LA VÉRITÉ SUR BLABLACAR (Personne ne la raconte) Ft. Frédéric Mazzella

Nothing is born big, everything is born small. That's why I never really wanted to start a business alone. Find the person who is worth ten, even if they are above market price. An idea that isn't good at one moment can be excellent at another. You do it manually first, then you automate, and then you scale. That's how you go from 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 to 1 million to 100 million, to 100 million users like there are today on BlaBlaCar.

I'm an entrepreneur, I'm the founder of BlaBlaCar and also the founder of DIFT more recently.

So, I studied computer science in California at Stanford after having done scientific studies in France in physics. And so, that's how I really learned to code. And so I did a lot of coding for friends, small free projects obviously. Well, my friends, I didn't make them pay, I made them websites because it allowed me to learn. For them, it gave them a website, it allowed them to have a showcase because you see, when you're an artist, when you're a violinist or a pianist or something else, well, you need to have in your artist's toolkit not only a record at some point but also to do concerts and then also at some point to have a website. And so I started by developing websites for artist friends. I had a lot of them because I had done music studies, and so it got me a little bit, let's say, hands-on to develop small websites. And in parallel, I did a lot of computer science studies. So I learned quite a bit that way. Well after, I had the idea for BlaBlaCar and I already had small tools to know how to create a website.

Yeah, that's it. I had to go back to Vendée from Paris because I'm originally from Vendée. The trains were full, it was for the end-of-year holidays. So when you try to get a ticket on the 21st or 22nd of December for the 23rd, it's an entrepreneur thing. Well, it doesn't work, it doesn't work anymore. So all the trains were full. So a bit in a panic, I called my little sister who had a car and who lived in Rouen and I said, 'Can you make a detour to pick me up in Paris to take me down to Vendée because otherwise I'm going to miss the family holidays, I don't see how I'm going to get down.' And so what she did, and on the A10 motorway indeed, she has the particularity that there are TGVs that go exactly in the same direction. So in fact, I saw the TGV overtake us and I said to my sister, 'Well, you see the TGVs, I'm sure there were more seats inside since I tried, everything is full.' And at the same time, I see dozens of empty cars, almost empty with three or four seats and I tell myself, in fact, the free seats to go to Vendée, they were no longer in the trains, they were in the cars. The proof, I found one in my sister's car. So that doesn't make a service, you know, because you had to know my sister to be able to benefit from that seat. But so, I tell myself, 'Ah well there you go, we should index all the free seats in the cars and put all that in a search engine and be able to book free seats in cars like you book free seats in trains.' That's where the idea came from. I didn't sleep for 72 hours telling myself that it was so simple and obvious that it must already exist. Oh yeah, really. Oh yeah. So I searched, I found classified ad sites that vaguely talked about sharing cars but in fact it was very poorly done because it wasn't departure, arrival, date and then search. Anyway, you see, it wasn't indexed either on obviously precise GPS coordinates to know where you pass. So in fact, classified ads, you know, but it didn't work. And well, I started coding. There you go. And then after I called my best friend and we started coding together.

Well, it's sure. Yes, if we go back to my studies, I did MATSUP MATSP at the Lycée Henri IV, so my prep classes. After, I did Normal Sup in physics, so it's true that it's very serious studies. Then, Stanford in computer science, so computer science in California. After, I even did the MBA at INSEAD. You must have been the star of your parents. But there you go, I made them happy, I think I made them very happy in terms of studies. But it's true that there was a moment, so I had a job, I worked for 5 years. Initially, I was in customer service at the start. Then I was doing IT development, then I was a project manager, then after I was what's called a Solutions Architect. So in fact, I was building prototypes so that the salespeople could go propose the solutions to future clients. So I was really in IT. But it's true that I had a normal job, you know, with a very correct engineer's salary and that yeah, I stopped everything to start BlaBlaCar and I think it's a moment where I told myself that anyway I didn't have a choice because I didn't project myself any longer as just an employee of a company in which I didn't have too much, I didn't have the controls.

