I don't need to introduce him to you because you already know him.
With BlaBlaCar, for example, we tried six business models. That means five times, quote-unquote, we failed. To build BlaBlaCar, I didn't pay myself for five years. So I didn't pay anyone else either. I'm not much of a spender. In fact, I often say the best gift God gave to entrepreneurs is pasta. I don't have expensive tastes, I don't have outsized desires. I manage to do, well, maybe quite a lot with not very much. I think the foundation of entrepreneurship is succeeding at making do with what you have. Afterward, you try to get more to have more means and then go further. But not when you don't have it; you do it that way. You know, when you create a company, you have to do everything. Plus, at the beginning, you're a bit of a one-man band, then you become a conductor; it's very, very demanding. I mean, look, I worked 90 hours a week for a dozen years to build this. It's normal, you see, you do everything. And then, little by little, you especially need to stop doing everything. The most precious resource when you're an entrepreneur is your time. So, that's what you must preserve by any means necessary.
We can really see that this is close to your heart.
There's an Einstein quote that says, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' So, you have to try multiple times, you have to try differently. When you plateau, it's often a little bit of that. Meaning you try the same thing but a bit harder, or one more time, or persist in the stupidity. I say that the day you understand certain things, you move faster; you don't do the same thing twice.
So, just before we continue, I discovered something quite crazy: nearly 90% of the people who watch this channel aren't subscribed yet. So, I have one very small favor to ask you. Just click subscribe, and it helps us enormously to continue producing this type of content on our channel. Thank you once again. Alright, let's get back to it.
Hello, I'm Frédéric Mazzella, and I have the pleasure and honor of being here today in 'Unique' with Franck Nicolas.
I have a real first question to ask you. Often in entrepreneurship, we realize that we aren't ready to live a traditional life. At what point did you say to yourself, 'I'm not going to live a normal life?'
Ah, that's a good question. I think I didn't really understand it right away. I mean, for me, what's normal, or rather what's always been my life, is doing a lot of things, you see. Even during my studies. At the same time as my studies, I did a lot of music, I played sports, I did various things. Whenever I had part-time jobs, I had two or three at once, or I even had a job while studying. So I've always done quite a few things. And so, if you want, entrepreneurship later on, especially at the moment of creating BlaBlaCar, I cut everything else because I really didn't have time to do anything else.
Even music, because you're a musician, you play the violin, right?
Not the violin, mostly piano.
Yeah. No, for a good dozen years, I completely, well, I didn't have time to play piano anymore. I didn't have the same, how should I put it, the energy for it.
But you were quite good, by the way.
Yes, I attended the Paris Conservatory for piano. And in fact, entrepreneurship filled that gap because I was doing so many things. You know, when you start a company, you have to do everything. And at the beginning, you're a bit of a one-man band. Later, you become a conductor—it's not the same job—but you truly become completely multitasking, doing lots of different things at the same time, covering every subject.
But how long did you stay alone at the beginning of the adventure?
I was never really completely alone, but I had several partners at the beginning to help me, especially when you're starting out. For me, to build BlaBlaCar, I didn't pay myself for five years. So I didn't pay anyone else either. I worked with people who were willing to work with me by distributing shares of capital to them, you see, to...
Ah yes, you distributed them.
Well yes, with the people I started with, of course. It's normal because we couldn't...
There are many who aren't ready to do that, you know. I mean, you have to give something, right? Either you pay people, or you share the capital. So since he couldn't pay because he didn't have the money, he shared the capital shares. So you see, folks, what Fred is telling us is that he had the vision, he had the leadership, and he had the values. A very good academic background, of course, no question about that. But you saw what he did, because a lot of people tell me, 'Franck, I can't buy a company, I can't scale a company, or I can't create a company, I just can't.' I say, 'Why?' 'Well, because I don't have any money,' but you don't necessarily need money either. I think the foundation of entrepreneurship is succeeding in doing what you can with what you have. After that, you try to get more to have more resources and then go further. Not even when you don't have it do you do that. I want to build on what you just said; it's super interesting. That leads me to ask you what the psychological price of building BlaBlaCar was, in the end.
