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Comment by bshimmin | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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).

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.

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'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...

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

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