Hygonomics is changing the labor market. Part 1: BlaBlaCar Success Story

According to experts, in modern times gigonomy, which involves the sharing of things, we will try our hand at many different works, because modern technology gives us enough free time from 9 to 17. But these changes also carry anxiety, insecurity and low wages.

In 2003, on Christmas, a young French IT specialist named Frédéric Mazzella tried to get from Paris to his parents' home in south-eastern France. He left the last-minute ticket purchase, and all trains of the National Company of the French Railways (SNCF) were already full. He had no car. There was no bus that would drive along the desired route with a length of 420 km. Mazzell thought that in any case there should be people who are traveling in the same direction, and in their cars there will be free space for the fellow traveler. Right? But how to contact them? There was a traditional method: Mazzell could get out on the side of the road and stand with a cardboard sign, but it seemed very outdated. In addition, according to the forecast promised snowfall. Does the Internet not offer such services? Mazzell searched the net, but found nothing. In the end, his sister had to drive 150 km to take him home for the holidays, but all the way Mazzell looked at cars moving in the same direction, with three empty seats. And each of these places was for him a gap in the market.

In those days, when we are moving away from traditional business and full-time work, multiple micro-businesses are becoming a tempting idea.

However, then Mazzell faced a problem characteristic of those years - in 2003 there was already the Internet, but social media was poorly developed. There was no Facebook. There were no smartphones. People told him his idea would never work. Who wants to drive 420 km with a stranger, whom I have met through the Internet, no matter how cheap it is? However, Mazzell believed in this idea. And his idea, which is now called BlaBlaCar, was waiting for the development of social media, Facebook and smartphones. In addition to the development of technology, Mazselle and two other partners, whom he managed to convince with him to create a carshoring platform, were also helped by a couple of external factors. The first is the financial crisis; thanks to him, the younger generation of people who were only looking for their first job could understand not only how unstable capitalism was, but also that it was not built according to their interests. It was necessary to find new streams of income. The second factor is the 2010 ash cloud from Iceland, which helped BlaBlaCar get publicity as an excellent solution for people who are stuck far from home. Five years later, Mazzell’s idea became a multi-million dollar success story.
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BlaBlaCar does not have a well-developed infrastructure, the company employs less than 300 employees worldwide. Every month, the company's online platform helps to find free places for 2 million trips. The head of SNCF recently recognized BlaBlaCar as the main competitor. And his concerns are understandable. SNCF has kilometers of railway tracks and a huge number of fixed trains that need to be maintained and repaired, and in addition, the company has thousands of employees who need to pay. And the infrastructure and to a large extent the organization of BlaBlaCar is provided by 10 million active participants in the service - for free. In the most popular countries, these members are happy to pay BlaBlaCar a 10% commission for using the platform.

BlaBlaCar is an ideal example of the possibilities that hygonomics gives us, finding in the inefficiency of capitalism free places to work, and using them thanks to sharing platforms. Due to this, there is an application for free places in the car, just as Airbnb earns money on free rooms or mass open online courses provide lectures. Participants do not earn on the proposed places - they cover the cost of travel thanks to fellow travelers.

Nicolas Brusson was one of Mazzell's partners at BlaBlaCar. When we recently talked to him about the company, he said that BlaBlaCar did not really relate to a business that provided cheap transportation services; rather, it was a business of trust. “There has always been talk about payment,” he said. “The main question was: how to build trust?” Technologies and an understanding of feedback and ratings allowed this to happen. “Magic does take place within the community,” says Brusson. Maintaining the reputation of the service and the safety of users is what keeps Brusson awake at night. However, filling out their profiles and carefully putting down a rating based on experience, “the participants themselves do most of our work for us”. Moreover, the more subscribers, the more ratings in the rating and the higher the reliability and security.

“Until now, our main task was not to win the competition,” says Brusson. - BlaBlaCar is too budget model for this. Our main task and difficulty was to train as many people as possible in the service. We wondered: Is this just a French phenomenon? And we proved not. Then we asked ourselves: is this just a European phenomenon? Not. We will soon appear in Brazil, India and not only. This platform works wherever people have cars. ”

As a member of BlaBlaCar, either by providing accommodation on Airbnb, or by harassing a taxi driver on Uber, or selling knick-knacks on Etsy, or teaching you anything on YouTube, you are not working full time. But now these things are increasingly becoming part of the working resumes of a huge number of people. All of them use their previously unrealized skills and abilities, resorting to the help of modern technologies in order to gain access to the market. At a time when we are moving away from traditional business and full-time work, multiple micro businesses are becoming a tempting idea.

In 2013, as a result of one study, it was found that of the 702 professions, almost half are in the high risk category of “potential automation”.

Indeed, the novelty of these models has convinced some commentators and representatives of legal structures that, thanks to digital platforms, freelancing can be something of a panacea for an economy in decline and stagnation, and such employment may be the future. But the BlaBlaCar example proves that ideas with zero indirect costs can grow exponentially very quickly. And yet, if such types of employment and sharing services are really our future, what will it look like? It certainly will not be employees with a fixed salary in companies with a hierarchical structure. There may be low wages and weak trade union rights. But such a future may also provide many opportunities, and perhaps, this change will simply be necessary.

Uber currently refers to the pioneers of these changes with his ambitions to make everyone who has a GPS a taxi driver (and eventually drive out full-time drivers from the business). Uber consultant David Plouffe recently explained that the service is designed for people who are in financial difficulties - it allows them to earn an extra penny or those who are in search of work. Most drivers do not decide to make it their profession or to do it for a long time. This is very important: for most people, Uber is not even a part-time job ... it's just a small part-time job for an hour or two a day that helps make ends meet. ”

The second part is here .