How Jens Wohltorf built Blacklane into a globally successful chauffeur service

IN THE LATE aughts, as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group in Berlin and then Chicago, Jens Wohltorf traveled frequently to projects around the world.

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"Ground transportation, the first and the last mile of travel, was almost always the vulnerable part of the trip," he says.

The chauffeur companies he used were local, fragmented, often offline and offered varied levels of quality and service. There were times when the chauffeur didn't show up, the car was dirty or the chauffeur drove too aggressively. Other times the experience was excellent. Wohltorf wondered, Why can't it be excellent every time?

When he looked into it, Wohltorf learned that there were tens of thousands of small, independent chauffeur companies around the world, each with their own set of standards. They had two to three cars and drivers, and often depended on large companies as their anchor clients. But if they lost that client, "They were basically left with nothing," Wohltorf says. "There was also so much risk on their side that could have been improved by aggregating all of those players in a smart way."