Xavier Niel is a French entrepreneur and business magnate. Born on August 25, 1967, in Creuse, France, he is best known as the founder and majority shareholder of Iliad SA, a telecommunications company. Iliad is the parent company of Free, one of the major Internet service providers in France.
Xavier Niel is renowned for his contributions to the French telecommunications industry, particularly for introducing disruptive business models that challenged traditional telecom operators. Free gained prominence for its low-cost and innovative services, including its Freebox offerings.
Apart from his involvement in the telecommunications sector, Xavier Niel has been involved in various other ventures. He is also known for his investments in technology startups and for his role in Station F, the largest startup campus in the world, located in Paris.
Xavier Niel Quotes
1. “When you love competition, you don’t want the market to consolidate.”
— Xavier Niel
2. “Telecoms is a national business. There isn’t a European market. There’s no Telecom Italia in France.”
— Xavier Niel
3. “In life, you need a house and a car. After that, you have a choice.”
— Xavier Niel
4. “’Entrepreneur’ is a French word.”
— Xavier Niel
5. “You can spend your money on art works and sit down and look at them. Or you can use your money to help people.”
— Xavier Niel
6. “France has the least social mobility of any developed country. The social elevator no longer works. It’s broken.”
— Xavier Niel
7. “It’s funny how the smallest things I’ve done speak the loudest about me, but I like that.”
— Xavier Niel
8. “Personally, I have invested in around ten U.S. companies and will continue to do so. That doesn’t give me a strong experience in the American market. But I have an understanding of the public.”
— Xavier Niel
9. “I always follow the same idea: Start small and disrupt to create something big.”
— Xavier Niel
10. “From France, you can call anywhere in the world for free. Americans can’t do that!”
— Xavier Niel
11. “France is a fantastic country. It’s between the Anglo-Saxon and Latin cultures. We have some of the Anglo-Saxon rigor, and some of the Latin quirkiness.”
— Xavier Niel
12. “We need to create an ecosystem which will make young people want to start their own company.”
— Xavier Niel
13. “The most sought-after candidates in the world today by companies like mine are people who make computer software – there’s a shortage of talent.”
— Xavier Niel
14. “Giving only 50% of your fortune is not enough.”
— Xavier Niel
15. “If you know how to make software, then you can create big things.”
— Xavier Niel
16. “Each week I try to have three lunches with my children, one working lunch, and one lunch with mates.”
— Xavier Niel
17. “I once said, ‘Steve Jobs is the American Xavier Niel,’ but that was humour.”
— Xavier Niel
18. “I know one business, and that’s how to make software.”
— Xavier Niel
19. “I don’t like clothes. I don’t especially like cars. I have a very nice house. I get sick on a boat.”
— Xavier Niel
20. “I’m always investing. I’m constantly in talks with someone about some opportunity.”
— Xavier Niel
21. “I have done a lot of stupid things in my life.”
— Xavier Niel
22. “If you are worried about the risk to your reputation, you don’t launch a telecoms firm in an aggressive way.”
— Xavier Niel
23. “The real force of Silicon Valley is the mentality, the spirit. There’s no reason at all that can’t be replicated in Paris.”
— Xavier Niel
24. “A free, analytical and questioning press must be helped survive.”
— Xavier Niel
25. “I’m not unusual; it’s the others who are strange.”
— Xavier Niel
26. “Stephane Richard is far more attuned to the market than Didier Lombard.”
— Xavier Niel
27. “France has a specificity – the market players who provide Internet access are the telecom operators, and all of the players are French. They had a habit of, let’s say, getting along with each other, and the prices traditionally were very high.”
— Xavier Niel
28. “Any country that wants to lower its mobile phone rates, all they need to do is bring in an aggressive player.”
— Xavier Niel
29. “I like being an outsider. It is better in France on the outside.”
— Xavier Niel
30. “I’d rather people talked about the 1,000 most successful French Internet companies instead of the 5 or 10 faces we already know – including mine.”
— Xavier Niel
31. “We have 200,000 kids a year who drop out of the French school system and have no hope. They become a drag on society.”
— Xavier Niel
32. “Nobody believed in the success of the Internet.”
— Xavier Niel
33. “Mark Zuckerberg did his own software for Facebook, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin made their own for Google.”
— Xavier Niel
34. “We have to help young people, because at the end of the day, we won’t have an economy if we don’t have them.”
— Xavier Niel
35. “I don’t think Steve Jobs had much desire to share his fortune.”
— Xavier Niel
36. “I made a lot of money, and I want to give something back to my country.”
— Xavier Niel
37. “The question for France and all countries is, ‘Do you favour foreign Internet operators that do not pay, or do you favour national operators who pay?’”
— Xavier Niel
38. “YouTube is a problem. It has very big traffic, but it refuses to contribute to the weight of that traffic.”
— Xavier Niel
39. “Countries like France should not be naive. We don’t have a French YouTube or Amazon or Netflix.”
— Xavier Niel
