All posts in Blablacar
La Belle Assiette raises $1.7m seed round to further accelerate their rapid growth
La Belle Assiette launched just last year and has already secured its position as the #1 marketplace for private chefs in Europe. The past 6 months were particularly robust ones in terms of their growth as they expanded throughout France and launched in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the UK and have validated over 350 Chefs on their […]
With the Sharing Economy booming in France, La Belle Assiette brings professional cooks to your kitchen
The sharing economy has been on the top of the tech agenda in recent years. With sharing giants such as Airbnb, ZipCar, Blablacar, etc as well as various events centered on it, including Le Web London in June and the recent Ouisharefest.com, this continues to be a growing area that’s still ripe for innovation. As […]
‘Web-to-Store’ startup Pubeco raises 1.25 million euros from ISAI
Pubeco, who specialize in helping retailers digitalize all those annoying paper ads and catalogs they send potential customers, has just announced that they raised 1.25 million euros from French VC ISAI (Blablacar, Commerce Guys, Shopmium, & more). Since its founding in 2008 by Romain Sarels and Yannick Lalleau, Orchies-based (in Northern France) Pubeco has grown steadily to reach a solid […]
3 Myths Busted about European vs. US Venture Capital success
The British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) just published a report dispelling many of the stereotypes and myths about the performance of Europe’s VCs. The conventional wisdom has been that Europe’s risk-adverse nature and difficult IPO environment has constrained the potential and success of Europe’s venture and startup communities. As the report points out, we […]
Blablacar releases shocking study on Trust in Online Communities
This morning at LeWeb, Blablacar CEO and co-founder Frédéric Mazzella spoke on stage as one of the Ignite speakers. In his speech, Mazzella announced some amazing figures – Blablacar now matches 400,000+ travelers a month across Europe in a community of more than 2.5 million users; for Mazzella, however, this isn’t good enough. He began asking himself […]
Concur's $150M TravelTech global fund takes off!
Concur Technologies, a traveltech giant who acquired TripIt last year (and owns a few other notable properties), has launched a $150M fund, called The Perfect Trip, dedicated to funding innovation in the traveltech sector. According to Pierre-Emmanuel Tetaz, head of Concur France and former founder of ETAP ON LINE before it was acquired by Concur, the […]
BlaBlaCar Rolls Out in Benelux, Portugal & Poland
BlaBlaCar announced this morning that they are rolling out their P2P ride-sharing marketplace in five new countries: Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands & Luxembourg), Portugal & Poland. In addition, In the announcement, BlaBlaCar said it has joined forces with Poland’s Superdojazd, a local car sharing network that was just about to launch, and they will be setting up an […]
German Carpooling.com plans US launch, but is the hearth safe?
Yesterday, TechCrunch announced that the German Carpooling.com, a ridesharing marketplace, raised $10M to launch in the US — this is about as far as I can get into the article giving full disclosure that I am a HUGE fan of BlaBlaCar, the France-based competitor who raised $10M to spread across Europe earlier this year. Not only was […]
Web2Day Wrap-Up – Fleur Pellerin, Collaborative Consumption, & $22 Billion
I had the wonderful pleasure not only to be a media partner, but to speak at Web2Day in Nantes last week, and the first thing I’d like to say is that, once again, Nantes punches above its weight class. This two-day event featured startups from all over France, speakers from all backgrounds, and they even […]
Scientipole replaces bootstrapping for French startups
Since 2002, Scientipole Initiatve, funded by the Ile-de-France has been providing personal loans of between €20K-€60K in order to help startups develop commercially and hire. With their new "croissance" program, they may just be replacing bootstrapping.