Lyft: John Zimmer (2017)

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One of the kind of funny things we had to figure out was how to quickly market to the college campus. And so one of our early purchases was a frog and beaver costume that we put on. I went to Cornell. I was actually going to Cornell on a recruiting trip for Lehman, and I was standing on the quad in this ridiculous costume handing out cards about this carpooling service.

Is this a frog costume or the beaver costume?

I was the beaver.

You were the beaver? Yeah.

And at that next day at the Lehman recruiting event, a girl came up to me and said, "Did I see you in a beaver costume yesterday?" From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how John Zimmer made private cars work like taxis, and in the process, helped build a service now worth billions. So, do you actually remember the days of walking onto the sidewalk, sticking out your hand, and hailing a taxi? I mean, it feels like ancient history, right? But still, even though this world of instant car rides is just a few years old, we're so used to it that if you're like me, you start to get really antsy and anxious when the Uber Uber or Lyft app says you have to wait for 3 minutes for your ride. And just think about how quickly ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft have totally transformed transportation in many cities around the world, how in most places they've become indispensable, which has also meant that the competition between the two companies has been really fierce since 2012, when both of them launched a service that turned private cars into public taxis. But the amazing thing is, is Even though Lyft is just a fraction the size of Uber, it is still valued at more than $5 billion. And one of the guys behind it, John Zimmer, he never thought that ridesharing would be his life's work. He actually studied hotel management at Cornell, but his interests really started to change during his senior year.

I took a course that was really, really important to me, uh, called Green Cities. And I had this amazing professor. His first lecture is the history of the world in 30 minutes, kind of like the book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Huh.

And he ended the lecture saying that we're at a really important time in world history where population density is rising rapidly in our cities as more and more people move there, and resources and infrastructures that were built decades ago are becoming more and more strained. And he kind of challenged us at the end of the class and said, "If you don't make this class the most important thing you do this semester, then I don't want to teach you, because if we don't fix these problems, we're going to have major economic, environmental, and social problems." And that kind of set me on a path which eventually led to Lyft. But being that I grew up in the East Coast and in Connecticut and New York, I did feel like I had to have a finance experience, and so After graduating, I went and worked at Lehman Brothers in 2006.

Wow. Lehman Brothers in 2006. Like when we look back on that in 100 years, we'll be like, wow, that was just—

woof.

That was like the decline and fall right there. So you go to Lehman Brothers in 2006. And what did you do there?

So I was doing real estate finance. So I was right in the heart of where everything happened. And as you said, right at that moment from 2006 to 2008 was my 2-year analyst program.

Was it— Interesting.

It was interesting for a few months, but I got to say, my interest declined probably after just about a year. And so I started thinking what else I could do. And it was actually about, about a year into it that I was on Facebook one night and saw Logan, who is now my co-founder, who I didn't know at the time, posted on a mutual friend's Facebook page saying that he was starting a website called Zimride.

And what— like, what was it? What was it? What was his story?

So Logan's background is that he grew up in L.A. hating traffic. He then went to UC Santa Barbara and made an experiment of himself. So he didn't bring a car to school and he wanted to see how he could survive without a car. And he started a car-sharing program similar to Zipcar first using university fleet vehicles. And he got the attention of the local transit board. And the local transit board elected him as the youngest member ever to be on this transit board. And Logan was the—

In Santa Barbara?

In Santa Barbara. And he quickly grew to realize the challenges in public transportation and came to the conclusion that across the country, when you pay to get on the bus, you're really only covering about 30% of the operating cost. So what that means is a $3 bus fare actually costs the government $10. And as the lines get more busy, they get harder to fund and harder to add service levels. So they actually— the more busy they get, the worse they get. So he came to the conclusion that public transportation was broken. And while the promise of public transit is phenomenal, the reality was not. And so he then traveled to Zimbabwe, where he saw people sharing rides out of necessity and got inspired to build a website that would connect people going the same way to be able to sell a seat in their car. And that's why he called the website Zimride.

