Hello and welcome to Esprit d'entreprise, the show of major economic interviews on Figaro TV. The show that gives the floor to business leaders. Hello Olivia.
So, who gives the floor to business leaders? It's perfect because today we are at Roland Garros, live from the ARF, surrounded by business leaders. And for our first show, we are delighted to welcome Frédéric Mazzella.
Hello. A true entrepreneur. You are the creator of BlaBlaCar, a company that everyone knows. It was about twenty years ago. You were given the mission to make people travel together to spend less money, to pollute less. And today, you have become the reference in what we call shared travel. And you have a second hat. You are also one of the leaders of France Digitale, an association that connects young entrepreneurs, people who are starting out, with an entire ecosystem in which we find large groups, financiers, of course, the public sector, and the mission you have given yourself is to create French or European tech champions. So, we will obviously talk about all of this, everything you observe from this somewhat privileged vantage point. You see the obstacles, the assets France has to become a land of champions. You will tell us about your own experience as a company creator. We will talk about artificial intelligence, obviously, about the competitiveness of companies. We feel that business leaders want to see this issue rise in the presidential campaign. And then we will also obviously talk about BlaBlaCar's projects, even if you have taken a step back in recent years. But first, since Gaetan said it, as we are in the beating heart of entrepreneurs this fall, what is the state of mind of top executives today after several complicated years?
Yes, I think that well, entrepreneurs and executives are people who always look ahead, who are always optimistic because you have to get your whole company, your whole team on board when you lead a project. So overall, if we look even at the latest barometers on the business climate, well, it's rather good. Overall, we are at 98 out of 100. Well, 100 being a bit of a reference for good times. So the confidence is there.
Yes. So, there is a form of confidence, but there is also a form of expectation and especially an expectation regarding what will be decided in 2027. Everyone knows it's a fairly pivotal year. There are still many issues currently, including AI, you mentioned it, but AI is shaking up the whole market, shaking up all the players. We will come back to that. So inevitably, it creates a lot of uncertainty because it's something new in which you have to commit because if you don't commit, you risk falling behind, a lot behind, which will be very hard to catch up later. And beyond that, well, otherwise, there is this political uncertainty that hangs over everyone to be sure that we won't have things that would be too, how to say? The worst is instability. You know, when you are a business leader, it means that when things change all the time, it's very complicated to know how to move forward. We are able to move forward in difficult contexts, but when it changes all the time, that's a brake. For example, if you have investment projects or hiring projects, is it likely to freeze them, to postpone them?
It can. We see that on employment, it's not very easy right now. Well, companies are still quite pragmatic overall, including regarding their recruitment. That is to say, normally when you recruit, it's because you need someone. And even generally when we wrote a job description, we already needed that person last month or three months earlier, but it took a little time to write the job description. So there is still this pragmatism regarding recruitment which means that we recruit when we need to. But it's true that for large groups that look further ahead, they can indeed project themselves less regarding next year's conditions and imagine different trends regarding the political climate.
We often hear that periods of transformation and instability are also those of opportunities. Which ones do you see today in the particularly volatile world we live in?
Yes. So that's the famous Chinese character that means both crisis and opportunity and which is represented in the same way. So indeed, every crisis is an opportunity. Well, here I want to say we are spoiled. There are quite a few crises that open up many possibilities. We talked about AI, which indeed, well, we won't call it a crisis, but in any case, it's really something that shakes things up enormously, on which you have to position yourself, know if you're going for it, if you're investing. It's a huge revolution, absolutely, because it affects many jobs, I was going to say all jobs, probably not, but many, many jobs, including creative jobs, which we thought were quite protected. There you go, there is political instability, it also opens up other difficulties when you have to position yourself and when you have to decide on future investments. So these are opportunities, these are doors that open, but as a business leader, that's what we do all the time. When a door opens, we look at it and try to see if we should go through it or not.
We hear many executives say that the doors that open are also difficult to go through because today, there is a lack of competitiveness. We don't have the conditions for competitiveness in France and in Europe. We had the first presidential debate, right? We talked about these issues of competitiveness, employment, retirement. What is today for you the priority of priorities to give back to companies that would like to seize opportunities?