Whoa! I didn't see it that way.
I must still be like that. Stay put, huh.
No. So, I didn't see any psychological price.
You started to delve into the subject, though. You told me, 'I didn't pay myself for five years.'
Well, I had worked for five years before in a company, and I'm not very spendy. Actually, I often say that the best gift God ever gave entrepreneurs is pasta, because, you know, it's good, it's cheap. Rice is not bad, it adds variety. Uh no, but I'm not very demanding at all.
Ah, that comes from those values of yours.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, you see, I don't have a taste for luxury, I don't have excessive desires. So, I manage to do, well, maybe quite a bit with very little. And actually, the very first investors who came to BlaBlaCar, that's kind of what impressed them. You see, for example, when we raised money initially with the first business angels, when we had around €600,000 at the start, we had already gathered nearly 400,000 members on the carpooling platform. And so, the guys thought, 'Wait, if this guy managed to gather 400,000 people with, at the time, I must have spent something like €50,000 or, you know, €80,000 max,' they thought, 'okay, wait, if we give this guy €600,000, what's going to happen?' You see? Because for €600,000, you were heavily diluted, and people often say the first dilution is the most painful.
Yeah, it's between 15 and 20%.
Yes. Yes, of course. They put it on the table.
Yeah. So, there you go. So, I never really saw it as, I don't know, a sacrifice, because it was the path anyway, I wanted it to work, so you do what's necessary to make it work.
So there wasn't really a psychological price, no psychological bill to pay, other than stopping the piano.
Yes, exactly. Because it was between playing piano and sleeping at one point. Because it's very, very consuming. I mean, you know, I worked 90 hours a week for a dozen years to build this. It's normal, you know, you do everything. But actually, it has value too, because people know that you're always there, available, you respond. And that energy helps the young organization to structure itself, to unite, to build itself, because you are available, and that has value too.
How did you organize yourself at the beginning? There's a big fear among the entrepreneurs we coach: who do I hire first?
Ah yes, hm. Well, for me, if you want, the first hires, I told you how it happened, they were people who thought the idea was very good, great, and who were complementary to what I knew how to do, and who came, you know, let's say for free, because they came just in exchange for shares, so you're sure you're with believers. People who truly also think it will work.
And how did you convince them?
Ah, well, these were people I knew.
Are we talking about childhood friends?
No, not from childhood. Work friends or, you know, people I had met in different places, either during my studies, or not really childhood friends, friends from Stanford, or studies before Henri-IV, or after my first job too.
Yeah, from Henri-IV, for me, that went back a long way. It was my prep classes. Yeah, I was 18 to 20, you know, when I was in prep school. So, there you go, these are people who, well, who already knew me, who also know the integrity and the commitment I'm capable of putting into a project, who naturally trust me, and who said to themselves, 'Hey, the idea is good, let's go, I'm going to do this with Fred.'
But people often say there's a point where a company moves from being a project to being a responsibility, so for you, when did that finally happen?
Well yes, it's true that it's a change. Meaning, if you look at it, in the beginning, it's a project, and then 10 years later, it's a form of responsibility. However, the moment—I'm not sure if there's a specific time it shifts or if you even realize it—there's often a little something that makes you go, 'Oh yeah.' I don't know, just saying. Oh yes, I see. Like, I hired, I don't know, 20 people, and then three of my employees are expecting a child. You see what I mean?
Can you have breakthroughs like that? Or also when your cash flow is tight.
Oh, the cash flow is, it's reduced. Yeah.
You think, 'Uh oh, at the end of the month, how am I...' Yeah, that happened to me once or twice. Yeah. Like, did you have, what, three months ahead of you?