After Zimbabwe. Yeah. So Logan was basically trying to build a website that was like, hey, I'm going this way, like a sort of a car sharing website. Like it used to be that you just advertise on like Craigslist or put something on a pinboard and like on college campuses saying, driving from, you know, LA to San Francisco, do you need a ride? But he was basically trying to take that concept and put it online.

Exactly. Yeah. So like you said, we had these physical bulletin boards or digital bulletin boards for people going along the same way if they're going home for spring break or fall break. But there was no identity or ratings behind that. And so it was limited in how many people actually used them. And so we thought, how can we make a safer system? And, you know, if you tied something to a social network like Facebook, you could have a profile of the individual you're going to share a ride with and follow up with ratings of how that ride experience was, which would create a safer and more broadly used environment for carpooling on college campuses.

Hmm. So what happens to you guys then? Like, at this stage, you and Logan still hadn't met, right? So do you Did you email him or did you call him or what?

So we got on a call, I believe, and he said that he was actually going to be in New York City in a few weeks. And so we ended up meeting up and talking a lot about carpooling. And I shared some of the thoughts that I had from that course I took at Cornell. We realized that we were both so passionate about solving the same problem and began working together right after that trip in New York.

And did you guys just hit it off right away? You liked each other?

Yeah, yeah, we're— he's become my best friend. He was best man in my wedding. He's also a very focused, calm, and thoughtful person. There's this funny story when he was a kid. I think he was about 8 years old. His parents had just gotten a TV, and I guess a few weeks later he said he asked his parents to remove the TV from the house because it was distracting him. So I think that just speaks to his his level of focus, and I've really enjoyed working with him because of that, that both passion, focus, and thoughtfulness.

Okay, so you guys start working on Zimride together, and at this point you're still at Lein Brothers, right?

Right.

And what was— what's Logan doing at this point?

So he's at UC Santa Barbara as a sustainability coordinator after he's graduated. He's working on Zimride as a side project. He actually did a lot of the original coding of the website. And we didn't know whether it was a big business. We thought it could be, but before we were going to jump all the way in, we wanted to start working on it. So we spent nights and weekends working on Zimride.

Just like remotely? You were in New York and he was in Santa Barbara and you were just like emailing and like Skyping and stuff all the time?

Yeah, yeah. We'd have late night Skype, and every maybe month or two we try to get together. And on Logan's end, he's, you know, working on building the website. On my end, I'm figuring out how do we get enough people using the platform so that it works. It was really like a chicken or egg problem where the idea of having a lot of seats to choose from on your way home from, say, Cornell in upstate New York to go to New York City was exciting. You know, there's very few bus routes, not everyone owned a car or had a car on campus. And so if I could go on, you know, Zimride Cornell Edition and buy a seat in someone else's car for $20 or $30, that would be really exciting. But it had to be there, had to be available. We had to create both sides of the marketplace.

So the idea was like kind of like how Facebook originally launched, which was you would just have these sites at universities so students could figure out like who they could hitch a ride with?

Exactly. And so one of the kind of funny things we had to figure out was how to quickly market to the college campus. And so this is kind of strange. We wanted to put on costumes on campus and hand out information about this service. One of our early purchases was a frog and beaver costume that we put on. I went to Cornell. I was actually going to Cornell on a recruiting trip for Lehman, but I went a few days early and I was standing on the quad in this ridiculous costume handing out cards about this carpooling service.

Frog costume or the beaver costume?

I was the beaver.

You were the beaver?

Yeah. Yeah.

And what were you like handing out flyers?

Yeah. So we needed to get a critical mass of, let's call it, 1,000 people offering their seats so that those that went on to look for a seat could find one. And it worked. And at that next day at the Lehman recruiting event, a girl came up to me while I was surrounded by a lot of our managing directors and said, "Did I see you in a beaver costume yesterday?" You know, the next step was let's sell a private network to the various universities, and we were able to over over a few-year period, sell to 150 universities and companies that would pay us an annual fee for this private carpooling network.

Oh, wow. So you were not— you weren't taking a cut off the fee that people would charge to share a ride?

Correct. Not at that time.

