How to visit Station F

Over the last year alone, over 100,000 people came to Station F for meetings and visits (see all of our year 1 data here). Over 63,000 were invited directly by startups for meetings on campus and over 5,000 signed-up for guided tours in English and French through our website. We actually had so many requests that we had to hire someone just to handle visits. And there were loads more people that came for unofficial tours held by startups and programs on campus.

Why you need a visit reservation.

People are often surprised that we ask people to sign-up to visit Station F. After all, aren’t startup spaces just open-access for everyone?

Well, actually no. Many people forget that Station F is a workspace. Yes, a workspace.

In fact over 1,000 companies are working inside our building — in a massive open space area. In order to maintain a safe, comfortable and productive work area for them, we don’t allow people to randomly enter the building as they please. In order to view the work areas, they need to sign-up for a tour and be accompanied by a guide. This seems to shock many people, which is very surprising for me. I mean, would you just show up outside of Google HQ demanding access to their campus? Probably not. Well, this is kind of like that.

If you would like to visit Station F, please be sure to sign-up via our website here.

We host visits daily (on weekdays) in both English and French. Please note that our visits do not enter the startup zone in order to protect the productivity of our working companies.

Also, due to a huge demand, visits cannot be booked after 45 days and are often full! If you can’t find a slot, just be patient, some new ones will show up :)

Yes, you can enter the CREATE zone. Here’s how.

As many of you already know, Station F is divided into 3 zones — including one zone dedicated entirely to startups called the CREATE zone. The CREATE zone is only accessible to startup programs, selected startups and their guests. In other words, it’s the startups who decide who enters the zone, but they need to approval of their startup program manager (and we have a limited number of total visitors per day). Usually, this is for startups mentors who need to work all day with them. We don’t have visitors who enter this zone out of curiosity.

This seems to surprise many people — including the fact that we don’t give investors automatic access to the startup zone. Fact. However, the reason we do things this way is because this is what our startups requested. After all, it’s their workspace and they wanted to be able to control who comes in and out — which sounds pretty fair to us.

So, if you’re looking to enter the CREATE zone, start working with our startup program :)

No visit registration? No meeting invitation?

Let’s say that you just show up at Station F with no visit registration and no meeting invitation. Does that mean you can’t see anything? Of course not, there is still plenty to see. We have quite a few areas that are open to the public that allow you to view into the building:

• The coffee shop and the massive restaurant La Felicità are both open to the public.
• We also have 2 walkways that cut through the building and allow you to view into the different zones, called Passage Louise and Passage Anatole.
• One of the walkways ( Passage Louise) is where the pop-up space is situated (also open to the public) and the post office.
• We also feature 3 of our startups in this zone, either demoing or selling products every Monday from 11am-3pm.

Otherwise, another way to gain access to Station F for those of you looking for a hack is to sign-up for an event. We have plenty of events open to the public.

And if you’re too lazy to get off your couch, you can visit STATION F in VR thanks to our startup Uptale! Just go on our website to discover fun facts by navigating the campus like a pro!

We’re looking forward to welcoming new visitors on campus — but please keep this in mind if you are thinking of stopping by any time soon :)