Yes, it's true that I don't really like problems that don't have a solution. So quite quickly, I look for solutions. Yeah. When I had the idea for BlaBlaCar, well, I started working on it right away. I started... That never discouraged you, Fred, having failed projects. There wasn't a moment where finally I imagine your loved ones said, 'But you tried, it's good, you did that.' Ah no, no, no. On the other hand, you were talking earlier about the fact that indeed with all the studies I did, I had lots of friends who were taking jobs that were climbing in rank quite quickly and who had very beautiful salaries in very beautiful situations as we can say. It's true when you become an entrepreneur and you don't pay yourself because I didn't pay myself for 5 years to build BlaBlaCar if you will before being able to extract a salary from the activity. Ah yes, zero. Yeah. How did you live? Since I had worked before and I'm not a spender. I had lots of friends who had real jobs, so to speak. I read more than once the compassion in my friends' eyes. Yes, when I talked about what wasn't called BlaBlaCar yet since it was covoiturage.fr at the time, I felt that they were looking at me thinking, 'Yet he was well on his way. He was well on his way. He had done good studies, all that. I even worked at NASA when I was in the US and all that and suddenly he stops and he creates a website for people who hitchhike.' You tell that story often? It marked you? Ah well yes, because I believed in what is today BlaBlaCar and it's true when you are confronted with the reality of people judging your project as unimportant, without a future, small and poorly thought out, you have to keep your faith.

Ah well, at the beginning, my first contact with Google was Google Beta, meaning it was the beta version of Google that was deployed on all the content of the university at Stanford. It's very practical because we used Google to search for documents on all of Stanford's servers. They did their POC at Stanford. Well, I don't know if it was the only POC but in any case we used it. Maybe they had other places, they did other POCs but in any case yes, it's one of the first, if not the first place where they deployed their search tool on all the university's content. That's how I discovered it when I arrived, people on campus were using Google Beta. Not right away but quite quickly. Or I could perhaps develop my own thing. You didn't want to join them at all? No, at the beginning no, I told myself wow, but you tell yourself it's possible, it's wild. So yes, I told myself it's possible. After, as time went on, I also realized that well, all the companies or all the services we know were created like that. One day there's someone who said, 'Hey, why not?' and boom, they left and they created. So in fact, it's feasible and in short, everything we use one day was created and one day didn't exist and one day was small. So there you go, there's also this realization that what's around you didn't arrive like that by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is born big. Everything is born small. And then also understand that it's an extremely fulfilling journey because it's full of creativity, because it's full of inventiveness, because it's full of work too, but that's obviously the necessity and the consequence. And then there you go, you still have to like working. You have to like two things when you're an entrepreneur. You have to like working and working a lot, you know, 80, 90 hours a week and without a salary. And that, there you go, you shouldn't be attracted by money more than that because in fact that's not where you get your daily satisfaction. And then you have to like problems and you have to smile at problems because when there's a problem, I tell myself, 'Ah, that's why I'm here.' Meaning that if there were no problems, we wouldn't need me, the project wouldn't need me. It's precisely because there's a problem that well, it falls back on me because I have to solve it and that's therefore my task somewhere. It's going to be my added value to solve the problem. It allows you to look at problems differently, to say, 'Ah yes, we've gone from level 11 to level 12, level 13, it's like in video games.' And there, 'Ah, that one, I have a big monster there anyway. There, on that one, it's not going to be easy.' There's something you don't know that I've never told you. Ah! But my father is a journalist. Ah! And my father worked at the ministry. I suspected it. My father worked at the Ministry of the Environment. Ah, and he interviewed you. Ah really? At your very beginnings when your company was still called Covoiturage. Ah really? And he remembers you in a shack in the suburbs? Does that interview mean something to you or not?

We had our first offices very close to the suburbs since it was in Montrouge on the last metro of Paris.