So the business model was, let's sell these universities on a subscription model. And you sold it to 100— so you were personally calling universities and pitching this to them?

Yeah, so I was personally calling and traveling to, probably visited hundreds of universities in those first few years.

How did you do this in the beginning and work at Lehman Brothers full-time?

So in the first year, it was more about getting the product stood up and having a proof point. Yeah. And that being kind of Cornell. And so the majority Virtually all of those sales came once I went full-time in 2008.

You were like, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to leave Lehman Brothers.

Yeah, so it was early 2008, and I had made the decision. And my best friend's mother actually worked in the same building as me when I was at Lehman Brothers. And I told her what I wanted to do, and she said, how could you leave a sure thing like Lehman to do a crazy carpool startup?

How many people said that to you, by the way? How many people said, you're leaving Lehman Brothers? Yeah. In 2008 to go do some internet thing?

Yeah. Several people said that to me. And then, you know, 3 months later, Lehman was bankrupt.

That's crazy.

We knew there were challenges going on at Lehman, but I could not have predicted that 3 months later they would have been bankrupt.

So you moved to Silicon Valley in 2008 to go full time on Zimride with Logan Green?

Yes.

Did Zimride get— become profitable?

Yeah, it did.

Like hugely profitable or respectably profitable?

I'd say respectably profitable.

So it was a pretty, you know, robust company. And did you see this as this was going to be your thing? This is what you were going to do with your life?

Yeah. I mean, the dream was to start a business that had a major and important impact on our world and specifically on the way that our cities are designed. And so, you know, I think from an early period we considered this our life's work.

I mean, you were going to basically transform carpooling. You were going to do for carpooling sort of what Airbnb has done for accommodations.

Exactly.

So what happened? How did you shift from like this concept of carpooling to what would eventually become Lyft?

So in the middle of 2012, um, it was like 4 years in now. Yeah, about 4 years of doing it full-time.

Yeah.

And, and we stop and look at ourselves and say, you know, how, how are things going and what would we do if we were starting over today? I think that's a really helpful exercise. And what was true in 2012 that was not true when we started was the proliferation of smartphones and operating systems that would enable more short-term planning and short-distance transportation.

Because with Zimride, you had to go on a website and you had to find the date and the person going, right? And you had to sort of do it, I guess, at least a day in advance, right?

Exactly. Yeah. So once the technology shifted, that would enable more instant decision-making to happen. Our, our thought process shifted.

And you guys started to think, "Maybe we should focus on something else." Yeah, so we had seen Uber had started kind of limos on demand. The black car, right?

Yeah, and we said, "You know, that's interesting from a, you know, using mobile technology, but it wasn't that interesting to us from picking a small population of people that can afford—" Right. Kind of a private driver type experience.

Because Uber was like an elite service at the beginning. It was just these black cars and it was sort of their kind of fancy.

Yeah, so the average American household spends over $9,000 every year on owning and operating a car. This equates to over $2 trillion annually in the US, and the car sits parked 96% of the time. And so we said, how could we take these personal vehicles that are parked at all times and expensive to their owners and make better use of them. And so the idea was to create an app where you could request someone's personal vehicle on demand.

But the platform really at that point was just, hey, I have a car sitting here and I'm going to make it available to kind of rent out for an hour.

No, it was Hey, I have a car and I have time and I'm going to go drive other people around for, for a payment. And it goes back to kind of my hospitality experience of how do we create something that was centered around service, about treating driver and passenger with respect. But also you got to remember what is now accepted as normal of getting into someone else's vehicle was not at all normal at the time. In fact, we had to work to change people's behavior. And in the early days, suggesting people sit up front and creating this "your friend with a car" hospitality environment, we felt that, one, it opened the audience to a larger set of drivers. You know, if you go in a room of our 100 of our friends and you ask, "How many of you are willing to drive a taxi?" A couple hands maybe go up. When you say, "How many of you are willing to share a ride?" 75 hands would go up. And so we wanted to create the experience around that because after many, many years of being told not to do this behavior and many, many years of seeing a yellow vehicle and thinking that that is safe just because it's yellow, we had a lot of behavior change to kind of push through.

