Burning tires , riots, blocked roads. These were the scenes last year when French taxi drivers protested against U.S. ride-hailing app Uber.
The incidents did little to help shake off the long-standing image of France as a hotbed if anti-innovation. But look a little closer, and the picture is very different.
"France is pretty bad at communication on innovation. Often you are stigmatized by strikes, we tend to be the champions for, and it becomes a cliché," Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder of long-distance ride sharing start-up BlaBlaCar, one of Europe's star start-ups currently valued over $1 billion, told CNBC by phone.
In recent times France has managed to attract an increasing amount of tech investment. In 2015, French start-ups raised 960 million euros ($1.08 billion), up from 862 million euros in 2014, according to data from Tech.eu, a technology publication and research body.
Some of the biggest deals last year included a $200 million round for BlaBlaCar and $110 million in funding for music streaming service Deezer.
And venture capital (VC) firms have been happy to jump into the country.
"I came back to Europe in 2011 after spending a significant amount of time in the Valley. One of the things that brought me back because I really though the ecosystem in Europe was really emerging and there was something very interesting, it felt I was witnessing the rebirth of the ecosystem," Phillipe Botteri, a partner at top pan-European VC firm Accel, told CNBC in a phone interview.
Accel, often seen as a key investor to have on board by start-ups, has invested in the likes of Showroomprive and BlaBlaCar in France.
"France is the number two country after the U.K. where we deploy the most capital. I think France is a very attractive market for venture and if I look at the overall trend of European tech, which has been growing, France has been growing faster," Botteri said, adding that Accel has invested about $150 million in the past few years in French start-ups.
Still, there are some French regulations that still bug start-ups. One of the most complained-about is "social charges," where, for example, companies have to pay for health benefits of people they hire. This can mean the capital that would be used on hiring another person would need to be spent on an existing employee. But the government has introduced a tax credit scheme to try to reduce this.
And France's government has been trying hard to shake off the negative image of the country and introduce new laws to foster its digital economy.