Manufacturing Serendipity & Adventures with BlaBlaCar
I always loved the idea of car sharing, it makes so much sense for the environment and aside from meeting interesting people, you never know what might happen and my first BlaBlaCar experience was no exception.
For those of you who are unfamiliar BlaBlaCar is a car sharing platform. A drive and passenger market place. You can either put in a journey you are making and charge for a seat for the journey or book on a journey as a passenger.
I was driving down to Bristol for a friends party and to see my younger brother for his birthday. Prices for trains being £56 return I decided to drive. I listed my journey on BlaBlaCar and around 24 hrs before got a single booking for 3 people, I knew it would be tight as I’ve a mini. Initially a bit concerned as they were unverified passengers I made a decision in my mind to meet them at the pickup point and if I felt uncomfortable for any reason I wouldn’t let them in the car.
Pick up time arrived, I’d agreed to meet them near Kentish Town tube station. The three of them a man and two women standing at the side of the road — I got out and introduced myself and all good they climbed in and we were good to go.
The first comment came from the back of the car when the man said he had a condition which meant that he fell asleep in moving vehicles a good excuse as any to excuse himself from all conversation and that’s the last we heard from him.
As the journey continued we spoke about life in general and Student Beans came up as I was yet to launch Causr which was in the pipeline. Priscilla who booked the journey was most talkative and it turns out she’d used us when she was studying. Priscila at the time was working as a Manager at the Billy Elliot musical in Victoria.
The conversation turned to what we were going to Bristol for and they shared they were going to the Banksy exhibition, Dismaland. I’d been really keen to go but tickets were unbelievably hard to get with some going for £1000 or more. When I shared I’d been really keen to go they offered me three spare tickets that they had for the Sunday. Amazingly they just handed them over — as a surprise then I took my brother and his girlfriend and had an unbelievable day out.
Whilst waiting in the line I then received another booking to drive people back to London. I drove back to Bristol from Weston-super-Mare with my brother and his girlfriend and picked up the BlaBlaCar passengers at the same time from Bristol Train Station.
As we drove down the motorway on that Sunday evening back to London the conversation turned once again to what we did. In the front, I had Hugo who worked in insurance and Pag a firefighter and his partner. I posed the question if we could do anything what would it be? The conversation turned to getting in a boat and sailing the world and the general theme of travel.
The question then turned back to me and as I go back to the beginning of the journey for Causr I was on the brink of going full time on it I reflected saying I’d be doing exactly what I am now. Despite the challenges of launching and starting a business from scratch again the potential of what we’re trying to do and the connections that we believe we can make keep me focused and motivated to do what needs to be done today to enable us to achieve what we can tomorrow.
Thank you for reading and being part of the journey.
Causr is a location-based app that introduces its users to others within the local area. It makes finding nearby professionals with similar jobs, interests and ambitions easy. Scroll through a network of users, see who’s free, meet for coffee, share business advice or simply connect. Causr plans those chances encounters, and makes missed opportunities a thing of the past.
Download the App to see who’s nearby and start connecting today. Now available on the Apple App Store. Pre-register for our Android release here.
