What keeps you awake at night? — Francis Nappez (Blablacar)
CTO.Pizza summarizes daily challenges of great startups CTOs, heard directly from their mouth during an informal discussion around a pizza. Follow us to stay up to date or register to the newsletter.
BlaBlaCar is a long distance carpooling platform that connects drivers with empty seats and passengers to share travel costs. It’s also a unicorn.
- Founder: Frédéric Mazzella, Nicolas Brusson & Francis Nappez
- Founded: 2006, worked on it full time since 2008
- Funds raised: 300M$
- Employees: 420+
- Tech team: 140+
What’s on your pizza?
Arugula, dried tomatoes, olives, mozzarella, lemon at Baretto di Edgar
Your background
Can you tell us a bit about what you were doing before Blablacar?
I quit studying after a technical university degree in Grenoble, at a time when Internet was just starting to warm up. It was mesmerizing because everything about it was new. I had the luck to meet Xavier Niel in 2000 and worked with him for a few years.
We launched quite a few of the structural products that allowed Free to disrupt the price of internet in France. I worked on the backend technology during the launch — it was a truly incredible experience that completely revolutionized the French internet landscape, killing the competitor’s prices for a great service. It was basically lead by a team of brilliant and passionated geeks who were the kings at Free — and Xavier Niel knew how to talk to them as he had also been a tech guy.
After a few years, I wanted to open my mind to something else and could tell that mobile browsing would be the next big thing. I joined Airweb where I helped build mobile websites for different companies, mostly internet and mobile providers with WAP portals and some serious traffic.
Meetic then poached me to launch their mobile app in 22 countries, with just 2 people leading the mobile app project.
How did you meet Nicolas and Fred to start Blablacar?
I have been very inspired by Marc Simoncini (Meetic) and Xavier Niel (Free), who are both very charismatic and great leaders. I re-used a lot of what I’ve learnt from them in my career.
After Meetic, I started my first company — something about people lending money to each other — didn’t work. My cofounder at the time introduced me to Fred Mazzella who was his neighbour, to talk about money lending on a mobile application — but the collaboration didn’t work too much either.
That’s when Frederic told me about the Blablacar idea he had in mind. I become a big fan of the project pretty much directly, but I needed about a year before being able to go full time on it. It was the same for Frederic who wanted to take an MBA at INSEAD, where he ended up meeting Nicolas. So after all that — in 2008 — we both quit our jobs and got started.
Definition of a CTO
You’re judged by your hard skills but you need to prove your soft skills and human management capabilities
What’s your concept of a CTO?
There are 2 levels in this job.
- A C-level role brings opportunities, tech solutions and value to the company. There’s a real subject when it comes to separating the roles between the project managers and the CTO. The CTO cannot do everything, and that’s when he needs to choose what profile to hire.
- Strategy: The CTO has a very large overview on the company. When the company grows, he might need to hire a VP of engineering who will make sure that delivery is smooth and fast.
At the beginning, the CTO has this title because he’s one of the founder or an early employee. Some CTOs want to keep coding, but I think that the real deal happens when you stop coding, when you can focus on management, vision and people. You can take the time you need to step back and thing instead of rushing to push the next bugfix. You’re managing the milestones of your developer’s team, so you stay legitimate — don’t be afraid to stop coding when necessary.
The hardest part of being a CTO is that you’re judged on your hard skills but you need to prove your soft skills and human management capabilities. You’re the tech guy that has the strategy in mind, and this side of your job has not usually been tested when you joined.
Can there be issues between the tech team and the rest of the company?
I don’t think the tech team at Blablacar has ever been in a position of rivalry with any other team. That might be because we (the founders) set a tone of transparency and we listen to each other.
We strongly believe that the entire focus of the company should be put towards pleasing your customers, your community or whoever your target is.
It’s easy to think that because developers might have higher salaries than the rest of the company, it can create tension. But when you look at it, other positions also have high salaries, look at the data-scientists now! It’s mostly a matter of who you are in the end.
Can you describe a crisis you had to manage?
How do you define a crisis? I’m currently reading The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and when I see what this guy has been through, it feels like I haven’t had any crises.
We’ve had bumps at pretty much all levels, but never to the point of no return. Let’s talk about crises when we said “Shit, we screwed up. What now?”.
That type of crisis can come from two things:
- Your own decisions
- External elements that move faster than you
You see your best assets the most during a crisis. You can tell very quickly if your team believe in you and the project when everybody is about to hit the same wall and has to stir the boat in the right direction.
In such a time, the position that the founders take is highly important. We’ve always been very “no bullshit”, very transparent. We closed down 3 countries last year and it hurts to say it, but we took the entire team and told them. The team expects us to assume the consequences of any decision we take.
People are important
Tech people often underestimate the value of relationships
A lot of people want to get advice from you in the french tech scene. Have you ever been mentored?
Everywhere I worked, I met great people. Sometimes I got mentored on things I should not be doing, which is as precious as things you should be doing.
One of my most impactful encounters was with Justin Ziegler (note: founder and CTO of Priceminister) that gave me a bunch of his time and great advice. Renaud Visage (note: CTO and co-founder of Evenbrite) was also of great help for his insights.
Tech people often underestimate the value of relationships. We need to work on changing that mindset.
Is there anything you would have done differently?
Millions of things! But there’s a few that I really keep in mind at all times now.
I really believe in diversity, either gender, ethnic or just the background of each person. A company needs strong values shared by different people. I think having people from different countries is a great way to open the team’s mind in general.
I’ve seen companies pitch on startup contests or during investment rounds, presenting a really solid tech stack — and I saw some of them go down a few months later. So now I have a signal in my mind when the stack seems perfect: it means that your team is not going fast enough.
I’ve talked a lot to Dan Teodosiu (note: CTO at Criteo) about how things were technically crappy at the beginning. Features needed to roll out fast, and as soon as they were confident that it worked enough for production, they shipped.
Is there anything special you want to see in a potential hire?
The know-how as well as knowing how to behave. I need to see if there’s a match with our company’s values, as the knowledge of a developer can become almost obsolete in a few months anyway: can you keep learning?
I usually try to get a personal feeling about the candidate, through questions about crisis management, human management, etc.
One of my favorite questions is: What keeps you awake at night? If they answer that everything is fine and they sleep well, it might be a sign of overconfidence. The candidate’s behaviour is way harder to change than their skillset, so that’s something really important for any hire.
Any tips for startups trying to hire?
We live in a time of war — for developers, at least. Salaries in France bumped 10% in the last year alone, it’s getting ridiculous. But I can think of two things that work the most:
- Be visible in real life. Go to meetups, events, etc. You will only find the most passionated people if you can go where their passion is.
- Referrals. At the end of it, the tech world is quite small, and people know each other. So try to have a good incentive when it comes to referrals, it will save you a lot of time and money.
You already built a unicorn… What’s next?
In Paris, there’s a solution for everything. In the rest of the country, options are limited
In Paris, there’s a solution for everything. Public transportation, cars, bikes, scooters, whatever… you can rent anything for dirt cheap and it’s very easy to get around.
In the rest of the country, options are very limited and not a lot of people seem to care. We’re in an innovation race in cities and capitals, but there’s a long tail everywhere else that we have to take care of.
I’d love for Blablacar to become a global transportation platform. Global means long distances and short distances. The goal remains to help people to move efficiently.
I actually have more questions than answers to this question.
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