So, I would say that beyond concrete measures that can be taken and that must be favorable to the development of companies, because it must be remembered, companies are the ones that finance everything else. That is to say, even when we talk a lot about taxing companies, but well, precisely all the money that can be allocated to our social system initially comes from the value creation made by companies. So everything obviously comes from companies. So to create value, what is missing today? For me, there is something important that is not necessarily going to be in the order of an extremely concrete measure. It will rather be to spread a pro-business state of mind. I think we need it because precisely to realize that we all owe our beautiful societies, our societies that develop and create value, the social model we all benefit from, it is extremely important and I would like that in the climate, I want to say in a very, very broad sense, in the general public, there is a form of recognition for all the companies that do this work of creating enough value to finance our system. It's necessary to create a climate of trust for all those who are entrepreneurs.
Do you today have the feeling that political leaders understand the business world? Do you meet them? When you must surely meet, discuss, do you have the impression that they understand exactly the environment in which you live and everything that being a business leader means?
Yes. So, I do meet them from time to time. What I notice is that when you are a business leader, you live in two complementary worlds. One is the purely economic world, which is analyzed by all the figures you see all the time and which preoccupates everyone. And the other is simply a sort of management of a team, of a whole bunch of people that you have to synchronize around a project. And that's relational, it's a lot of human, it's a lot of operational. And so on the purely economic aspects, sometimes you have politicians who can see the big picture but don't necessarily have the detailed understanding of what it means to create value on the ground. Regarding management, it's much rarer to find politicians who have this experience of managing to lead a team to build a project together, motivate everyone and understand what it means, including in terms of value sharing, sharing successes.
But precisely, we hear business leaders engaging more and more on these issues in the media. Is it their role and is it through this that it will also happen? Do you think it's useful?
So, I think that given that there is indeed a deficit of understanding of how companies work and everything they can bring to society, I think it is important indeed for business leaders to express themselves on the subjects they master. That is to say, it's not about asking business leaders to express themselves on societal or geopolitical subjects. But on the other hand, on innovation subjects, on subjects of reallocation perhaps between working life and retirement, knowing what employers think, it's important because it's also part of the overall life of the company to have employees who will later be able to retire. So on certain subjects, yes, I think it's important that they express themselves too because generally they are people who have a form of optimism and an energy that I think is salvific and useful to society.
Well, there are some who really don't, right? Because we see that there are two business leaders in the government, the former president of SNCF Jean-Paul Farandou, there is Serge Papin who was at Système U, in the past there was Thierry Breton, there was Francis Mer. Do you think that a good business leader makes a good political leader?
Oh, that's a big question. I don't think there's a rule. I think it helps because there's a form of pragmatism. You know, when you run a company, you can't just make plans on a comet and just hope. You still have to deliver. You have to be extremely operational, concrete, that is to say, it works or it doesn't work. So when you are a business leader, you have this habit, this pragmatism, and that is I think quite useful. After, does that make you a good politician? That's another thing because there's also the whole aspect of managing to explain your project and lead everyone behind you. Those are other skills.
Me, no, not today. That is to say, I asked myself the question, especially between two great values, you know, almost philosophical, and power. I chose freedom. So today, I am really much better in my position as an entrepreneur.
So precisely, we're going to talk to move forward a bit on our entrepreneurship topics since you are a bit of the figure of entrepreneurship in France for 20 years. BlaBlaCar is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Do you have the feeling that it is today easier to create a company than 10 or 20 years ago?
So, I think it's easier at the beginning because there are many, many tools that have simplified the first steps. So that is to say, the idea, the proof of concept. There you go. Well, there are many incubators that can help you from the start to overcome certain shortcomings of your skills, that is to say, come help you with quite concrete things to put in place, which can support you, support you also mentally when you create a company, at the beginning it's quite complicated because you don't know and you obviously don't know if it will work and you are sometimes a bit alone and you are very alone, that is to say, freedom often comes with a form of solitude in decision-making. So between incubators, financing systems that have largely increased over the last 10, 15, 20 years compared to when I started, it's easier and moreover there are tools like artificial intelligence which are extremely beneficial for creating prototypes, even if it's just that. In any case, creating a first version. So when we talk about a digital company, creating a first version of a product. Before, you either had to know how to code or have a budget to pay a developer or two who could make a first version of the product. Today with artificial intelligence, even if you don't know how to code or not well, you can develop a first version of your own product and do the first tests and deliver it directly. So at the very beginning, the first steps, we save a lot of time. That is to say, if you want, I look at the first 6, 8, 10 months of BlaBlaCar, it was well, I coded the interface, the whole system to put it into production. It took 8, 10 months. Today, with artificial intelligence, you can do that in 15 days, 3 weeks. So we save an enormous amount of time, an enormous amount of costs and so it allows you to test your idea much faster. On the other hand, afterwards, to emerge, it's very, very hard because there are many networks in place, many volume powers against which you will have to fight to manage to exist. So it's difficult to emerge afterwards.