John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. After the break, how the state of California almost killed his company. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. When I started How I Built This, there was so much to figure out. Booking processes, production schedules, timetables, sponsors, promotion. It was honestly overwhelming. And what I realized pretty quickly is this: when you're building something, the last thing you want is to waste time juggling a bunch of different tools that don't quite work together. That's why finding the right platform matters. And for millions of businesses, that platform is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10% of all e-commerce in the US, from household names to brands just getting started. Tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to bounce between different tools. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go— with Shopify and their Shop Pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/built. Go to shopify.com/built. That's shopify.com/built. Work can be a little weird. I've had plenty of those moments early in my career and honestly, even later. I remember stretches where I wasn't totally sure what the next step was supposed to be. And that's the thing, work isn't always a straight line. And that's where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn helps you tap into ideas and insights from people who've been where you are. Connect with others in your field, grow your network, and access tools that can actually help you find the right next step. Whether you're just getting started, thinking about a change, or trying to accelerate where you are, LinkedIn is built to support you at every stage. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit LinkedIn.com/HIBT to learn more. There's no one like you, and there never will be. From the producer of Bohemian Rhapsody. There are many legends, but there is only one. Michael. Rated PG-13. Now playing in theaters. It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2012, and John and Logan were still working on this carpool concept called Zimride, and they were doing pretty well. They'd pitched a bunch of investors in Silicon Valley. They got some money, but around this time they decided to change course and focus on other ways they could make car sharing accessible to millions of people. Basically an early version of what eventually would become Lyft. But before they could really launch the app, they needed to test it out. So they got in touch with a bunch of drivers.

So the first set of drivers, we actually emailed a bunch of Zimride users. And we said, "Hey, we have this new project we're trying out, and we'd love you to try it out." Then we invited them over to the office and walked through kind of the whole experience that we were working through.

They were all in San Francisco area? Yes. And what did you tell them to do? Like drive around the city?

Uh, well, we, we first kind of walk through how, how the app works, all the safety standards that we had, and we let them know that what, what's going to happen is that you're going to get a request on your phone, and it's going to let you know where that, that passenger is, that they could go pick up that passenger, uh, and, and take them where they needed to go, and that the app would kind of help, help them, uh, navigate and do, do all those pickup and drop-off And at the time, there was a suggested donation at the end of the ride that the passenger could make through their credit card that was attached to their profile.

Oh, so this was going to be free if you wanted it to be free?

It was in the early days. You got to remember, again, one, that this was, was very, very new and not normal. And, you know, I say would fall in a regulatory gray area. And so one of the ways that we we saw around that was to say, to make it optional for payment in the early days until we had forged through the right regulatory structure.

So at what point did you come up with a new name? Like, when did it go from being called Zimride to Lyft?

Before we launched it, the working title was Zimride Instant. But while going through, it was actually really a 3-week period that the Lyft app, the original Lyft app, was built. It was very, very fast. Wow. And the brand Lyft was thought of during that period as well, along with the logo and everything. So Lyft as in give me a lift.

Yeah, except you couldn't get Lyft because that was probably taken.

Yeah. Lyft.com is owned by Otis Elevators.

Okay, fair enough. Yeah, right. So you got Lyft. Yeah.

In the middle of 2012, again, over a 3-week period, the team moved incredibly fast to build the app, come up with the branding, and meet and background check and onboard the first set of drivers. Wow. And then we invited a few friends, and it was— we got an incredible response.

So this is only in San Francisco at this point, right? Yeah. And so how long did it take before, you know, you opened this up, you made this into something anybody could use?

So I'd say it was probably the second half of 2012. Where we, you know, it started to take off. We started to divert resources from Zimride over to Lyft. And then really in January of 2013, we said, okay, we need to go all in on this. This is a massive opportunity. This has been incredibly successful with a small amount of focus. But that was a really, in many ways, a tough moment because we had worked for 4 or 5 years on Zimride, and we were deciding to divert all of our attention to an entirely new model. So you guys sold Zimride? Exactly, yeah. So we sold Zimride to Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and basically the assets, the contracts with the universities, and retained the entire team and went all in on Lyft.

