Europe is still lacking real tech giants like Google, Facebook or Amazon, but it looks like things are slowly changing. However, if European companies want to start competing with Silicon Valley, they have to start thinking internationally from the beginning, says BlaBlaCar COO Nicolas Brusson.

BlaBlaCar is a French ride-sharing startup. It has about 20 million users and is active in 18 countries, where its users can offer empty seats in their cars on a trip for a fee, allowing them to save costs while others can arrange a relatively cheap trip.

Brusson, who spent years in Silicon Valley and worked as a venture capitalist before co-founding BlaBlaCar, is responsible for the international growth of the company. At The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam on Thursday he gave fellow European entrepreneurs some tips on how to become a big company.

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