John ZimmerCo-founder, Lyft · Working on Yes&

Lyft: How Stumbles at Uber Could Be Its Moment I Fortune

Name: Lyft: How Stumbles at Uber Could Be Its Moment I Fortune
Uploaded: 2017-07-19T19:00:00+00:00
Duration: 3 min 9 s
Channel: John Zimmer
Description: In this interview, Lyft co‑founder John Zimmer explains how Lyft is seizing its moment despite Uber’s recent setbacks. He emphasizes Lyft’s people‑first…

19 Jul 2017 · 3 min

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3:09

In this interview, Lyft co‑founder John Zimmer explains how Lyft is seizing its moment despite Uber’s recent setbacks. He emphasizes Lyft’s people‑first philosophy, focusing on drivers, passengers, and team members while scaling the company’s culture. To manage growth, Lyft introduced a mentor program and community associates—often former drivers—to maintain community connections. Zimmer envisions autonomous vehicles as “rooms on wheels,” where a host ensures safety, and predicts a 10‑20‑year transition to full autonomy. During this period, driver demand will rise dramatically, as only a tiny fraction of miles are currently autonomous. Lyft is forging partnerships with automakers (Jaguar Land Rover, General Motors) and autonomous‑technology leaders (Waymo, Nutonomy) to test and integrate self‑driving cars. Looking five years ahead, Zimmer expects a majority of rides to be autonomous and foresees transportation shifting from car ownership to a subscription‑style service, similar to streaming media, with monthly mileage plans becoming common in major U.S. cities.

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You know, people ask, is now Lyft's moment? Are you gonna, you know, take advantage of this situation with what's happening at the competition? Nothing that's happening over there is impacting our drivers and passengers and team members in the way that what's happening here is going to impact those people. And so Our philosophy has always been to focus on Lyft and to focus on the people that are part of our business. We've stayed true to our values, we've maintained a similar culture, but now we're doing it at a much, much higher scale, so there's things that change. Logan and I used to interview every driver that came onto the platform, and now that's not possible, obviously. So we found ways to scale with the community, and so we have things like a mentor program, we have community associates who are often former drivers helping us scale the operations. So I think about the future autonomous experience like a room on wheels. And so, you know, it's easy to perceive that as just taking today's car and imagining it driving itself. But in reality, I think the whole design will change pretty dramatically. And you'll likely have a third party, like a driver, but in this case now a host, providing services or making sure that everything's safe. The transition to autonomous, we believe, is going to take place over 10 to 20 years. And during the transition there's going to be more and more drivers needed. Right now today you have just 0.4% of miles being traveled on Lyft and Uber, and we believe that's about 100x or 200x from where it's ultimately going to be. And so as you move away from car ownership to transportation as a service, you're going to actually need more and more drivers to provide the rides that can't be done by autonomous. And when you get fully autonomous vehicles, We actually think there's going to be more opportunities for people in these vehicles than exist today. We never planned to be a car manufacturer, and we want to partner with, with some of the best. On the automobile side, we have multiple partnerships with Jaguar Land Rover and General Motors. We've also announced or confirmed partnerships with Waymo and Nutonomy, and so those that are developing the world's best autonomous technology, we'll be able to test autonomous technology on our platform and, and provide rides through the Lyft network. We're 5 years in, and if we look 5 years into the future, I believe that the majority of rides could be autonomous at that point. And what that means is that we've really taken a massive shift moving transportation from the idea that you need to own a car to accessing a service. So just like music and movies have gone the way of streaming, We think transportation will become a service that you subscribe to in a monthly miles plan instead of a minutes plan, and I'd say in about 5 years you're gonna be seeing that in all major US cities.