BlaBlaCar raises $200M at $1.4B valuation | Hacker News Reader

BlaBlaCar raises $200M at $1.4B valuation

forbes.com

64 pointsmraison46 comments

One of the example of startup that is huge success in Europe, but in USA similar models aren't that successful (Zimride pivoted to Lyft, Ridejoy closed).

I wonder what would happen if we started taking smart ideas that didn't gain traction in the U.S. due to cultural and regional differences and then trying them overseas (e.g. the reverse Samovar brother)

I guess the really hard part would be isolating a startups failure or lack of popularity to culture or density. At least enough to spend time and effort to get a similar thing going in another country only to face not that much better odds of failure.

Fundraising seems hard, but maybe if you have enough counterexamples like this, a compelling case can be made.

Raising money doesn't make one a 'huge success.' When they have profits or an exit, then we can discuss success parameters.

No one said that raising money means success. BlaBlaCar is considered a big success for several years now, simply because the service is used and really appreciated by thousand of people.

Each fundraising is literally a mini-exit, especially B-series and beyond, where founders are often allowed to liquidate some of their shares.

The reality is more fluid and less black and white.

Well, I would not call it a huge success yet. Certainly it gained some traction and lots of people use it here (I'm from Germany), but in the past it was repeatedly shown that BlaBla Car's business model has no lock-in at all and that it will be very difficult to monetize their reach.

Predecessors of their ride-sharing platform here tried to charge (low) fees and users switched platforms rapidly or tried to circumvent paying fees (canceling of rides when drivers/passengers already have shared contact details). BlaBla Car could only grow to its current size because they did not charge anything.

This busines model can't be compared to Uber/Airbnb/... in my view and I really don't know who invested at this valuation and how they want to earn that much...

I don't see it. So they compare a ride via BlaBlaCar to the train but are there additional hidden costs? Is that 20 Euro fee the money paid to BlaBlaCar or the person you are riding with? Is there some understanding of paying the driver more for fuel? Really I don't see the valuation as they clearly state they are not there to generate profit for those offering the rides. Unless there is expected to be some sort of change where costs go up I still see people simply short circuiting the system should the price go up.

Also, where is liability? Uber was fine until it started making a dent in established businesses. This hasn't yet but will get notice because of the headlines.

You are paying through the app, the driver gets most of it, and Blablacar takes a few percent. Regarding the price, I think the application is recommending a price given the distance, gas price, possibly the type of car, and availability. But ultimately the driver is free to set any price.

Historically they launched with home-work travel, but as you mentioned, after a while people were short circuiting the system. On longer, occasional, travel there are much less chance that you will ride twice with the same person.

Source? I had a few trip with blablacar and I always paid in person. There was this legend that this was the case only for the Italian market, but you had to pay through the app in other countries. But as far as I can tell the platform works the same in Italy, UK and France. I once had a trip from London and again, I paid the driver directly.

This is from hearsay, but from what I understand from the (french) site you are paying Blablacar when reserving, and then you give a code to the driver IRL before the ride, so that he/she can redeem the payment. So you don't pay "directly" the driver.

Here is a link to the UK site : https://www.blablacar.co.uk/faq/question/how-are-the-booking...

So the booking fee perceived by Blablacar is about 10% of the cost of the ride.

It is possible you used an earlier iteration or that different market have different prices. It is very possible booking is free in new markets.

Source: using the service every month.

In the beginning, you would pay the driver in person.

After a while, they added the option to pay on the site directly, with a fee (or perhaps without, I can't remember).

Lately (a few years ago, can't recall the exact moment), this is the only available payement option. You cannot book a trip without paying via credit card, at least in France.

Seren and Fradow you are right, checked again now. Seems like the Italian site is still in the process of introducing the booking fee, while for the majority of the trips you can still contact the driver directly. This all makes sense now.

For anyone curious of the name as I was

https://www.blablacar.co.uk/blog/our-story-continued

https://www.blablacar.co.uk/blog/are-you-a-blabla

Members are asked to rate how chatty they are from bla to bla bla bla

I'm surprised so many are willing to trust a random stranger's driving especially on long rural roads, which are more dangerous. I would not even trust a licensed livery driver for this, or even most friends.

It's amazing how people are willing to hand total control of their lives to people they know nothing about.

This is crazy. Before this article, I hadn't even heard of BlaBlaCar before. Seems ride sharing is still a market with lots of potential to raise copious amounts of venture capital.

It is sort of well known in Europe.

Incredible well known, I'd say. Pretty much all of my friends, techies and non-techies, have used it repeatedly. I'm not too surprised about this valuation.

Sample of not very many? I'm based in the UK and I've never heard of it before. Perhaps all my friends are using it and never mentioning it to me, though!

(I checked to see if it does operate in the UK, and it seems to.)

I've heard of it (in the UK) because of their heavy advertising on Spotify.

Count me like another sample. A lot of my friends use it. I think that at this moment is very strong in the continent: Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Poland

So, the valuation is not so strange, except that the business model is not clear to me. In the other hand, I could say that about a lot of others startups.

I think the business model is fairly straightforward. People offer rides in exchange for money. Blablacar pockets a small percentage of each ride.

I believe they used to not charge a fee until about a year ago but they do now.

They still don't charge anything in Germany.

