Hacker News Reader

Comment by orbifold | Hacker News Reader

It is sort of well known in Europe.

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.

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 :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com