Roxanne Varza runs Station F, the world’s largest startup campus, based in Paris. That one fact already puts her at the center of European tech. But what makes her profile worth paying attention to is how she got there, and what she has actually built along the way.
She grew up in Silicon Valley and went on to study at UCLA, Sciences Po Paris, and the London School of Economics. That mix of backgrounds shows up in how she operates, across borders, in multiple languages, and with a sharp sense for what founders actually need.
Before Station F:
Before Station F, Varza led Microsoft Ventures Paris and was the editor of TechCrunch France. The journalism background is relevant. It means she spent years learning how to identify real stories in tech, which is a different skill than most operators carry into ecosystem work.
She also co-founded StarHer, now part of SISTA, Tech.eu, and Failcon Paris. These were not vanity projects. StarHer focused on supporting women in entrepreneurship. Tech.eu became a reliable source for European startup coverage. Failcon brought together founders to talk openly about what went wrong. Each one pointed to a specific gap she decided to fill.
What Station F Actually is:
Station F is the biggest startup campus in the world, housing more than 1,000 startups, located in Paris. It is not just co-working space. The campus runs structured programs in partnership with companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and others, and hosts founders at different stages under one roof.
In the first five years of Station F, it supported more than 5,000 French startups, with 92.4 percent still in operation. Companies from that period raised more than 8 billion euros and created 47,200 jobs. Hugging Face, now one of the most recognized AI companies globally, started there.
Varza has been the director through a significant stretch of that growth. If you want to understand how Europe built real startup density, Station F is a good place to start, and her work there is a big part of that story.
Investor and Scout:
Beyond running the campus, Varza is an angel investor with a portfolio that includes Lovable, Harmattan AI, Photoroom, and H Company, among others. She has also served as a scout for Sequoia Capital and previously for Atomico.
She is also an LP in funds, including Weekend Fund, Spice Capital, and Origins VC. One of her bets worth noting is Spore.bio, a Paris-based startup using AI for microbiology testing that has since raised over 29 million euros and secured funding from Google.org. It is the kind of early, non-obvious bet that holds up over time.
Boards and Public Roles:
Varza sits on the board of NRJ Groupe and Le Fonds pour l’indépendance de la presse. She has also been a member of the French Government’s Conseil National du Numérique and the European Commission’s European Innovation Council. These roles put her in rooms where policy, capital, and tech strategy overlap, which is a useful position for anyone trying to build at scale in Europe.
Still Building:
In 2025, Station F tracked 29 M&A deals involving its portfolio companies, including Hugging Face’s acquisition of Pollen Robotics and H Company’s acquisition of Mithril Security. The campus also expanded its facilities to include a medical clinic and a podcast studio, among other additions. In 2026, she is speaking at HumanX Amsterdam, continuing to shape the conversation around European tech infrastructure and what serious ecosystem building actually looks like.
For founders and operators who care about what building a real ecosystem looks like, Roxanne Varza is one of the clearest examples in Europe right now. Her work at Station F shows what consistent, practical investment in community and infrastructure can produce over time. She is also a strong reference for anyone tracking Women in Tech leadership beyond surface-level recognition.
She did not just talk about the European startup scene. She helped build the physical and institutional infrastructure that made a lot of it possible.
