  The first thing I wanted to say
is that we love our customers
so much that we actually don't
call them customers, we call them
members, and we have a set
of ten values in the company
which are(? 00.18) and one of them is
'the member is the boss'. So it's
not that new, because this is
a saying that comes from Sam
Walton, who had founded Walmart
and who said, 'There is only one boss
the customer,'
  but it's actually what drives us
every day and we make sure
we actually provide the best
service for our community and
we also consider ourselves
members, because we do
our activity, which is ridesharing. So
I'll come back to the very origin
of the idea and the concept
  A few years ago
  I needed to get back home for Christmas
to get to my home place, which is
in Vendée, for those of you who know
where this remote place in France
is. It's about 300 miles
from Paris and actually
all the trains were full and
  I found myself in a situation
where I could not actually
meet my family for Christmas. So
in the end my little sister came and
picked me up
  in Paris and then she brought me
back to Vendée, and on the road I
remarked that almost all the cars
were empty and I was like, 'Wow
that was a chance of seats
actually available,' but they were not
in the trains, they were in the cars
because all the cars on the road
almost all of them, were empty. So
I was like, 'Okay, we need to index all
this in a search engine or
something.' So that's how the idea
came about and actually for
72 hours I didn't sleep
I tried to go to sleep and I
was like, 'This is too simple an idea, it
must exist,' and I was coming back
and looking for it in all the languages
I knew and it did not exist
to the scale I wished. So
that's how
  the story of BlaBlaCar began
  So, just to make clear what we do
today, it's ridesharing. So we
allow drivers with empty seats
to actually share them with passengers
going the same way and as
you can see from the slides, when
you drive alone, not
only is everything grey around you
and you're bored and you pay
a lot of money, but then when
you are sharing your car
it's all joyful, colourful
and it costs you less money as well. That's
basic marketing, but I'm sure you
will remember that next time you'll be alone
behind the wheel.
  You could enjoy a nice ride
with passengers and feeling that
actually the journey's shorter because
you've been sharing part of your life with
people. So what we exactly
are is a combination
of a search engine, a travel
search engine, and a community
We are providing a service
for transporting people that
actually is on
a community which
shares values, and
if we look at the growth of
what we've witnessed over the past
years, so I began almost ten
years ago. This is the growth since
2009. I spared you
the years from 2004 to
2009 which, as you can guess
are about the thickness of the line
  and this was actually the time
where we were figuring out
the product market fit. So
the way we would offer a service
that would fit our community
and so I would spend, like, hours
during the weekends calling all
the members and making sure
that we were actually providing
a service that would fit their needs
  Then, over the past years it seems
we've found the recipe for growth
  and now we have a community of
20 million members.
  All this community is built
around the brand, so I put
up the Google trends for the keyword
search worldwide on brands
you may all know about
  As you can see, we are
building a brand and this is the
worldwide search and we are not
present in the US. I could come back
on that topic, but we're not in the US
at all and what we do in the US
which is long-distance ridesharing
on distances of about 200
miles, does not exist in the US
yet. There are several reasons for this
So this is a worldwide search
  without the US. So we're in
nineteen countries and
actually our brand has been
growing in all those countries also
because it's universal. You
may wonder why we're called
BlaBlaCar. I get the question all the
time. It's actually because when
you register, you choose how much you talk
in the car.
  So you choose if you are Bla
BlaBla or BlaBlaBla.
  This is a feature that allows
you to find the right people to travel
with and that's why it's BlaBlaCar
and then it's actually universal
so it's becoming a brand
which actually has
not only the universal
thing in it, which is BlaBla
but
  it also looks local to all
the countries, because everybody thinks
that BlaBla is something they have in
their own country and then actually
it exists everywhere.
  So BlaBlaCar is a community
  and I wanted to go back to
a quote which I really like
from a movie I'm sure you remember
which is Gladiator.
  I'll try to imitate Russell
Crowe, but it's kind of hard.
  So what he says is,
  let me try it, 'What we do in life
echoes in eternity.'
  That's right before the battle, right
You need to motivate all those soldiers
so that they go fight,
  and so what we can say today
is a bit different. What we do
in life echoes on social
media. That's really something
that we push forward with
BlaBlaCar, because we try
to do a lot of things in our lives
that echo on social media and build
a community. So I'll go through
this. We have what we call
the BlaBla Times (ph 05.44). As you can see, we
are doing a lot of things about the brand
and
  the BlaBla thing is something which
really works. So we have the BlaBla
Times where we meet our members
we do a lot of things with them
We discuss about the product
we get their feedback, we
also show them that we are real
humans, because sometimes they
believe that computers work
on their own. Actually we tell them, 'No
there are people behind the screen and
it's us.'
  Also, we have the BlaBla Stars. BlaBla
Stars are exceptional people in
the community. They are, like, artists
they are photographers, they
will cross the ocean with a boat
they
  run a marathon or whatever
so we put them forward in the community
and we say they are BlaBla Stars
They are normal people like you, but
they are doing something which is exceptional
and this is building a community
spirit. We also have what we call
the BlaBla Tour, which is actually
a number of BlaBla Times
so last year we went
into 41 cities in
Europe to do the BlaBla Tour
and meet our community. This year
we'll go to 80 cities, so
it's growing every year. It's really
popular and it's helping
building the image of not
only our team but also all
the community and we forward
that, we push that on the social
networks everywhere, so that people
remark that all this is
building in the real life as well
and it is not only on mobile phones
  We have a BlaBla Day where we
gather
  the artists in the community
they will play concerts, they will
be selling their arts, their
crafts, to the community
Last year it was on
the River Seine in Paris. We
had 10,000 people coming
by and then it was a great day
for the community itself
as well.
  We also go on festivals
all the music festivals. I believe
we're going to more than twenty
festivals this year, all over Europe
and beyond,
  and we also have a tool which
we call the BlaBla Help. Again
a BlaBla-something.
  Actually it's the most senior
members of our community, whom
we call ambassadors, who
are helping the newbies and
it's all online. So when you arrive
on the service, you can ask a question
and 95% of the time
you get an answer in less than ten seconds
Then people are able to rate each
other. So it's really scaling with
the community. It's kind
of a customer support 2.0. The
community is helping the community
and it really, really works. It can
scale in all countries.
  So, what we remarked is that
people join for the savings
they stay for the sharing and actually
love us for the freedom we
provide them. This is really, really
strong, this is what we've been
witnessing in the community
and it's what's holding the entire
community right now. What I wanted
to show you as well is
actually in the real life, what
we do. So I have a short video
  You are actually allowed to cry
after the video if you wish
and that would be the end of my talk
Let's go for the video.
  (Video plays in Spanish 08.39-09.40).
