The people
What they build
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Working at Poparide
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On the TechVancouver & TechWaterloo stages
Demo of the Month: Pop Ride Share
Watch on YouTube ↗
Demo of the Month: Pop Rideshare
Watch on YouTube ↗Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Poparide ↗
About
Poparide fills empty car seats on long-distance drives: a driver posts a trip, passengers book and pay online, and both sides review each other afterwards. It began as HitchWhistler in November 2010, a site for people sharing rides up the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whistler, relaunched in December 2014 as HitchPlanet when the founders decided to make it a business, and introduced the Poparide brand in November 2016. It reached the TechTO community network's stages in July 2017, on a Demo of the Month slot at TechVancouver and again at TechWaterloo — a summer when the company had just opened its first office outside western Canada, in Kingston, to push into the Highway 401 corridor between Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa and Montréal. It had roughly 50,000 members then. It has since become the largest carpooling service in Canada, reporting more than two million members and 505,302 seats filled in 2025.
Backers
Angel-funded and crowdfunded rather than venture-scale in its early years: a $150,000 angel round in November 2015 and $280,000 raised from the crowd in November 2016, per the company's own blog. Later funding is not claimed here.
Quick answers
Is Pop Rideshare the same company as Poparide?
Yes. The company ran as HitchWhistler from 2010 and HitchPlanet from December 2014, introduced the POP / Poparide brand in November 2016, and was being written up as 'POP Rideshare' in 2017 — the year of both of these demos. It still operates as HitchPlanet Online Inc.
Who founded Poparide?
Flo Devellennes, who moved to Vancouver from Europe in 2010 and started picking up hitchhikers on the road to Whistler, and Luke Burden, the company's tech director. Both demoed on TechTO-network stages in July 2017.
How big is Poparide now?
It reports more than two million members and 505,302 seats filled in 2025 across 747 communities in Ontario, Québec, British Columbia and Alberta.