Bipi: the biggest car subscription exit in Europe
We recently announced that Renault Group has acquired our portfolio company Bipi. We have been investors in Bipi since 2017 so this is a bittersweet moment for us: on the one side, we are happy for the team and for fulfilling our obligations as investors, but on the other side we are sad to end this amazing journey. Through this post, we want to thank the Bipi team for all these years, give some background on the whole story and share a few learnings.
Thank you Bipi!
First of all, THANKS to Hans, Alejandro and the rest of the team for this almost 5-year ride, you guys deserve all the credit for this success. You’ve put a lot of hard work, focus, resilience and perseverance.
We feel very grateful to have been part of this journey and we have learned many things working alongside all of you. We are sure this is only the beginning and we have a hunch that your entrepreneurial spirit will allow us to work together again.
Bipi’s story- far from a smooth ride
Hans and Alejandro started this journey back in 2014 when they built Llollo, a company that provided on-demand parking in Madrid and Barcelona. They struggled with making unit economics work and rapidly changed the model to valet parking in train stations and airports, a business that was growing but did not meet their expectations of building something that could truly change the car industry. That’s when we met the team back in 2017: they had acquired vast experience dealing with cars at an operational level and had been around the car industry for a long time, which led them to anticipate a market opportunity around building a car subscription service. Bipi was born and we decided to invest in them: you can read our thoughts and investment thesis back then in this post from Sonia. After two pivots the team was now ready to roll!
The road has had its bumps along the way for Bipi. A critical moment for the company was having its lead investor for the A round back away from a signed TS two weeks before closing on December 26th…. Happy New Year folks! Cash running out, the team had to keep its cool and work on other options. The investor will remain un-named but the team learned a lesson the hard way, choose your investors wisely, view it as a marriage, it will get messy if things don’t work out so you’d better be in best terms at least going in.
Equally, we have had also tons of good moments and great achievements that have led the team to build what Bipi is today: more than 10k car subscribers between Spain, France and Italy since launch, and more than 120 people in their HQ offices in Madrid. Going forward, Bipi will operate as a standalone company backed by Renault, so if you need a car, think https://bipicar.com
Some learnings — getting the right support for the team
From our co-pilot point of view, there are some things that have proven to be key in the development of this success story. Not often early stage companies think about them and very rarely teams execute them well. They boil down to getting the right help for the founders as they need it:
- Getting the right investors at the right time who will force you to choose a course: in the case of Bipi getting Kibo in meant shutting down Llollo as a strategic decision to focus on car subscriptions
- Bringing in mentors early on: Sean Behr has been a mentor to Hans and Alejandro since the very early days. He has been instrumental in helping them grow as founders and make the right and tough calls at the right time
- Bringing in relevant partners from the automotive industry — Maniv led Bipi’s Series A and brought automotive expertise and network that has been key for Bipi’s development and its ultimate sale
- Bringing in industry experts as independent advisors. Maniv brought Nick as an independent board member. Nick’s contacts and industry knowledge has been key in helping the team especially in the exit process
The outcome — a successful exit and willingness to repeat again soon
We are proud to say that Bipi is an example of how we like doing business: working closely with teams in good and bad times, building trust, being fully transparent with each other, and bringing in partners that can add value. We absolutely love to see how founders grow and the level of maturity and empowerment in the case of Bipi has been incredible.
Besides returns to our investors, a great outcome from this journey is the many long-term relationships we have built, from Hans and Alejandro to Sean, Nick and the rest of the investors. We couldn’t end this post without thanking also our partners good friends at Maniv, IDC , P101, Toyota Ventures, TA Ventures, A3 Ventures and Adevinta who have been a key piece in this story. You all brought your insights and input and had the company’s as well as the team’s interests always in mind. We look forward to partnering with you again soon and sharing board meetings with tortilla de Betanzos, a Bipi trademark now.
Good luck Bipi in your new road ahead, we wish you a pleasant ride!!
Post written by Sonia and Jordi from Kibo Ventures
