hands of AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, with data exposed to the CLOUD Act even when stored in Europe.

• A surge in cyberattacks targeting public services, hospitals, and local authorities: ransomware, massive outages, and data theft are multiplying, often on critical systems that are poorly protected or poorly maintained.

• Technological gap for European players: in terms of R&D, technical performance, or features, sovereign providers are still behind, often for lack of funding, an adapted go-to-market, or coherent political support.

• Risk for companies and local authorities: too many SMEs, mid-caps, or town halls use tools they don't control, can't audit, and can't secure, for lack of a credible or accessible alternative.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build sovereign building blocks for cloud, collaboration, analytics, or embedded AI.
• Offer cybersecurity that's simple, affordable, integrated, and auditable for public and private players.
• Let local authorities, hospitals, and institutions take back control of their data and workflows.
• Equip the European cyber sector so it isn't reserved for governments and large corporations.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• Europe has legal frameworks unlike any other in the world (GDPR, AI Act, NIS2, and more), but hasn't yet built its native tools.
• Players like OVH, Scaleway, NumSpot, and Outscale are emerging, but they need product, UX, and API support.
• Local authorities are asking for sovereignty, but have neither the expertise nor the means to build it on their own.
• The stakes aren't only technological: they're cultural, political, and ethical. And it's urgent.

🚌 Mobility & sustainable urbanization

❗ The problems

European cities are increasingly dense, congested, and polluted. Our infrastructure, designed for the 20th century, struggles to absorb new uses (deliveries, bikes, remote work, an aging population, and more). Public transport is under pressure, the car remains dominant, and rural areas are too often left behind. The result: stress, unequal access, rising emissions, and a feeling of being trapped in poorly served areas.

• Congestion, pollution, and a lower quality of life: in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Brussels, or Milan, traffic jams cost users hundreds of hours a year. Air quality falls below recommended thresholds in most urban areas.

• Two-speed mobility: over-equipped metros vs. cut-off areas. In some rural areas, there's no bus, no train, no solution. This hampers access to jobs, training, and healthcare.

• Obsolete logistics and urban models: the boom in e-commerce, remote work, dark stores, and low-emission zones (LEZs) makes traditional logistics schemes inefficient, costly, or polluting.

• Rigid urban planning, ill-suited to experimentation: cities lack tools to test, adapt, and manage transformations in real time. Street furniture, traffic flows, and needs evolve too quickly for traditional planning.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Reinvent local mobility through shared, autonomous, electric, or intermodal solutions.
• Digitize urban planning and decision-making for local authorities.
• Build urban logistics infrastructure that's clean, shared, and optimized.
• Improve the clarity, accessibility, and inclusiveness of transport solutions.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• Our cities are old, dense, and diverse: they're open-air laboratories for innovation.
• Local authorities are asking for concrete, measurable solutions, but lack modern tools.
• Europe is investing in the sustainable city through the New European Bauhaus, ERDF funds, France 2030, and territorial recovery contracts.
• French startups in mobility, urban planning, and urban logistics have already shown their capacity to innovate (Vianova, Cityscoot, Pony, Kisio, and others).

🔧 Administrative simplification

❗ The problems

In France, public administration is both omnipresent and often illegible. For citizens and businesses alike, procedures are long, complex, and dehumanized. The pile-up of rules, platforms, and points of contact makes processes Kafkaesque. This administrative burden creates stress, dropouts, and inequalities, along with an enormous waste of energy, time, and money.

• Procedures too complex, giving up out of exhaustion: whether it's obtaining a CAF benefit, starting a company, declaring income, or getting a permit, the technical complexity or lack of support drives people to give up (12% of households abandon an administrative procedure each year).

• A massive digital divide: older people, those in precarious situations, and those far from the digital world are the first to be excluded from an increasingly paperless system with no accessible human support.

• Mental load and lost productivity for freelancers and micro-businesses: between accounting, URSSAF, VAT, filings, and keeping up with regulations, entrepreneurs spend several days a month on paperwork.

