On the occasion of BlaBlaCar’s 10-year anniversary, invaluable insights from BlaBlaCar’s founders, employees, investors, sharing economy specialists and members of the community were gathered to take you behind the scenes and shed some light into how BlaBlaCar was built over the years. In a series of 10 stories, each linked to one of BlaBlaCar’s 10 values, you will discover a decade full of dreams, hard work, passion and fun.
In the first story of the series, the “Think It. Build It. Use It.” value mirrors 10 years of iteration and progress in building BlaBlaCar’s successful, yet continuously evolving, product.
SOLD OUT. Fred Mazzella kept refreshing the train’s website. Surely there must be at least one train ticket available. At 27 years old, he had never missed a Christmas at home and was determined that 2003 wouldn’t be that year. At 500 kilometers away from Paris in the Vendée region of western France, his hometown wasn’t the easiest place to get to without a car. With no seats available on the train until after Christmas, Fred ended up calling his younger sister and convinced her to make a lengthy detour to pick him up in Paris.
Soon after, the siblings were on the road in the old family Honda Civic. It must have been a few hours into the journey when Fred who had been staring out of the window noticed something.
He could see the train from the A10 highway. The train that he should have been on. The train that was overbooked and had no seats left. And whizzing by him were hundreds of cars. Cars that were mostly empty, except for the driver. Suddenly, he realised what he was actually seeing.
For the next 72 hours, Fred couldn’t sleep. Surely a database of empty seats in cars must exist? After searching online, he discovered a handful of listings on various forums with people offering to share a ride. It was at a very low scale and so unorganised that finding someone who was doing the same trip at the same time was next to impossible.
After living through the Silicon Valley boom and adopting a start-up mindset during his studies in Stanford, Fred understood that this could be massive. In each empty car seat, he saw a gap in the market and was convinced that other people would benefit from such an affordable, convenient and friendly transport solution.
Could empty seats in existing cars be the beginning of a new travel network?
Thinking back to his younger years when travelling through Europe, Fred had loved the ease of hitchhiking, but always thought of it as a pinnacle example of a great idea, badly executed. It was impossible to plan ahead, you never knew who you’d be driving with and there was often an awkward money encounter at the petrol station. Feeling guilty for free-riding, Fred would always find a way to contribute. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that hitchhiking is just like a gift that drivers give to passengers, yet not everyone is always ready to give such a gift or even receive such a gift. Add in the possibility of choosing who to travel with and the opportunity to share the costs of the journey, and suddenly a lot more people will open their door. It becomes an exchange of real value.
As Fred honed in on his idea, he knew he didn’t want to develop it alone. He thought back to two of his closest school friends with whom he’d been wanting to start a company with for years and rang them straight away. Less than 24 hours later, as they sat in one of the show model cars at the Renault pop-up store on the Champs-Elysées, Fred pitched them the idea.
How did Fred’s friends react to his idea? Find out here.