Oh no. I had less. Yeah, well, because I had clients who weren't paying me. Because in the beginning, you know, big companies take a long time to pay. I notably had one client who took over a year to pay us, and they were a big client. When you're a small company, it's complicated because at the same time you're telling them, 'Well, you should pay us anyway, because for you a year might not be much, but for us, how can I put it, we have time to die.' Well, I mean, yes, it's important for us. And so you're always waiting for the payment that's going to arrive, and meanwhile, you're delivering the service because you're not going to stop since you're contractually committed, but you have this big client who isn't paying you. So, uh...
Well, first of all, people who had started to invest as business angels in BlaBlaCar advanced me cash flow via their current accounts.
Because at that point, how much did you have left?
Oh, it came down to, you know, I must have been short 10 or 15,000 euros. It's not, you know, it's not huge, but it's enough to cause trouble, especially when you're just starting out and don't have many employees. It's enough to have to tell two, three, or four people that this month you won't be able to pay them, so it gets complicated.
So, what would you say to the entrepreneurs listening to you right now?
No, but you have to have, you shouldn't be all alone. I already had people who had actually invested in the company.
So, we're back to your initial strategic choice where you said to yourself, 'Well, I don't have any money, so, in the end, I'll bring in partners.' And they were the ones who helped bail you out later, who stuck with you.
Yes. And then, I paid them back, you know, not even two months later.
That way, you, uh, it just acts as an advance, it lets you have the money to pay, and then when you can pay them back, you do. Anyway, I think all entrepreneurs go through this kind of phase. It's, well, it's normal. So yes, you feel more responsible, because you tell yourself: 'Well, I've brought these people on board, the deal for them is that they have a job and therefore they are paid, and if you can't pay them, it's you who isn't fulfilling your end of the contract.' After that, a lesson like that also makes you ensure you never have cash problems again. You know, it keeps you up at night and all that. So you say to yourself, 'Okay, I really need to be even more cautious, to always have enough money in advance so that no matter what happens, I have time to scale back if needed, but not end up hitting a wall.'
What would you say your profile is? Introverted, discreet?
Well, I've done those tests, MBTI and the like.
Yeah. Have you done the Carl Jung profile? You know, based on thought, emotion, extraversion, introversion.
No, I haven't done that one. No, I did the Myers-Briggs one. Yeah, if I recall, I came out as something like 52 or 53% extroverted. So you see, it's, well, it's a bit extroverted, a bit introverted, I don't really know.
Yeah. Yeah. But what would you say? Forget the tests.
No, I think I'm a bit of both. It depends on the moment. It's just that I also like working alone in my bubble. And then I like to chat from time to time.
To go and recharge your batteries. Yeah, but that's also part of it. I think it's about the moments. It's not just a matter of personality, it's a matter of occasions, of opportunities. Yes, often we actually manage to discover a bit about these personalities through how we recharge. You, you go recharge alone when you've had a bit too much.
No, not only. No, rather with family, things like that, or also in places where, uh, where there aren't too many people. I mean, I'm not alone.
The clan, you like joining the clan to recharge.
Yeah. Or friends a lot, too. Yeah. It's that I have that, I kept my friends, you see. I have friends from over 30 years ago. And that's also very important because to them I'm still the same, I'm still Fred. I mean, you see, they knew me through the ups, the downs, and the whole adventure. They knew me before, they knew me, and they know me today. And you see, well, just last night, I was with two friends, we had a great evening. So that is very important to me.
It's a place to recharge.
What about this mental approach aspect? What might have surprised you the most about yourself as a leader and at what moment?
Uh, it's the extent to which, when you are convinced, you become convincing. Meaning that when you try to convince, you see, by using arguments that are somewhat rational that you've worked on or whatever, but sometimes it doesn't necessarily work very well.
well, with everyone, whether it's with employees, whether it's with clients, with investors, even with the media, with, well, all your contacts.
For example, so we know what we're talking about. Well, I don't know, you're going to describe why, for example, if we take the case of the pitch, you see, when you have to pitch, well, you have to pitch in many different ways depending on your audience. And besides,
that's why it's very difficult when we talk about the art of the pitch or how to pitch. The reality is that your pitch has to depend on your listener, because the goal is to convince the person in front of you, and they won't be swayed by the same arguments as the last person. So, in fact, you need to manage to speak to the person with the right arguments to convince them, whether it's to invest, to join you as a colleague, to use your product, to talk about it, well, everything.