• Fragmented, poorly designed public tools: users have to juggle dozens of accounts (Ameli, Impots.gouv, France Travail, and more), logins, and formats, with no unified view and interfaces that are sometimes obsolete or contradictory.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build accessible AI assistants to navigate complex procedures.
• Offer simple interfaces to automate or delegate the legal obligations of micro-businesses and SMEs.
• Unify the user experience around well-designed B2C or B2B platforms connected to public APIs.
• Reconcile design, simplicity, and administrative compliance.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇫🇷 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France is one of the most administered and most digitized countries in the world, yet without coherent usability.
• Public APIs exist (API.gouv, FranceConnect+, MonComptePro, and others), but they're barely used by modern interfaces.
• There's enormous demand, from citizens and local authorities alike, for tools that are simple, understandable, and dignified.
• The UX, product, no-code/low-code, and AI talent is already here. What's missing is the right brief and the right team.

🌿 Ethical luxury & export

❗ The problems

The French luxury sector, a jewel of our economy and our international image, is going through a turbulent period. After the post-Covid euphoria, key markets like China and the United States are slowing, costs are exploding, younger generations reject ostentation, and regulatory pressure on sustainability is rising sharply. Historic brands need to adapt deeply, but often lack the digital tools, cultural channels, or structure to reinvent their model.

• Slowdown in traditional luxury markets: in China, consumers are turning to their own cultural heritage. In the United States, economic uncertainty weighs on high-end purchases. In France and Europe, inflation and the crisis of meaning are driving status-driven consumption down.

• A surge in expectations around ethics and sustainability: the European CSDDD directive imposes transparency and accountability across the entire value chain. Brands have to prove their impact, or face penalties or exclusion from certain markets.

• A lack of tools for storytelling, digital export, and circular resale: houses don't master their online narratives, international direct sales, or second-hand platforms, letting cultural or economic value slip away.

• Losing touch with younger generations: Gen Z and Alpha reject bling luxury and prefer authenticity, cultural rarity, and a direct connection with the artisan or the region. Luxury's codes need to be hybridized with those of gaming, heritage, or immersive digital experiences.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Rethink luxury as a cultural medium (history, heritage, identity).
• Highlight authenticity, traceability, and sustainability through tech and design.
• Create immersive digital experiences: storytelling, exploration, sharing.
• Build the tools for exporting, reselling, and culturally hybridizing brands.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇫🇷 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France is the world capital of luxury, but also of artisanal craftsmanship, wine, gastronomy, and creativity.
• The design, culture, fashion, tech, and impact talent is plentiful and motivated (e.g. Vestiaire Collective, Arianee, LVMH Maison des Startups, and others).
• Europe is imposing a strong regulatory shift: only brands that adapt quickly will be able to keep exporting.
• There's a huge reservoir of small family houses that are just waiting to move into the digital age, but need the right tools to do it with style.

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🎓 Education & adult upskilling

❗ The problems

The French education system (and the European one more broadly) trains people too slowly, too theoretically, and too late. Faced with the rapid transformation of jobs, the challenges of retraining, and the growing complexity of the professional world, adults and young people alike struggle to find learning paths that are relevant, motivating, and concrete. The result: companies can't find the skills they need, millions of workers stagnate or drop out, and the most vulnerable stay stuck.

• Initial education ill-suited to economic realities: schools and universities still teach little of the concrete know-how expected in digital, the ecological transition, self-employment, or project management.

• Elitist and underused continuing education: only 37% of adults take a training course each year in Europe. The least qualified rarely access it, out of ignorance or discouragement. The CPF, while useful, remains poorly exploited.

• Massive geographic and social inequalities: residents of rural or disadvantaged areas, the unemployed, young people without qualifications, and seniors retraining rarely access flexible or job-ready formats.

• Rigid teaching formats: little value placed on active learning, mentoring, peer-to-peer, micro-certification, or entrepreneurship. Content is rarely personalized or contextualized.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Create à-la-carte upskilling paths, by skill rather than by diploma.
• Equip companies, freelancers, and institutions to train continuously without depending on the national education system.
• Multiply short, hybrid, immersive, mentored, or practice-based formats.
• Reassess the value of "invisible skills": soft skills, the ability to learn, adaptability, and self-management.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• Europe aims for 60% adult participation in training by 2030 (vs 37% today): the room is enormous.
• France has a strong tradition of continuing education, but the tools to make it accessible, appealing, and pragmatic are lacking.
• Inspiring models exist (Simplon, OpenClassrooms, Rocket School, and others), but they cover only a small fraction of the needs.
• The public funds (France Travail, CPF, OPCO, PIA, Erasmus+, ESF) are there. What's needed is the right products to make them useful.

