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Our success story

Driven by a strong environmental awareness, Frederic Mazzella discovered ride-sharing in California, where he spent 3 years in between San Francisco and Palo Alto.

Once back in France, he created Comuto SAS / BlaBlaCar

2007 - 2009: launching and first innovation

  • 2007
    • Frédéric Mazzella met Nicolas Brusson at INSEAD (MBA) and they started building the business plan and the funding plan for BlaBlaCar
    • Frederic met Francis Nappez who started helping on the technology platform and joined BlaBlaCar as co-founder and CTO
    • Introduction of the first social layer and the well-known pictograms like “Bla Bla”
    • First mobile portal for the service in October
  • 2008
    • Full development of the social layer and community fixtures with ratings, in-site messaging systems, travel page etc...
  • 2009:
    • First office and employee!
    • Released Iphone app

 

2010: take-off!

  • Hire head of BlaBlaCar Spain and launched the service
  • Reach half a million users
  • Launch of Android app
  • Launch of the Agenda to help users get to events, festival and concerts
  • The site helps tens of thousands of people get back home during the ash cloud in April 2010
  • Moved to larger offices and grew the team to 15
  • Win green business prize and well as sustainable tourism prize in France

2011

  • Reach 1 million users!
  • New Iphone app
  • Launched BlaBlaCar in the UK
  • Launched the Campus product
  • Launched Agenda UK
  • Finished the year with 40 employees (3 in Madrid, 1 in London)

2012