In the chaos of a legislative campaign marked by the surge of the National Rally (RN), the creation of the New Popular Front and the mobilization of the majority, how are business leaders positioned? While party leaders held a “grand oral” before the French Business Movement (Medef) on Thursday, June 20, press releases from employers’ organizations multiplied. In the tech sector, chosen for a long time by Emmanuel Macron, the start-up association France Digitale published on Thursday June 13 a Tribune pour castigation “the return of nationalism, the temptation of extremes or self-reaction”. But this message is not to everyone’s taste in the sector.
“I don’t recognize myself at all in this call, explains Thomas Fauré, the founder of the secure professional social network Whaller. This represents a majority current, that of the “start-up nation”, but not the entire French tech ecosystem. » The president of this collaborative platform publisher “sovereign” for businesses goes further by spontaneously recounting this anecdote: “I was approached by Les Républicains (LR), who offered me an investiture for the legislative elections, supported by the National Rally”, explains Mr. Fauré. He immediately states that he has “refused, for personal reasons”, but recognizes that the proposed political orientation suited him. If the entrepreneur says he refuses the label of” far right “, dismiss ” racism ” and not give voting instructions, he presents himself as “sovereignist and conservative”. Contacted, the entourage of Eric Ciotti, still president of LR and promoter of a rapprochement with the RN, did not respond.
Father of six children, Catholic, trained in the Scouts of Europe – his leader within the movement, Jérôme Moreau, co-founded Whaller with him before leaving the company in 2018, report Christian family –, this engineer graduated from Centrale Lille left the Safran aeronautical group in 2012 with the ambition of launching a sovereign social network. The Bolloré group welcomed the start-up within it as a diversification project, until Mr. Fauré sought in 2018 to develop independently, with new financing. Today, the business leader says he has “very little contact” with Vincent Bolloré, owner of the media CNews, C8, Europe 1 or The JDD. Whaller has since made a place for itself as a secure communication platform dedicated to businesses, presented as an alternative to the American services Microsoft Teams or Facebook Workplace. The company claims more than twenty thousand customers, including for example the French army.
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