🧓 Demographics, aging & autonomy

❗ The problems

France, like Europe, is aging fast, and it isn't ready. By 2030, a third of French people will be over 60. The number of people over 85, the most exposed to loss of autonomy, is exploding. The healthcare system is undersized, housing models are obsolete, and support schemes are scattered or insufficient. Yet the vast majority of seniors want to stay independent and at home, but have neither the tools, the resources, nor the adapted environment to do so.

• A healthcare system ill-suited to aging: too few geriatricians, nurses trained in age-related conditions, or intermediate structures between hospital and home. Nursing homes are saturated or in crisis, and home hospitalization remains rare.

• Housing that's poorly adapted or not adapted at all to loss of autonomy: in France, more than 90% of homes are unsuitable for aging. Older people stay home, at the risk of falls, isolation, or social breakdown.

• Massive isolation of older people: 25% of those over 75 live alone, often far from services, sometimes in declining rural areas. Social connection and prevention are the great absentees of current policies.

• Pension and financing systems under strain: a falling ratio of workers to retirees, hard-to-read pensions, and autonomy support that's insufficient or inaccessible for those who need it most.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Equip aging in place: health, prevention, coordination, social connection, home automation, administrative help.
• Create intermediate housing formats: modular, collective, evolving, human.
• Offer inclusive digital services that are simple and adapted to seniors, or operated on their behalf.
• Digitize, simplify, and make accessible the rights tied to retirement and autonomy.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France already has a partial financing structure (APA, CNAV, pension funds, local authorities), but it's too fragmented and barely digitized.
• The stakes are immense for local areas: keeping seniors in villages and small towns means social AND economic vitality.
• The non-profit, mutualist, quasi-public, and entrepreneurial fabric exists: what's missing is the right tools, simple, unified, and designed for users.
• Europe has made this a strategic and budgetary priority, notably through the "Healthy Aging 2021–2030" plan and ESF+ funds.

🧠 Mental health & psychological well-being

❗ The problems

A silent crisis is becoming a major public emergency. Burnout, anxiety, depression, isolation: the mental health of Europeans, and of French people in particular, is deteriorating fast. Young people, employees, caregivers, older people: every group is affected. And yet care is insufficient, unevenly distributed, and too often stigmatized. Professionals are scarce, waiting times too long, and the tools ill-suited to everyday needs.

• A surge in burnout and workplace stress: in France, more than 3 million working people are in psychological distress, with alarming rates among the young and in caregiving, teaching, and digital professions.

• A rise in anxiety and depressive disorders: more than one in five French people has experienced a depressive episode lasting several weeks. Among young adults, prevalence has nearly doubled in five years. Mental health has become a generational emergency.

• Massive isolation and loneliness: seniors, young people, isolated parents, students: more and more people find themselves alone, with no space to be heard, no support structure, no regular social connection.

• A shortage of professionals and unreasonable waiting times: in rural areas, you sometimes have to wait 6 months for a psychiatry appointment. Even in cities, care remains scarce, expensive, or unsuitable. Therapists are overloaded, caregivers are suffering.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build accessible, discreet, and progressive tools for psychological support.
• Develop mixed human + AI formats to scale access to support without sacrificing ethics.
• Integrate mental health into everyday settings: workplaces, schools, local communities, families.
• Destigmatize mental health: make emotional prevention as natural as physical hygiene.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France has a structured care system, but mental health is still underfunded, under-integrated, and underestimated.
• The tech, health, design, and teaching talent exists. What's missing is a product and ethical vision.
• Citizens are ready: 77% consider mental health as important as physical health.
• The EU is pushing to integrate mental health into public policy (employment, education, local areas), and funding is taking shape (national plans, the Europe of Health, social funds).