So in that first year, how many people downloaded the app?

Um, best guess, tens of thousands.

And you guys, your, your model was you were taking a cut out of every ride, right? Like a percentage or something like that.

Um, so the, the rate is calculated based on, uh, distance and time. And then Lyft, uh, receives a commission off of that, whether 20 to 25%, uh, off of the overall rate. The rest goes to the driver as well as a, uh, trust and service fee.

So when you start this, right, did you— I mean, now we look back and say, "Oh, of course this is gonna work," but presumably, like, you started to face a lot of backlash and obstacles from cities that had pretty entrenched, you know, taxi cab commissions and drivers and established regulations about who can pick people up and drive them for money.

Yeah, so about a month into launching Lyft, this was in later 2012, we received our first of many cease and desist from various different governments. And it basically said, you need to stop operating.

And what did you do?

We read the letter and we had already done our legwork and research on the laws and we asked for a meeting. And I think that was followed by a second cease and desist. But we eventually got a meeting. With the—

with who?

With the Public Utilities Commission. Okay. And our approach to regulations is to really understand the motivations and the needs of, of the regulating entity because we understand they have a very important job. And so we went in and asked that. We said, hey, look, is this a matter of public safety or is this about, you know, existing industries? And they said public safety, of course. And so we said, we don't own vehicles, we don't have employees driving for us. So we don't fall into the category that you currently have, but we've looked at your safety regulations since that's the most important thing, and we've gone above and beyond on the background checks, which actually still to this day for limos in California are not required. We've done driving record checks with more strict criteria, and we've created an insurance policy that's $1 million, and theirs is and was $750,000. And we said, so if it's about safety, what we'd love to do with you is to create a new category that allows you to enforce that we are doing these things that we tell you we're doing, but that we're able to do this in a safe way that brings more affordable transportation to California.

I mean, they were threatening to sue you, right?

They were threatening to shut us down, you know, enforce against the drivers that were driving in the community. Were you scared about that possibility?

Yes, because you had sold off Zimride and you put all your eggs in this basket and it could have been shut down.

Yeah, I think I literally had a headache for one month. I had to go check and make sure nothing was wrong. But it was, it was incredibly stressful time because as you said, we switched all of our focus over from Zimride to Lyft and the opportunity was massive and the regulatory obstacles were just as massive.

How long did it take for you to overcome those initial regulatory challenges? Like, was it months, years?

I'd say at least, at least a year, probably for that first year. If I was to pick the one thing I spent most of my time on was the government relations and was working to create a new regulatory category for the space. And then you know, not just doing that in one state, but being able to demonstrate that in multiple cities and states.

So when— so when you started to expand outside of San Francisco and then L.A., how fast were you expanding to other cities? Was it like every month, every day, every week?

In that kind of earlier period, it was more every few months. Maybe the most intense moment was April, uh, 24th, 2014, when we launched 24 markets on the same day. And wow.

Who were your competitors? Because Uber was still doing black, mainly black cars, right?

Yeah. And there, there really wasn't, um, there were some other companies that, that were trying in this, in this kind of peer-to-peer personal vehicle space, but there, there wasn't a, a large amount of competition. There were still so many questions looming around regulatory, frankly, that I think, you know, people were waiting back to see how that played out.

Your focus was on this, like, Airbnb model where you've got a car and it's going to be a community and it's going to be this sharing economy thing. Like, what happened when all of a sudden Uber started doing UberX, where they basically copied your model?

Yeah, so I mean, we assumed that because the opportunity was so large and everything we were seeing, that there would be more competition coming. And so it wasn't a big surprise. And it just, you know, I think over the course of the few years we've been doing this, it's made us better. And frankly, I think both companies grow faster.

How do you differentiate yourself from them? Like, how do you make the case that actually you should go with us and not them?

