Be The Member: From Moscow to Paris
How Rémi, Artabaz and Ben traveled across Europe to test the BlaBlaCar product.
At BlaBlaCar, our culture is our compass. As we grow, expand into new parts of the world and pursue our ambitions, it is important we retain an internal culture that keeps us grounded. On a team-all retreat a few years ago, we crowdsourced a set of 6 BlaBlaPrinciples that would frame our thinking and guide us through every strategic decision we make.
Two years ago, three members of our Product team — Remi, Artabaz and Ben — traveled from Moscow to Paris by bus and carpool, using 100% BlaBlaCar all along the way. That’s over 3,000 kilometers on the road! It’s an incredible manifestation of our principle Be the Member, which encourages each of us to walk in our members’ shoes and be regular users of our service. In order to understand their needs and constraints and offer our members the best possible experience with our product, we must be users of our service and members of our community.
To honor this principle, we offer free carpooling and bus travel to our team, in exchange for valuable feedback to improve our product. Many of us enjoy taking weekend trips to visit friends and family, or going on team-building day trips in neighboring cities — but Remi, Artabaz and Ben went the extra mile. Or the extra two thousand. We’ve interviewed them below to ask about their best moments, their challenges and what insights they brought back to their teams.
Tell us about yourselves. What do you do at BlaBlaCar?
Rémi: We’re on the Product team of BlaBlaCar. I am Chief Product Officer, Artabaz is VP Product Drivers, and Ben is VP Product Passengers. Our job is to design a product that allows people to have the best travel experience. It means understanding how people want to travel, anticipating their needs, observing the problems they encounter, thinking about ways to improve them, and adjusting our product accordingly.
So, Moscow to Paris is quite a long way. Any stats to share?
Artabaz: It’s true, they’re not exactly next door. For a total of 7 trips (3 bus rides and 4 carpools), we were on the road for 50 hours.
Ben: It took us a whole week though, because we wanted to stop and say hi to our local offices along the way, starting with Moscow, Kyiv, Warsaw and then Berlin.
What motivated you to go on the trip?
Ben: Our Paris-based team knows the product inside and out in the French Market. We regularly book carpool and bus trips on BlaBlaCar in order to be on the receiving end of our product. This time, we wanted to step out of our comfort zone and understand the product outside of our usual context.
Rémi: Exactly. BlaBlaCar is a global company, so we wanted to get a sense of our ‘global footprint’ and witness how our product interacts with different environments. Plus, we believe that the best way to get insights on your product is to put yourself in extreme situations: when you don’t know the language nor the city you’re in, it’s just you and the app. And the occasional bypasser who’ll point you in the right direction if you’re lucky.
Artabaz: We call that the ‘grandparent test.’ If you’re showing an app to your grandparents, they’ll ask questions you never even thought of. Another reason we went on this trip? At BlaBlaCar, we’re trying to revolutionize the way people travel. We’re encouraging intermodal traveling: hopping on a bus for the first leg of your journey on a big axis (Moscow-Kyiv), then finishing it off with a carpool to get to less popular destinations (Warsaw-Poznan). We wanted to experience the transition between these different modes of transport and truly “Be the Member.”
Any insightful moments? Did they lead to a change in product?
Artabaz: Many. I think I gathered around 30 product observations from this experience, and some of them have been implemented. It also gave me an idea to submit to our Coding Night, a regular get-together where our Engineering team splits up into groups to compete on projects that have nothing to do with our roadmap. Coding + pizza is a winning combo.
Ben: For me, it wasn’t necessarily a change in product, but a change in mindset: if you’re putting people out of their comfort zone, you’re asking them to place total trust in your product. We need to make sure we provide the most accurate and helpful information at all times.
87% of members say they have enriching conversations while carpooling. Did you?
Rémi: I would say so. On my trips, I heard conversations about Descartes’s theory about the subjectivity of objectivity, how Mali produces music that is both happy and sad, the benefits of a rough divorce, why it’s easy to make money online by selling heart-related drugs, the quality of Pearl Jam’s ballads, Jacques Brel’s accent… But seriously though. I believe that people can reveal a side of themselves on a BlaBlaCar ride that they never would have otherwise. When you put people who might never see each other again on the road with a few hours to kill, you can start to talk about really personal things.
What was the most unexpected moment?
Artabaz: This trip made me realize that we’re truly building a network of trust. When I entered the vehicle going from Lviv to Warsaw, the driver I had just met left me in his car with his phone and the key in the ignition. I had seen many other manifestations of trust in my 5 years traveling with BlaBlaCar, but never to that point!
Ben: It was my last day. I was trying to get from Brussels to Paris that very night, be with my family and sleep in my own bed after a long week on the road. I looked on BlaBlaCar, and there were no buses, no cars and not even any trains going to Paris on others. I had almost given up, until I got a Search Alert on my phone for a carpool leaving exactly from where I was arriving in Brussels to two metro stops away from where I live in Paris, two hours before departure time. What are the chances?! On top of everything else, I arrived in Brussels an hour and a half late and the driver still waited for me. Only BlaBlaCar can offer you such an experience.
Would you do it again? If so, where?
All: In a heartbeat. In Brazil, maybe?