Energy. Ah well, lots of things. Already you think about the energy you deploy yourself for your project. It's life. It's truly what makes it live. So you have to do everything to preserve this energy, meaning you have to give it the means, the means of its ambitions. And so in fact, that's what's going to allow you to accomplish your dream. So you have to be very careful about everything that can depress us. That's why I never really wanted to start a business alone. I always managed to be with one or two or three people because you can quite quickly get depressed when you start a project because it's hard, because no one believes in it except you, because you yourself don't see the path well, you have a vision but you don't know where you're going to pass. I don't know exactly how it's going to happen, but that's what's exciting too, you know, to discourage me or make me run away, you have to explain to me what's going to happen. Typically, you know, you go to a job interview where the person is going to explain to me, 'Well, you're going to start with this position and then in 2 years this position and then in 4 years, you'll be like this. Then in 6 years if everything goes well, you'll be like that. Then in 10 years, maybe you'll become something.' There, I want to say, well, spoiler, you know, it's as if I went to the movies and you told me what's going to happen in the film. I'm not interested. So there you go, you still have to like discovering what's going to happen. And so what do you have to do to keep your energy? You have to then keep your optimism and you have to sleep. You have to interact as much as possible with people and be careful not to end up alone. Sometimes it's difficult when you're an entrepreneur because you end up quite alone. You have to go see your friends. You have to keep in touch with as many people as possible. For me, that's how I function. It's what feeds me, interactions with people because inevitably it takes you out of what you have in your head since other people have other things in their heads and so you're going to discuss other subjects and then that can just, this new perspective can give you new ideas and then especially it makes you realize that you're alive.

Well, in all life situations. Uh, as I was telling you at the very beginning, I started coding with my friend Damien with whom I was in prep school, in R4, who did a lot of IT development too. And so, since I obviously immediately saw that it was a very technical project because we still had to develop the platform, I partnered at the start with Damien. I also had in the loop another friend Patrick and then my sister Hélène who was more on communication and then quite quickly, since no one is paid on the project, we start. It turns out that what needed to be done was truly to build the first product before imagining doing anything else. So quite quickly, Damien and I ended up working all the time and then Patrick and Hélène didn't work much on the project because there wasn't much to do until the product was out. After, I met Francis. So there, it's not a recruitment method but you're asking me how I found him. So at the bar, no, well not far from my neighbor around a pizza because I had a neighbor named Lionel who worked at Mythic and who was just on the same floor as me who wanted to start a company and who gathered people he had met through his job at his place once every 15 days. It's a mastermind, a mini mastermind of the time. Yeah. You know, it was around a pizza. Yeah. Very informal, in a bit of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mode maybe. There you go, exactly. But we were, you know, I don't know, 7 people and we were thinking about ideas. Then after, we'd say, can we develop this thing to see? Once we think of an idea. It was a solution to track everything you could have lent to all your friends and all your family, whether it's books, DVDs, I don't know what, even complaint letters. No, no, no, no. Things that you could share, you know, that you lent and you lose track of, you don't know anymore. And so, we tell ourselves, hey, we're going to make an app to follow, to be able to track, to be able to get back your DVDs when you've lent them. DVDs sound old but well, that's how it was. And so we talked about that and the following week or 10 days later we meet and there, well, the product was done, was developed. So I was doing IT, I saw the product, I say to Francis, how did that happen? There you go and I ask Lionel, I say but what happened? And there Lionel tells me, 'Ah well, Francis had a bit of time this weekend.' I say, 'Wow, Francis is efficient.' So I started talking to Francis and there Francis tells me, 'Yes, your thing there covoiturage.fr, if you want to put it on mobile, call me.' And so I called him. Then after it was the beginning of a very long and beautiful adventure precisely because Francis was, well, he is still formidable, but he was worth 15 developers all by himself. Anyway, it's incredible the capacity for synthesis and speed he has on IT development. What the Americans call A players where they say precisely, in fact, it's the strategy. There's a management book that I find quite incredible even in corporate culture, it's the book No Rules Rules by the founder of Netflix where precisely he says, 'Stop wanting to recruit people who don't cost much for junior positions and it's a bit the French mindset to recruit lots of juniors and do the famous intern factories.' He says in fact find the person who is worth ten even if they are above market price and that's a bit the Netflix strategy. Did you in a first time operate the Netflix strategy or was it just Francis, you found the gem? You told yourself, 'OK, I'll associate him because I need him in my team.' Yes, but it's indeed a strategy. Meaning that in any case to succeed when it's very, very hard, you can't afford to bring on people who are not, on the one hand, driving and on the other hand, extremely competent in their domain. Otherwise, it's too hard. It's like if you say, 'We're going to climb Everest and three people show up in sandals.' You say, 'That's not going to work, we're not going to make it.' Did you have a nice unity right away among the co-founders or were there failures, quacks? No, it went rather well. Uh, always. On the other hand, since we had no money, nothing, we didn't pay anyone because we couldn't, up to a certain point obviously, it was a bit variable geometry, you know. Meaning that I was at the beginning with Damien a lot, we partnered in capital if you will, but after since we couldn't pay, he had to go find another job. So he went to find another job. So after I had a Nicolas, Nicolas de Roche who joined us too, same in a mode to help Francis, all that and all that was done a bit by adjusting the energies and I was the red thread if you will, I worked with whoever wanted to dedicate time to the project. After, well, when we had...

