Building a Great Marketplace

Frederic Mazzella, Co-Founder and CEO BlaBlaCar

Frederic Mazella is the CEO and Founder of BlaBlaCar, a peer-2-peer travel company which connects drivers with empty seats to people looking for a ride. BlaBlarCar was founded in 2006 and is a Lead Edge Capital portfolio company. Prior to BlaBlaCar, Frederic was a Project Manager at Kabira, a supplier of in-memory transactional platforms that power some of the world’s largest financial and telecommunications enterprises. Before joining Kabira, Frederic was a Research Assistant at NASA for three years.

Summary Notes on Building a Great Marketplace

Building a great marketplace
First thing to look at in marketplace
The quality of service, ratings etc.
What makes a great marketplace?
Quality of service that each side provides to the other
Drivers have to be good at providing service, punctual, friendly, rating mechanism
Building trust with people who have never met
Key metrics to monitor?
Fill rate in the cars – how many seats have been sold vs. offered by drivers
Wants any driver offering seats to get passengers
Ratings and average of rating to make sure it’s high enough
Monitor activity and how often riders and drivers come back
Advice to marketplace entrepreneurs
Build a service you would use
Frederic has been ridesharing for a long time and this helped shape the right experience to make sure it’s easy and efficient
Since it takes a long time to build a marketplace, it’s a good goal to want to build a service you would use
Make sure market is large
Think about the opportunity and whether or not it is niche
Need to have many people to participate in the network