👔 Guidance, employment & career transitions

❗ The problems

Millions of French and European people are now "between two statuses": neither employees, nor unemployed, nor fully self-employed. The labor market is evolving fast, careers are increasingly hybrid, and yet the systems for support, social protection, and guidance remain designed for traditional employment or strict unemployment. The result: an immense gray zone, a source of anxiety, exclusion, and wasted potential.

• Administrative haze and social insecurity between two statuses: the end of a fixed-term contract without registration, the start of a freelance assignment without a clear status, combining RSA with work. Many live through invisible transitions, poorly covered legally, with no stable social rights.
• Difficulty accessing rights, training, and support: guidance and retraining paths are still too fragmented. The available tools can lack the personalization or fluidity needed to match the realities of non-linear careers.
• Growing precarity and an explosion of short or fragmented contracts: short assignments, umbrella employment, temp work, self-employment, but without real protection. The gray area around unemployment is widening, with no fully adapted solution.
• A lack of recognition for atypical situations: many people in career transition don't feel fully supported or valued, and struggle to picture their future for lack of clarity on their rights or opportunities.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build a continuous professional "compass": guidance, retraining, statuses, training, social rights.
• Smooth transitions between statuses (employee ↔ self-employed ↔ entrepreneur ↔ unemployed).
• Build platforms genuinely centered on the person, not on the administration.
• Recognize the value of atypical career paths and cross-cutting skills.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France has a rich foundation of schemes (France Travail, CPF, OPCO, URSSAF, and more), but they would benefit from being more interconnected, legible, and adapted to the diversity of career paths.
• The human potential is there: millions of people want to work, retrain, and progress, but don't know how.
• Europe promotes continuing education, professional mobility, and self-employment, and is calling for new forms of support.
• Initiatives like HelloWork, Skilleos, Indépendants.co, JobTeaser, and OpenClassrooms show we can do better by simplifying and humanizing guidance and transition paths.

🗺️ Tourism (and health tourism) in France

❗ The problems

France is the world's top tourist destination, but not the most profitable or the most innovative. Despite 100 million visitors in 2024, the revenue generated is lower than Spain's. French tourism remains too concentrated, seasonal, undervalued, and poorly adapted to the expectations of demanding international travelers. On the health side, France has one of the best medical systems in the world, but hasn't yet made it a true international destination for care and well-being.

🔎 Classic tourism

• The footfall/value paradox: a record volume of visitors, but a low average spend. The offering remains too generic, poorly segmented, and insufficiently high-end.
• Aging & inadequate infrastructure: hotels and restaurants are often obsolete, poorly adapted to Asian or American standards. The experience isn't always smooth or memorable.
• Overtourism & concentration: Paris, the Côte d'Azur, and the Loire are saturated, while other regions are underused. Seasonality remains very strong.
• Climate & sustainability challenges: pressure on resources, polluting transport, and rising expectations for "responsible" tourism.

🏥 Health tourism

• Underexploited medical excellence: France has world-reference centers (Curie, Pitié-Salpêtrière, and others) but few pathways for international patients.
• A patient experience that can be improved: reception, languages, concierge services, digitalization, clear information: the experience is far from the standards expected by wealthy or international patients.
• Poorly coordinated wellness and prevention: the wealth of thermal spas and wellness retreats is there, but it's barely visible, poorly integrated, and poorly marketed internationally.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Reposition France on premium tourism that's personalized, deseasonalized, and high value-added.
• Develop a structured offering of health and wellness tourism, combining hospitals, clinics, spas, and regions.
• Better distribute flows, highlight forgotten regions, and create unique, sustainable, immersive experiences.
• Digitize the traveler experience end to end: before, during, and after.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇫🇷 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France already attracts tourists, but doesn't always know how to add value, segment, or build loyalty.
• The medical and wellness offering is of excellent quality, but lacks packaging, experience, and channels.
• The tech, hospital, and cultural talent is there. The intersection of culture, health, luxury, and nature is a distinctly French strength.
• The government is already pushing these topics through "Destination France," France Tourisme Ingénierie, and regional health and sustainable-tourism plans.