commencé à pouvoir générer un peu de revenus c'était pas facile parce qu'on a essayé six modèles économiques. Enfin j'en parle aussi dans Mission BlaBlaCar mais enfin faire six modèles économiques faut être résilient quoi. C'est-à-dire qu'il y a six fois tu y crois et cinq fois ça marche pas.

Le 8 avril 2011, je m'en souviens. Ouais, c'est le moment où on a commencé à voir que on avait essayé pas mal de modèles économiques. Modèle économique où tu vends des solutions de covoiturage d'entreprise qui marchouillaient mais le problème c'est que ça faisait des revenus linéaires quand on avait des coûts qui étaient exponentiels. Alors je vais te refaire les courbes de maths. Je sais pas si tu...

Voilà. Tu vois quand tu as une courbe de revenu qui est linéaire et une courbe de coût qui est exponentielle qui fait comme ça, il y a un moment ça se croise, ça marche pas.

Non non. Mais si si si vendent des solutions aux entreprises. Si au tout début non au tout début, j'ai essayé de mettre un peu de pub pour voir si ça marchait mais on avait pas assez de volume pour que ça rapporte quoi que ce soit. Au mieux on arrivait à récupérer 100 € par mois quand on avait plus de coût que ça évidemment. Donc ça ça marchait pas. Après on a essayé un système de mise en relation téléphonique qu'on a appelé Merci. Attention il y avait déjà du marketing he c'est mise en relation confidentielle immédiate.

Passion acronyme. Donc ça s'appelait Merci. C'était ça te permettait de joindre les gens évidemment directement par téléphone sans pour autant divulguer leur numéro de téléphone mobile tu vois à tout le monde. Donc là ça devait être l'usine à gaz. Ah c'était pas très facile parce que ça passait par un opérateur téléphonique. C'était un peu compliqué. Ça marchouillait mais pas très bien.

Ah non le modèle Allô en l'occurrence il était lui à base d'abonnement annuel. Tu étais abonné au service et tu pouvais joindre tous les modèles économiques qui sont détaillés dans le livre. C'est dans la fiche qui s'appelle modèle économique justement. Il y a une fiche modèle économique dans laquelle je détaille les six modèles économiques essayés par BlaBlaCar et je décortique tout. Attention parce qu'il y a un truc très important avec les modèles économiques. Il y a des modèles économiques qui marchent pas. Il y a des modèles économiques qui marchent et il y a des modèles économiques et c'est là où faut faire très attention qui marchouillent. C'est-à-dire qu'ils sont entre les deux. Piège. OK, c'est un piège, c'est un marécage. Il faut les identifier parce que tu peux t'y installer et les modèles économiques qui infiniment vont pas être suffisant pour nourrir l'activité, l'équilibrer tout simplement. Et il y a des modèles économiques qui marchaient pas mais qui marchent avec le bon timing. Alors là, toute la nouvelle économie de la création ou même des modèles économiques basés sur le tips, il y a quelques années, ça aurait été aberrant et c'est en train de se développer de plus en plus.

