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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

In France this sector is working very well (covoiturage.fr), has been for several years, to the point that friends consider checking out rideshare site like that and price-checking with trains and planes.

I have a suspicion that the fact that a lot of rides are either Paris-X or X-Paris probably helps (a lot of parisian students end up getting schools outside and go home during vacation/weekends). And students here don't always have cars.

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Let me just do a wild stab in the dark here: none of these French sites are VC backed start-ups looking to get rich quick or conquer the world, but just ordinary companies happy to be making a profit.

Well this would be my comment too. Many VC backed companies kill lifestyle businesses which could be profitable. this would give joy to the owners of the business and their users.

But these VC backed companies kill these small businesses AND they later when it's not profitable enough let down their uses my closing down the shop.

Let's build a community also expects input from a community which is left in the cold. Wouldn't this make it harder and harder to form communities in the long run?

blablacar discuss their model here (I think (via whois) these guys are also the covoiturage and comuto brands):

http://allthingsd.com/20131202/europes-blablacar-has-created...

"The company last raised funding in 2011 — $10 million led by Accel Partners"

As far as I can tell, Blablacar was a successful company that after half a decade raised funding to expand, not to exist.

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