And where I was surprised is that there is one thing that always works: when you speak about your own conviction, about the reasons why you believe in it yourself, you have a greater tendency to bring people together naturally than if you truly try to adapt to what you think the other person is thinking, telling yourself: 'Okay, if I tell him this argument, since he has this profile, it will resonate more with him.' That is harder to do. Whereas there is something very simple to do, which is that if you talk about the reasons why you are doing the project, well then, you can easily, by creating empathy, by emotion, by I don't know what, a whole bunch of things, while still being rational, by explaining the reasons that make you so convinced, you become convincing. And somewhere, that actually works with everyone because everyone has a form of empathy that can be triggered when we meet someone who is convinced. Uh, following someone who is convinced, it's—it's inspiring.
If we talk about the BlaBlaCar system, it's not just a company, it's a system of—stop me if I'm wrong—but it's a system of trust between strangers, ultimately.
Well, at the start, it began with a need. You needed to reach your family in the Vendée.
Vendée. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And you say, 'But wait, these cars, they're empty.' 'Uh, was it your sister who came to pick you up?' Who is it?
Exactly. Uh, initially, I had to go down to the Vendée from Paris, uh, for the end-of-year holidays. And then, uh, I started a bit late, uh, because I often start late for my travel plans and so everything was fully booked; well, I didn't have a single seat on a train. So, I called my little sister who was living in Rennes at the time and I asked her: 'Can you make a detour through Paris to take me to...to...?' 'Vendée?' She came to pick me up, and then, on the motorway, the A10, for those who have taken it, we were actually being passed by the high-speed trains, and, uh, there, I see the train go by, I say to my sister: 'You see that train there? It's full, I'm sure, because I tried every seat, there was nothing left, it was all booked up.' And then at the same time, I see dozens, hundreds of cars, almost empty, with only one driver on board. And there, I say to myself, 'Ah, but actually, there were plenty of seats to get to the Vendée, they just weren't in the trains, they were in the cars.' And I think, well, I was lucky because I happened to, well, I knew my sister, so I was able to get a seat in my sister's car, but that doesn't make it a service, you see, for everyone to find seats in cars. So, we have to find a way for people to be able to access the inventory of empty seats in cars.
And so, since I had also spent quite a bit of time in Silicon Valley, I was immersed in computing. I was returning from my studies that I had done at Stanford, in California, and I told myself: 'But actually, this is totally doable.' Because I had, you know, I had developed quite a few sites, I was coding a lot, and so I knew it was technically feasible. So, I knew there were no technical obstacles to building a service to connect people, even on a very large scale, like eBay, if you will, at the time, which was kind of the big marketplace that had really brought something truly new. And there you go, so afterwards, when I had...I told myself: 'Well, it's doable, that's it.' I, well, I'm going to do it, I don't see what could...
And how do you manage to build this company where you tell strangers, 'Trust each other,' on a global scale?
Well, there's a lot of work that's much more rational than people think, because actually, trust—you could say it's something human, emotional, call it what you want—but there are still arguments for building trust. Meaning that beneath the fact that you want to trust someone or something, there are certain parameters you haven't necessarily made explicit, but which will convince you that you can actually trust them. Well, these are parameters based on the past, parameters based on your own experience, on the experience of others, on reputation, on the commitment the person can show, and also on proof that everything went well. And so all of that, we were able to put into a model.