C'est-à-dire que le temps joue un rôle très important. D'ailleurs, une belle citation de Victor Hugo, je sais pas si tu la connais, qui dit "Rien n'est plus puissant qu'une idée dont le temps est venu." Qui dit un petit peu tout, à savoir exactement ce que tu mentionnes, qu'une idée et ou même un modèle sont aussi non seulement dépendant du contexte dans lequel ils sont, mais dépendants temporellement puisque les mentalités, les usages, les technologies évoluent. Ça fait qu'une idée qui n'est pas bonne à un moment peut être excellente à un autre.

Première chose, c'est quand tu as de la chance d'avoir des premiers utilisateurs. Il faut les interroger surtout. Faut parler beaucoup avec eux. Moi il y a un moment j'avais enfin je sais toujours d'ailleurs mais j'avais 1500 numéros de téléphone de covoitureurs que j'appelais pour savoir ce que je pouvais modifier sur le produit.

Ah oui oui oui très bien. Ils étaient super contents. Ah par contre te font des listes à rallonge, ils te disent surtout tu repères les gens qui utilisent beaucoup et là ils ont beaucoup de demandes et ça j'avais lu dans un bouquin qui s'appelait Rework. Je sais pas si tu connaisses.

C'est un bouquin écrit avec genre une ou deux phrases par page. Ça se lit très très très vite. OK. Très sympa. Et dedans, ils expliquaient et j'ai essayé ça marche évidemment que il faut pas justement quand tu appelles tes clients que tu notes ce qu'ils te disent. Faut juste vaut mieux que tu appelles 10 ou 15 ou 20 clients et que tu leur demandes ce qu'ils amélioreraient dans le produit et que tu notes rien plutôt que tu en appelles deux trois et que tu notes tout. Pourquoi ? Parce que quand tu vas en appeler plein, généralement les problèmes qui sont évidents pour les gens qui l'utilisent ton produit vont revenir. Et même au bout du 3è ou 4è coup de fil, la personne va commencer à dire un truc dire "Ah, ce qui serait bien c'est de faire ça ?" Et tu dis "Oui, je sais, je sais." Enfin je l'ai déjà entendu deux fois. Et en fait après, une fois que tu as fini cette série de discussion avec tout le monde, bah tu es capable de faire une liste de priorités et là tu prends les deux trois gros problèmes qu'on a remontés, tu les dégommes, même si ça te prend un mois, 2 mois, 3 mois pour réussir à fixer ces problèmes-là. Et tu recommences. Et là, ce qui va ressortir sera les problèmes d'après. Et donc, tu passes ton temps en fait à dégommer les problèmes les plus importants. Et donc, des problèmes qui étaient pas très importants vont le devenir au fur et à mesure parce que ce sera les seuls qui restent. Mais c'est comme ça que tu passes de 10 à 100 à 1000 à 10000 à 100000 utilisateurs à 1 million, à 100 millions, à 100 millions d'utilisateurs comme il y a aujourd'hui sur BlaBlaCar.

Non, tu renouvelles. Ouais. Tous les clients sont bons hein.

Non, tu peux mettre justement par contre c'est ce qu'on déteste quand les commerciaux nous appellent pour savoir ce qu'on a pensé. Non mais là quand tu dis je suis fondateur du site, ils sont plutôt très contents.

Oui mais quand c'est un tout petit site, les gens se disent "Bah oui, c'est toi qui mets à jour le blog là, le weekend." Je dis non, je fais ça 24h du lundi au dimanche mais il pas que le weekend mais c'est pas grave. Donc parce que en plus quand c'est petit les gens pensent qu'il y a pas de travail. D'ailleurs toute la question quand je disais ce que je faisais "Ah oui d'accord tu fais ça mais c'est quoi ton vrai boulot ? Mais tu fais quoi sur le côté ? C'est quoi tu sais quoi que tu fais ?" Je fais ça je fais que ça en fait et ça c'est difficile d'imaginer quand le truc est petit que en fait on y passe quand même 24 heures sur 24h.