- they tell you explicitly you can contact the consulate, that's when you're not in France
- If you're already in France, there is a big chance you've already been in contact with the prefecture, so you'll know what it is. Besides, it's very googleable.
Finally, yes, the prefecture is definitely not the best place to hang out, but I'd be surprised if they did not get very precise and direct instructions on how to take care of those candidates.
I'm sorry, but ... typical French reaction (I'm French myself)
The government and the administration is trying to improve the climate on founders/visa/startups/tech, and yes, it's far from being perfect and there are a lot of pieces missing and a lot that could be improved, but, at least, they seem to be trying.
And then you come, and just tell people they should go somewhere else "because it will be too hard".
So, I'm all for warning that it won't be all pink and easy, but I don't think it ought to be as hard as you seem to imply.
One thing which is definitely true is learning a few words and know how to say "Hi" in French and that you don't know the language will go a long way.
After, that, if you feel like you want to stay in the country, you will naturally go towards learning the language anyway.
I lived 7 years in the Netherlands, and you can go mostly fine with just English (even though, in some more rural areas, it can still be hard despite the reputation of the country), but learning Dutch helped me integrate and "unlock" situations where English would not have been enough, just because it showed to the people involved I was willing to integrate better in the country and make efforts to be understood.
I don't know how altitude is calculated on Mars, but, for instance, there are some landing strips of Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) that are below sea level and I expect an altimeter to give a negative value there. But this value is correct though !
I still have found my holy grail : a kind of knowledge management software where I could just stuff things probably with tags.
Not only links (I have pinboard for that) but ideas, snippets of knowledge etc.
This would be online (not necessarily self-hosted) and I'm willing to pay for that.
Accessible via smartphones and potentially with an email gateway would be great.
I don't think mindmapping software fit the bill. I really would like tag and/or full-text search.
Wikis come close but it's quite cumbersome to add a piece of info.