So, I developed a model called the DREAMS model. It's six letters, the word 'dreams,' in which I built six pillars of trust. The D for declared information. It's a piece of information that allows you to trust. You see, you'll say, well, I don't know, Franck is a math teacher, he likes jazz. And there's his photo and there's his name. So that is declared information. Then you have the R for ratings, so all the reviews, you know, the feedback that people can leave for each other. If I see on your profile, hey, Franck has 94 positive reviews from people he traveled with before. Well, right away I think he's someone I can trust. Everyone tells me Franck is great, I had a very good time, we talked a lot, he was on time, you know, just things like that. Then you have the E for engagement, and there, for example, I'm going to show you as a passenger that I am committed to coming tomorrow or the next day at 6 PM by paying in advance. So I'll pay €25 and tell you I'll be there, that sort of thing. Besides, you see, I've already paid, I've made a commitment. That is also a sign of trust. So you are going to trust me, you'll say, well, he's committed. The A is for activity. So what is activity going to be? It will be: is Franck registered since yesterday, or has he been registered for 3 years, and is he actually responsive? Replies to messages in half an hour or if he replies in a week. Actually, all those things are going to build my trust in Franck. Then, you have, well, that's for the A for Activity.
After that, you have the M for Moderation. So that is the work of the platform where, actually, uh, we make sure that all exchanges made, all interactions, uh, have the sole goal of carpooling and nothing else for starters, and then obviously that the exchanges are respectful, and so there is a form of moderation that the platform necessarily does to, uh, ensure that all interactions go well. Then after that, you have the S for Social where you will be able to, as a new user, say: 'Well, actually, I'm going to link my BlaBlaCar profile to my, I don't know, LinkedIn, Insta or whatever other social references,' and all that, put together, will obviously increase the trust I can have in you. Meaning that at some point, when all that information is available, I'll tell myself I know Franck, actually there's no problem, I can go carpooling with him. And we've even measured that.
Meaning the trust we are able to generate is in the top 3 of the types of trust we can generate. Meaning we went and asked people, uh, on a scale of 1 to 5, what is your level of trust regarding certain categories of people you interact with. So, we asked your level of trust regarding your connections on social networks and there, you have less than 16% of people who will say 4 or 5 out of 5. So, that's a very low level of trust. We ask people what is your level of trust toward family members or toward your friends. There, you land at 92 or 94% of people who tell you, uh, well yes, I have high, well 4 or 5 out of 5 in trust regarding people in my family or my friends. And then after you have neighbors, you have colleagues. So they are around 50% for 4 or 5 out of 5. So the big question was, what is the percentage for BlaBlaCar members who have a complete profile like the one I just described? And there, do you have any idea?
Well, you're looking at 88. 88% of people give a 4 or 5 out of 5 in trust to someone they've never met, but who has a complete profile with reviews and for whom we also do verifications.
So, you managed to do that with, ultimately, algorithms, programming, and matchmaking.
All the information available digitally from a distance, and so you manage to create trust remotely between people who have never met, based on a history of interactions the person has had with the community, but not necessarily with you. Meaning that when I see 94 positive reviews, it's not because I interacted 94 times with you, because otherwise...
That's genius, what you're telling me is that you've scaled trust, in the end.
You can, but we have over 100 million people in the network today, right now.
Fred, what do entrepreneurs not understand about building a scalable system?
I wouldn't say they don't understand, but I'd say the day you grasp certain things, you move faster. No, it's that you have to—well, that's almost a rule when you're a software developer, it's in your blood—you don't do the same thing twice. Everything, everything that can be automated, you automate. Everything. You shouldn't tolerate doing tasks by hand that take you, I don't know, half an hour, an hour, two, or three hours, that could be done by a machine, because otherwise, the bottleneck to scalability will be you. So, while machines can do the same thing faster, automatically, you can spend that time doing something else. So that's almost like a product designer's job, if you want. Meaning, based on the experiences you might have with the product and service, you'll say, 'Wait, this thing has happened before.' Now, I say twice, I'm exaggerating, but really, when you see something that has happened 8 or 10 times and took you an hour each time, you say, 'Wait, this thing...can I set it up automatically so I don't have to spend an hour every time it comes up?'
Because the problem is that if you have something to manage specifically on a transaction once in every ten cases, when you have 10 transactions a day, well, you do it once a day. But when you have 100, you're doing it 10 times a day. When you have 1,000 of them, you do it 100 times a day. When you have 10,000 of them, you do it 1,000 times a day. The thing is, that doesn't work. It stops working when you get up to 100 million, and at 100 million, you see the problem. So at some point, you really have to switch to...mode.
