{"id":31588,"date":"2015-11-30T08:31:05","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T07:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=31588"},"modified":"2015-11-30T08:31:05","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T07:31:05","slug":"lyft-blablacar-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2015\/11\/lyft-blablacar-merger\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Lyft & Blablacar would make the perfect merger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"_MG_1301ret\"
\nIt started as far back as\u00a0last year, when Blablacar raised $100 Million<\/a>\u00a0to ‘go global’ – everyone had always known that Mazzella’s ambitions were big, but $100 Million was a whole new ball game.\u00a0One year later, the company\u00a0raised $200 Million more and it’s safe to say that there’s no stopping the BlaBlaCar. Today, they are present in most of Europe, India & Mexico, and they’ve got plans to open a handful of new markets in the beginning of 2016.
\nIt’s not something I throw out lightly, to say that I think that two Unicorns should merge together. It’s not a fantasy celebrity couple, or an attempt to pack as many buzz words into a single title (otherwise I would’ve crammed Unicorn, Rudeicorn, Decacorn, and a couple other terms in there), but the result of:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Living in the heart of the Sharing Economy<\/a> (Paris).<\/li>\n
  2. Following Blablacar for more than 4 years as\u00a0they evolved from covoiturage.fr into the giant that they are today.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Lyft + Blablacar = Perfect Combo<\/h3>\n

    There are a few\u00a0initial observations that\u00a0make merging the two companies together optimal. That is, if they\u00a0both decided it was good to consider, it’s obvious that some of the most important variables would line up perfectly.
    \nFirst, from a brand perspective,\u00a0while they both have very strong brands, their relationship with their users (drivers & passengers) is very much the same. Lyft combats the\u00a0impersonal feel of Uber by creating a sense of community, while Blablacar has done wonders to remove all\u00a0aspects of anonymity & distrust from what is essentially hitchhiking online (I say that as a known “rude hitchhiker” – my handle on this blog and the source of the “rude” in Rude Baguette).
    \nIn addition,\u00a0because Lyft\u00a0shuttered its long-distance ridesharing business early on (Side Car, anyone?), and because Blablacar has always avoided intra-city\u00a0travel, it is as if Greyhound was merging with your local bus line. Blablacar has already considered getting into short-distance travel in the past – through a failed acquisition of Djump that never got completed – and Lyft dropped its long-distance ridesharing service when Uber stepped up the short-distance pressure.
    \nBlablacar needs\u00a0users to turn the Blablacar app on more often if they want to\u00a0be able to provide real-time ride offers, and Lyft needs drivers to make\u00a0longer trips if they want to diversify their competition with Uber.
    \nNot that it needs to be said, but\u00a0Uber & Blablacar would obviously be a terrible fit – the relationship with users (drivers & passengers) just doesn’t line up, and I couldn’t see Travis Kalanick & Fred Mazzella being on the same page, despite the fact that Uber has enough money to buy Blablacar 10 times over.
    \nLyft desperately needs\u00a0growth abroad –\u00a0the company already called off plans for European expansion this year after Uber stepped up competition in NYC, and, as I’ve said before, you can’t be a global leader in the Sharing Economy if you’re not a leader in Paris (Airbnb’s #2 city for revenue, Uber’s #2 city for revenue, Blablacar’s #1 country for revenue).<\/p>\n

    Why this might not work, but really should.<\/h3>\n

    Now, the biggest factor that’s going to play here\u00a0– or maybe it already has – is going to be a question of control.\u00a0I\u00a0tend to see Blablacar as the\u00a0more dominant of the two, to which\u00a0you may respond that Lyft has a higher valuation and more money raised. Well, given the sentiment in the valley of predicting dying Unicorns, I think it’s enough to say that sometimes a valuation isn’t a valuation, whereas Blablacar (valued at $1.6 Billion) has\u00a0arguably raised the minimum required fundraising, despite\u00a0planning to grow from 400+ at the end of 2015 to 700+ this time next year: in fact,\u00a0in the past year, Blablacar has\u00a0recruited one new employee per day. In France.
    \nThere are certainly financial details that I won’t even begin to scratch the surface. Blablacar has virtually no competitors, whereas Lyft is on the receiving end of most of Uber’s aggression. Blablacar is valued at about $1.6 Billion from its last fundraising round, where as Lyft is valued at $2.5 Billion, but Blablacar’s growth trajectory is virtually unlimited – China, Canada, all of South America (where they are rumored to be launching soon).
    \nDoes Lyft need\u00a0Blablacar to survive? Maybe, depending on what your\u00a0definition of surviving is.\u00a0Lyft isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but they also aren’t really going anywhere on their own, if you see what I mean. Blablacar will continue to roll out, and its next fundraising will likely be 1) at a higher valuation than Lyft, and 2) enough money for them to\u00a0enter the US market, which makes the deal with Lyft ephemeral, at least in terms of\u00a0minimizing user overlap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It started as far back as\u00a0last year, when Blablacar raised $100 Million\u00a0to ‘go global’ – everyone had always known that Mazzella’s ambitions were big, but $100 Million was a whole new ball game.\u00a0One year later, the company\u00a0raised $200 Million more and it’s safe to say that there’s no stopping the BlaBlaCar. Today, they are present<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":31591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}