💰 Finance, insurance & risk management

❗ The problems

The finance and insurance sector in France and Europe faces growing complexity. At the convergence of the climate crisis, cyber threats, regulatory transformations, and technological demands, financial institutions have to adapt their models while regaining citizens' trust and supporting the transition of the economy.

• The rise of climate and cyber risks: extreme weather events and cyberattacks have become the leading insurance risks. Some areas are becoming difficult to insure. Costs are exploding, for the insured and insurers alike.
• The legacy of low rates and economic uncertainty: years of near-zero rates eroded the profitability of life-insurance products. The return of inflation and financial volatility call for a redesign of portfolios and offerings.
• Inflationary and fragmented regulation: DORA, Basel III, MiCA, SFDR, CSRD. The European regulatory layer cake generates high compliance costs, holds back innovation, and hurts agility, especially for smaller players.
• Claims inflation and pressure on prices: in auto or health, repair and reimbursement costs are exploding. Insurers struggle to balance affordable premiums with economic viability.
• A still-fragmented financial single market: differences in national regulations hinder cross-border investment and hold back the emergence of European champions in insurance or savings.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Build insurance tailored to emerging risks (climate, cyber, energy transition).
• Develop tools for risk management and regulatory transparency (compliance-as-a-service).
• Accelerate sustainable finance: green bonds, ESG scoring, transition financing, climate models.
• Digitize the insurance experience: claims filing, customer relations, underwriting, prevention.
• Create hybrid products combining insurance + tech + service (prevention, monitoring, recommendation).

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• Europe leads in sustainable regulation and digital resilience, but doesn't yet have dominant players in insurtech or climate-native finance.
• France is a growing FinTech, InsurTech, and RegTech hub: Alan, Luko, Descartes, Leocare, plus a unique network of mutual insurers.
• Major events (the 2024 Olympics, the 2025 AI Action Summit, the Sustainable Investment Forum Europe, and others) show the momentum is there.
• The cross-sector synergies are numerous: energy, mobility, agriculture, health, digital. Finance needs to become the catalyst of the transitions.

🏭 Industry, reshoring & modernization

❗ The problems

French and European industry is under pressure. High production costs, critical dependencies, lost competitiveness, chronic underinvestment, poorly coordinated ecological and digital transitions, and more. Faced with the war in Ukraine, Asian competition, and the climate emergency, it's becoming vital to reinvent a sovereign industrial model that's efficient, low-carbon, and attractive to talent.

• Energy costs and a production disadvantage: energy prices in Europe remain among the highest in the world. The end of ARENH in France by the end of 2025 introduces tariff uncertainty for manufacturers and threatens the competitiveness of energy-intensive sites.
• Vulnerable supply chains: geopolitical crises, climate, dependence on China for batteries or rare metals. Supply chains are fragile. Reshoring or diversification is becoming strategic.
• A shortage of skilled labor and a decline in R&D: the talent shortage in industry is widening (digital, automation, "green skills"). R&D investment remains below Germany's, holding back innovation.
• Structural industrial decline: in France, more factories close than open. Industrial output is falling, the trade balance remains in deficit, and the auto sector is struggling against China on batteries and electric vehicles.
• Desynchronized ecological and digital transitions: Industry 4.0 demands more electricity and data, but green electrification isn't ready yet. The financing and coordination of these transformations are still too slow.

🌍 Opportunities to explore

• Rebuild a modern, low-carbon, automated, competitive industrial fabric.
• Tap the potential of additive manufacturing, robotics, and industrial AI.
• Support the transition to a circular industry: recycling, resource efficiency, strategic reshoring.
• Support local reindustrialization through SaaS tools, digital twins, and platforms for managing carbon, energy, and quality.

🛠️ Examples of concrete solutions

🇪🇺 Why we can (and must) do it in France / Europe

• France has one of the best deeptech ecosystems in Europe, but lacks modern industrial systems to actually produce.
• National and European recovery plans (France 2030, Green Deal) target industry, but need tech operators to deliver.
• The industrial fabric exists, but needs to be reconnected to innovation and young talent.

Nearly 50% of French industrial startups are already greentech. Now we need to industrialize greentech itself.

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