Paris, 15 June 2021 – On the eve of the VivaTech conference, where a central focus is the attractiveness of the European tech ecosystem for international talent, BlaBlaCar unveils its new employee equity policy to attract new talents and further foster an entrepreneurial mindset across its team.
100% of employees to be equity holders
From the summer of 2021, BlaBlaCar is implementing a new equity policy for its employees: 100% will have the opportunity to become shareholders of the company. Everyone in the company who was not yet an equity holder has become so, and all new employees will become so too as they join, getting free shares with a two year vesting period.
This comes at a time of fast-development for the company, which has just raised an additional $115 million to support its growth strategy, and plans to recruit 260 people in 2021. BlaBlaCar is looking for engineering, data, product, marketing, sales, HR and finance profiles (see all the positions available).
Financial education for everyone
Until now, about a third of the team owned equity, mainly senior profiles or employees who had negotiated it. This situation, quite common across the European tech ecosystem, creates inequalities based on disparities in profiles, between those who already have a good understanding of the benefits of holding equity, and those who have little knowledge about it, if any.
The new policy sets all employees on an equal footing in terms of access to share ownership, regardless of their level of experience, financial education or negotiating skills. It is coupled with internal trainings on corporate finance, so that everyone now has a basic knowledge of equity ownership, fundraising, valuation, etc. Ultimately, by making everyone co-owners, this initiative contributes to the entrepreneurial culture that defines BlaBlaCar and its team.
“When I got my first job in the Silicon Valley, every engineer talked about equity and it was part of any employee’s ask”, says Nicolas Brusson. “But in Europe, the lack of examples of employees cashing out from successful tech companies, combined with a more taboo relationship to risk and money, has put a brake on a more transparent and aligned corporate leadership culture. We want BlaBlaCar to lead the way to make this entrepreneurial mindset more accessible, where employees are empowered to be co-owners. The best way to cut the vicious circle is to educate everyone, and bring them on board with an inclusive equity policy.”
$15 million employee cash-out across 4 secondaries
Since the creation of BlaBlaCar, employees who own shares have already had 4 opportunities to sell them during secondary deals, using funding rounds to give the possibility for employee shareholders to sell part of their equity to investors. This is when the value created becomes tangible: some use this money to support their personal projects and others prefer to reinvest it in a new company, thus reinjecting this value into the ecosystem. This is notably the case of more than 30 former BlaBlaCar employees who are now entrepreneurs.
Through these secondary opportunities, a total of $15 million was cashed out by 86 employees or former employees (founders excluded).
Read Nicolas Brusson’s full statement on Medium.
See open positions at BlaBlaCar : https://blog.blablacar.com/dreamjobs