Now, in that scenario, it's easier to understand. But most entrepreneurs—I'm talking about small businesses making under 10 million too, you know, between 5 and 10—well, maybe I'm the one with the red nose here, if you like. So, that's what I understood: in the end, it's having this avalanche of repetition where you have...there, you can't, you can't fall into the trap. But for an entrepreneur, where, oh, it might be maybe once a week, it's, it's more complicated.
Well, at that point, you have to take a somewhat rational approach and try to quantify the time spent on each issue. So you'll say, 'Okay, this thing happened.' If it's something that happens 10 times and takes you 2 minutes each time, well, that took you 20 minutes. If it's something that happens, uh, twice and each time it takes you an hour, yeah, that took you 2 hours. To start with, find the ratio between not just the number of times it happens, but also the time it takes you. We're talking about hours, about, in the end, it's your time.
We're talking about time.
The most precious resource when you're an entrepreneur is your time. So that's what you must preserve by any means. So, as soon as there's something that starts taking your time because it repeats and because every time it requires your intervention.
I would say the most important thing for an entrepreneur, you're right, is time. But before time, I would say it's energy. It's the level of energy we have every day with this decision fatigue. We talk about it in our masterminds. Actually, we should do a mastermind together. Yeah. Great. What are the behaviors, the attitudes you uninstalled to grow the company?
Well, that came through, uh, well, there's a real reflection on that. The moment we felt the need to make explicit things that were implicit, meaning the culture, uh, how we want...
Here we are talking about culture, about the vision, about the company's values.
Yeah. OK. Meaning that when we were 50, well, again, you're going to say, 'Ah yes, but we had to think about it.' Yes, it's true. It was out of necessity that we arrived at having to define our...
culture. It's because it was a time when we were 50 and we were already in four countries.
50 full-time employees. Yes.
And we were in four countries, so we had offices, you know, an office in Warsaw, an office in Milan, an office in Madrid, an office in Paris. And there, we saw that even if the offices were small, sometimes you had three or four people, sometimes seven, well, there were little cultures that couldn't be exactly the same depending on the place. So we said, "Oh wait, actually this is going to hurt us because, you know, you can have a culture that splinters like that, and then it's not efficient at all anymore."
Can we clarify for our friends what it means for a culture to splinter?
Oh yes, absolutely, besides, you know this quote by Peter Drucker that says "culture eats strategy for breakfast and technology for lunch." Absolutely. Pardon, a great economist who says, here it is: culture eats strategy for breakfast and technology for lunch. Yes, culture is very important because it's what makes you resilient, it's what makes people happy and invested in their work, it's what makes the structure perform well together, quite simply. It's a group of people working effectively together. And so the challenge is really to align everyone, you see. And so when I say a culture that splinters, it's just that when it's not defined, if you will, there can be very different interpretations in different places and so everything becomes a bit implicit. So you lose coherence because some people do it one way and others do it another way, and then after that it becomes, "But wait, we didn't do it the same way," and so it inevitably creates...
Exactly. We often talk about dilution when we offer pieces of a cake, but here we are talking about leadership dilution.
Yeah. So what we did is we all got together for our first break, what we call the BlaBla Break. It was the first of a long series where we went to the mountains for 3 days.
Oh, I see. So, a retreat, essentially.
Yeah. A kind of retreat, and we got into the movie theater of the ski resort where we were staying—there were about fifty of us—and we said, "Right, let's try to define what makes us happy working for BlaBlaCar, and what we consider to be our team values." And from all of that, several different concepts emerged. Concepts like innovation, obviously, the right to make mistakes, mutual support, "being serious but knowing how to have fun"—you know, that sort of thing.
And what was the goal of those three days?
The goal was to successfully define a shared culture.
OK. So it was for internal use, and then for it to also radiate externally.
