In this interview, Frédéric Mazzella, founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar, explains how the company leverages the sharing economy to make car usage more sustainable and cost‑effective, emphasizing the creation of a trust‑based social network that connects strangers for rides. He describes how BlaBlaCar’s values were crowdsourced from employees, forming a set of ten guiding principles that shape culture, hiring, and decision‑making. Mazzella downplays the pressure of being a unicorn, stating that community building and optimisation are the core mission, while valuations are secondary. He outlines BlaBlaCar’s acqui‑hiring strategy—eight acquisitions to enter new markets—and how a clear values framework eases cultural integration. Leadership at BlaBlaCar is portrayed as motivation‑driven, with a focus on continuous learning, and the company enjoys strong talent retention and a magnetic employer brand. Mazzella recounts his entrepreneurial spark, inspired by peers leaving academia for startups, and credits a wide network of mentors for shaping his approach. Finally, he reflects on the company’s six business‑model pivots, stressing a pragmatic, ego‑free process of testing, learning from failure, and iterating.
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TranscriptAuto-generated · 8 min
Many people would argue that the sharing economy is actually More sustainable, more human than the traditional one. How do you see it? What advantages does it bring to society?
We arrived with BlaBlaCar, which is a solution that helps people share the cost of usage of cars. And it's massive. So it's bringing a new solution directly from the tip of your smartphone to actually access through connectivity and then the search engines and databases the possibility to match with someone who's using another car, and make a better usage of this car, so that everybody can save money, but also use less resources.
When you think about the purpose of BlaBlaCar, the purpose is— the economic optimisation is a means to the end, which is the purpose of building the trust and community around a social network. How has that manifested
What's magic about it is that we're able to build better interactions between people, because we are building a trust network in which everybody knows with whom they will be riding. This is actually much better for humanity, because you are able to travel with people you have never met, but whom you can trust, thanks to the new digital tools that we are building.
So often, the purpose of a company is built by the PR department, and it is a bit fabricated in a way. How genuine is that of Blablacar?
We live our values. We crowdsourced our values internally. When we were 60, we gathered in a room and said, okay, what defines us? What makes us so motivated every day to, to build Blablacar? And so we were able to bring some values out of our team, which are now our 10 values. We have values like in trust we trust, Which means that we are building trust for everyone, and it's really front and central in the preoccupations of everyone every day. We have values like share more, learn more, which is a value that allows us to really share as much as we can, so that we learn together. We have values like think it, build it, use it, which means we think the product, we build it, and we use it.
You've been described as one of the most promising unicorns So it must put a lot of pressure in terms of creating value. How do you deal with that tension?
I don't feel any kind of special pressure regarding that, because we know that we are still only scratching the surface of what's possible in terms of optimisation. We know that along the way we're building a community where people help each other, and that's the most important. And then the valuations, or the financial pressures, are just something which goes with the development of the activity. But it's not the core of the business we're building. The core of the business we're building is a community in 22 countries where people are able to share the cost together.
So regarding culture, you've been known in your growth strategy to do quote unquote acquihiring, acquiring companies to enter new markets, acquiring new talents. How do you preserve this culture when integrating new companies?
In terms of culture, the fact that we have written our values makes it much faster for us to convey our motivation factors, the way we work together. So far we've done 8 acquihires. And so when we arrive, they are relieved to see that we have deployed so much energy into making ridesharing a reality, that they are super happy for that. And then they see that the values that go with it And the way we grow is compatible with them.
How would you describe the skills of the leaders at Blablacar, and the type of organisation you have? And what could traditional companies learn from you?
It's a lot about motivation. And then the skills come with motivation, because when you're motivated, you can learn anything. The learning is front and central in our motivation to do what we do every day. So for talents, this is That's super important because people are looking for that, and we look for people who are looking for a learning experience.
So what might scare off a traditional corporate company, somebody who's changed a lot, might actually be attractive to you?
Yeah, it could be. And then it's a challenge, of course, because you need to make sure that the job you're proposing to the person is enough for this person for several years to— They're not going
to hop again. Presumably, as you've become more successful, it's become easier to hire people. But does that then up the expectations of the people who you hire? And is it— does it become hard to retain people, or are you still growing fast enough that—
We're growing fast enough. We don't see people leaving the company at all. Actually, I remember having interviews for an HR director recently, and I asked him, so why do you apply at Blablacar? He just told me, Because I've been trying to recruit someone from BlaBlaCar for the past two years, and there is no way I can get someone out of this company. So I just wanted to know what's inside.
Yeah. When did you find out you wanted to be an entrepreneur, and why?
The seed was planted probably when I was at. I could see lots of my classmates not even finishing their master's or PhD, and then dropping out and going to startups, or creating companies. It created a lot of questions in my head. I had been looking for ideas that would bring enough passion for me, for putting all my energy in it. And so one day I had this— the ridesharing idea, and then I thought, this is the right one.
And did you have any important mentors early in that entrepreneurial journey?
Probably like 50 or 80 people who have influenced me over the years for some things. And then you make your own mix of the good things you've seen that you want to reproduce.
Many people told you Blablacar would never succeed. You had to reinvent your business model 6 times along the years. How did you manage to hold your ground? What does it take to deal with failure and learn from it?
It is super important, actually, to To try, see that it doesn't work, and then learn, and then try something else. So that's the process of progressing. So that's the way we've been dealing with failure, if you want. It's by identifying mistakes, correcting them, and going further, not reproducing it. So you have to be very pragmatic and very tough to yourself when you see that there is a mistake. There should be no ego that says, but it should have worked. Yes, but it doesn't. So—