But Emmanuel Macron developed a concept that must have seduced you, that of La French Tech. You yourself are, as I said, co-president of France Digitale.
Yes, La French Tech was launched in 2012.
Well, something like the startup nation. And has he today really tried to work to make France a land of entrepreneurs? Do you think that today in France there is the right ecosystem when you want to create companies, when you want to innovate?
So obviously President Macron was very positive for this whole entrepreneurial spirit. He helped in almost all the directions he could to ensure that France has and regains an entrepreneurial spirit. That is to say, if we compare today in 2026 with the entrepreneurial spirit that could have existed in the 60s and 70s where we created a huge number of large companies that today are large groups that make the economic strength of France, I think there is an entrepreneurial spirit that we had somewhat lost in between. And so we caught up with the great innovation nations that we often cite like the United States for example. We create a lot of projects, we don't yet create enough large projects. I think that's also the difference. That is to say, the entrepreneurial fabric creates the projects it is capable of creating. On the other hand, unlike perhaps what happened 50, 60, 70 years ago, there were state programs that had been put in place which were innovations and bets that were very, very strong. We can think of Airbus and others, but which were projects that we wanted to launch at the national level and which were really pushed by a political will and which were of very, very large scale.
Okay. Grand plans, in fact.
They were grand plans. There you go, those grand plans, I think, well, I think we need to rethink them because precisely given the scale of the problems we are dealing with, when we talk about AI, you see the investment amounts being made, it obviously requires managing to come together to have enough power. We can't just do isolated projects as an entrepreneur.
You did part of your studies at Stanford?
Yes, absolutely. In the United States, at Stanford University. I was even a student with Larry Page.
Yes, I was at the same time as Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the Stanford campus.
So, you observed the American environment. What makes the difference, perhaps in the state of mind, in the ecosystem?
So, in the state of mind indeed, I mentioned it earlier, there is a pro-entrepreneurship state of mind that is completely ambient in the United States, well, at least in Silicon Valley. That is to say, what is new by definition is attractive, has value, deserves that we take an interest in it. And that already changes a lot of things. That is to say, for everyone to get involved in new projects, it has a value, it has somewhere a social recognition and that is important in the entrepreneurial spirit of the country as a whole. After, there are collaborations between universities, companies, the environments, well, already just the universities and companies communicate enormously and that is very important because research is very intertwined. There you go, they are very intertwined, it means that research moves easily from one to the other. So from the theoretical idea to commercial development, well, there is a bridge that is made and that helps enormously. So there you go. After, there is also the capital structure which means that you can raise a lot of money quite quickly in the United States because they have structured themselves over the last 50 years precisely with, well, we often talk about pension funds, but which invest in innovation and not only in much more conservative things. So that is very important too because well, we are there today. Projects precisely to emerge need a lot of capital and there are many companies that when they need large amounts of capital, well, they go get them abroad because they can't necessarily find checks of 100 or 200 or 300 million in France or in Europe.
In these vast projects that you call Europe, could it be an opportunity? Is it today an asset? Is it a brake precisely for launching these large projects? You mentioned Airbus which is a European project.
Yes. So, I think it's an asset at the level of our entire ecosystem, including all the talents we are able to train. We really have an extremely educated, powerful population in new technologies that we can develop, all the sciences. On the other hand, having 27 countries and laws that are sometimes obviously not harmonized. So, we talk a lot about the single market, but well, still today, when you launch a company in the 27 countries, it's like launching 27 companies almost. So, there is a simplification that is coming with the 28th regime which was also brought back earlier by Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen. So the 28th regime will normally simplify the possibility of having a European company and not have to... So soon a Google in Europe.
I can't predict that, but is it possible that every time there is a technological revolution, it's the Americans who take everything or the Chinese? But well, it's not the case. But here for example in AI, we have Mistral, we are very proud, it's a very beautiful company.
Exactly. But it weighs 12 billion when the others weigh, I don't know how much, well, much more. So it's, I think we would be capable of doing it indeed if we had the courage, it's fitting because it's the theme of the ARF this year, but the courage to put colossal means behind projects of this type. So, Mistral is doing extremely well and it's a great hope indeed.
