Here's Why Entrepreneurs Working in AI Should Look at France for Partnership The best way to establish a partnership is to look for international startup communities or startup hubs

I have previously been writing about how important it is for entrepreneurs to establish international relations and partnerships as early as possible for a number of different reasons including:

You get a more diversified view on your idea or venture, which will help you develop it in such a way that it will be more likely to become a success.
International relationship and partnerships will be help promoting your idea, product or service to a broader audience. That includes customers, investors and new partners.

You gain new important knowledge about the market, your competitors, your strengths and weaknesses - all valuable knowledge when you want to succeed with your venture.

One of the best ways to get started with international partnership as an early stage company is to look out for programs that tries to attract a specific kind of startups.

If you are starting up in the artificial intelligence area you might want to look at France for establishing your international connections

The French President Emmanuel Macron had recently visited India. On the last day of his visit he invited Indian entrepreneurs, scientist and researchers to come here to France to establish partnerships with French and other international entrepreneurs.

Later, President Macron has allocated 1,5 billion Euro for a particular area, namely artificial intelligence. So if you are a startup or in an early stage in this field you might want to look at France for establishing partnerships.

Good Cultural Fit

Succeeding with international partnerships is mostly about a good cultural fit. A good cultural fit is the foundation for establishing trust, which again is the foundation for doing business together.

Most mergers and acquisitions fail due to cultural clashes and most business deals or partnerships fail to be accomplished due to cultural misunderstandings. It is therefore very important that you as an entrepreneur take the cultural fit into consideration when you look for international partnerships.

I have interacted with companies and executives on international business over the years and they have all said that the main reason why they didn't succeed was cultural differences. Unfortunately most of them blame the other party and fail to see their own lack of cultural intelligence.

You can't stereotype about cultures saying that the Indians are like that, the French are like that , etc. But you can look at how use to is a particular group of people is to cultural diversity. In that respect Europe, like India is a great place because there are so many different cultures living closely together with different languages, religions, history, etc.

When you seek to create partnership with people from a culture with a fairly high level of cultural intelligence there will be a much higher desire, will and ability to find a common ground. That opposite to if you seek to establish partnerships with someone who is not use to deal with other cultures. In that case you might be rejected, cheated on or feel humiliated very easily.

How to Get Started With Establishing International Relationships?

The best way is to look for international startup communities or startup hubs. The largest startup hub in the world is located in Paris, France and is called Station F. But there are many other hubs like that around Europe.

The good thing about these startup hubs is that you will meet people just like yourself but who come from a completely different background, with different dreams, different strategies and different network of people. When you start sharing ideas and experiences with them you will develop new and better ideas - together. That will increase the likelihood of your venture to become successful and set you ahead of the competition.

Start Developing Relationships as Early as Possible

Developing relationships takes time. Especially if you want to create strong relationships with which you develop and expand a business.

So start as early as you possibly can to identify who you want to network with. For that identification process LinkedIn, Xing and Viadeo are great platforms. You probably know LinkedIn. Xing and Viadeo are European equivalent. Xing is German and Viadeo is French but you can create profile and communicate in English on both of them.

Start today instead of tomorrow.