Count me against. Had not heard from them two days ago. Then heard an ad on Spotify and after that saw their ad in a restroom at a highway restaurant.

So ok, I know their business model. I know ride-sharing is big in Germany (or at least used to be - not driving that much anymore).

But also I am not in their target group anymore. Would not invite strangers into my car, just to save some pennies/euros on gasoline. Nowadays my quite (or podcast) time while driving is way more valuable to me.

But if I were a student and had to drive greater distances - I would be in probably.

Count me maybe. I live in Poland. I've heard about it for a year or so, mostly because I had them show up in Facebook ads constantly for months. My friends have heard about it, but I'm not yet aware of any one who actually used it.

It's huge in Spain, a lot of friends use it all the time.

+1.

It's used by many people in my social circle (early 20s, techies and non-techies).

I've seen quite a lot of paid search ads for BlaBlaCar for some time without actually using it or hearing of anyone using it, and as a non-driver in the UK I'm one of its core markets.

I hear "get an Uber" quite a lot...

They've started advertising it on TV recently in the UK, and that's the only reason I've heard of it, but I'd assumed it was a new service, not something that had been running for several years so the valuation did surprise me! Kept thinking what a ridiculous name for the service, still makes no sense!

I live in France. Right after I read this comment I went outside and asked three of my neighbors who where heading to work if they heard of Uber: all 'yes.' Blah Car? Blank looks. "Incredibly popular" perhaps in the 'cool' techy scene among normal folks, not so much. Definitely not a scientific survey, but still interesting. Remember people were using Uber until it shut down in France. This company would not have the same traction in France if not because of the Uber riots.

I live in France too, and all my friends have heard of it, and some even use it regurarly. I've used it several times, and the people I've travelled with came from all backgrounds, so I wouldn't say it is only for 'techies'. For passengers, it's a really cheap way of getting a ticket to somewhere, and for drivers, a way to pay their trip (gas, toll, etc.).

I would say exactly the opposite - Uber was mainly anglophone tourists, and not many people knew about it until the riots. BlaBlaCar has been extremely popular in student circles for a while

Uber did not shut down.

Anecdote, I've made numerous Balblacar rides and no one has been a "techie" yet : teacher, painter, architect, hr, whatever. Mostly young people though.

If you live in a major city, maybe it's not as popular. On my case on the east, it's almost the only way to go in a lot of places and everyone knows about it.

German here. There are TV ads, but i have no idea what Blablacar really is and know noone who uses it. If it's carsharing, then there are plenty other players in the german market fighting for market share (basically every major car manufacturer has an offering).

edit: ok, it's more like private car sharing for longer destinations. There is a well known big website for that already for a long time ("Mitfahrzentrale") which i used a few times. But, blablacar would be only the second big offering in that sense. So there is some "space" in the market for that in Germany :)

Blablacar bought Mitfahrgelegenheit.de and Mitfahrzentrale.de a while back.

Oh.. i did not know that. So blablacar is like germanys biggest and only player then..

Crazy thing is these sites had been founded back in 1999 :)

Very strong in Italy too. All of my friends know it, and a lot of them used it at least once.

I'm from Germany and have never heard of it before. Anecdotal evidence only gets us so far :)

As always Europe may be too much countries to make a generalization like that :)

At least in France it's well known, thanks to high-speed train prices and fuel & tolls costs for cars. It's even said to be a great company to work for (minus their ridiculous name).

I've used it a few times and it can be an OK experience but if the new coach lines take off I'll most likely use that instead.

I assumed the name was coined before the first bubble, around 1998, by a French friend of mine. In English we rather tend to say "blah blah" than "blabla". The idea didn't work because there wasn't enough connected people at the time. He later sold it and it is very famous now, at least in France.

It's probably especially popular in France because our train service has random failures* and is about 2-3x more expensive. I wonder about penetration rates in counties with a reliable train service.

*the last ever time I took the train was a "surprise strike" of the only on-board agent, which prevented the train from leaving. The joke is, I think they told him he was on strike when he woke up.

This poor company will go the way of Daily Motion if Hollande stays president. Any decent exit will get blocked. Either that or they'll leave France before they are exposed to the risk.

And in what way does this incoherent anti-government rant further the discussion?

You could (and maybe rightly so) argue against a lot of policies. But without providing any background even someone from Germany, like me, has probably no way of following your thought process.

I have an idea! No execution. Can I have my $20bn yet?

When did profitability become irrelevant to investors?

I assume from the downvotes you collectively have some kind of secret as to how they intend to end up profitable? Not revenue. Profit. Revenue is vanity.

If they're valued at $1.4bn, at a reasonable multiplier, I guess they're profiting $500m/yr - right? Right?

I'm going to answer because it seems no one else bothered.

You are being downvoted because calling Blablacar "just an idea, no execution" is like telling Dropbox is "just an idea, no execution". Blablacar have executed very well, with a customer acquisition phase (when it was free), then stepped up the monetization (gradully stepping up fees, while keeping a healthy customer base). They also began expanding out of their home country (France), which is no small feat considering cultural differences.

On the profitability part, what makes you say they are not profitable already? I can't really extrapolate numbers, but a good customer base + recurrent fee (for each travel) generally are good signs for a business. I would bet the raised money is to fund expansion in other countries (I am pretty sure at least one of the previous round was for that).

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