[Speaker:JOHN ZIMMER] Yes, so our focus in the early days was we needed to ensure we solved the two most important things for our customers first, which was reliability. You can get a ride when you want it at the best possible price. Once you have parity on those, and now we do, we've built up enough infrastructure, enough base of driver community that you can get a ride within, on average, 3 minutes in these cities, then it's about the experience. In today's world, by treating drivers better than any other company, the ability to have cashless tips, get paid in the same day, create an environment where drivers are respected by passengers, and that translates to passengers being treated better than on any other service.

Are you a competitive person? Like, do you look at your competition and really want to beat them? Yes, absolutely. Like, how much does that drive you? That idea?

That's a, I'd say, to a large degree. I used to play sports, whether it was running track or playing soccer. And, you know, I started running track as just to stay in shape for soccer. And then I wanted to win the race and I wanted to go under 5-minute mile and was able to do that. And so I think often now today, you know, we're in what could be described as a mile. 4 laps, and we're in lap 2. And, you know, lap 3 is typically in that race the most critical lap where you set yourself up for victory. And so I think we're making a lot of important moves and decisions now that should allow us to win the race. Do you take it personally?

Like, you know, Uber obviously has, you know, been a pretty tough competitor, and at times there have been accusations that they've kind of try to sabotage you, or maybe you guys have to them. And is it personal to you? Is it something that you really feel emotionally? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, is part of it, well, it's just— is it just business? And, you know, in business there's days where, you know, you hate your competitor, but you always still respect them. Or is it really like, no, actually, this is really personal. I don't like them.

I think we take it— And I take it personally, which drives me because I believe so strongly in what our team is working on and why we're working on it. We believe that by building what we're building, we can make our cities designed around people instead of cars. And by having the right values and ethics, we can impact society in a way that's bigger than the transportation we provide. Hmm. And so I take it personally because we're out to win for the values that we represent. I don't let that distract me. I let that, you know, fuel the fire. And I think in the early days when I was less mature, it would distract me. But today, I think it just fuels the desire to push harder.

How many people work for Lyft today?

So at the company, there's about 1,300 people.

And then drivers, do you disclose that number?

No, we've said several months ago that last year there was over 300,000, and you can assume that this year that number has grown quite significantly.

We think about these ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft as this thing, this permanent thing that we all come to depend on. I've got the apps for both companies. On my phone. Sorry, I do have both. And, um, they've become a part of our lives. Like, they're like— I can't even remember what life was like before Lyft or Uber, right? And yet we have to imagine one day something is going to replace you guys. You know, people are talking about driverless cars, for example. Do you ever think about that?

Sure. I mean, it's that, you know, I saw the rise and fall of Lehman right before my eyes, and I think that that creates the the right sense of awareness. And when building a company that, that you've seen something like that. But when you look at the future, you know, you talk about autonomous cars. An autonomous car is not going to drop out of the sky and be able to do 100% of our trips. That's not real. What's real is that over the next couple of years, it'll be able to do a few percent of our trips, 10% of our trips, 50% of our trips. And what that means for this opportunity is that we're going to be able to address that ultimate goal we have of ending car ownership and providing a full alternative to owning a car. In fact, what you'll be able to do is buy, you know, likely a miles plan from us, a monthly subscription to handle all your transportation needs. And over the next few years, some of those trips will be done by human drivers and others will be done by autonomous vehicles to the point that we can provide you with amazing hospitality experiences on wheels.

John, when you look back at, you know, contacting Logan over Facebook and then like working on the side project and moving to Menlo Park and pouring your heart and soul into the— into Zimride and then starting Lyft and watching it turn into a company that's valued over $5 billion. Do you sort of look at that and sort of say to yourself, okay, I can like breathe out a sigh of relief, like we're okay, we've made it, we've gone, we've passed the hump, or are you constantly worried and vigilant every day?

Yeah, no, I don't think there's a sigh of accomplishment. I think there's, the bar keeps getting raised, and that's the bar that we raise on ourselves. The goal over the last 10 years for Logan and I hasn't changed. You know, it was Zimride, and then it was Lyft, and then it will have autonomous implications. Until we've accomplished the fact that you don't need to own a car in a city, until we've accomplished the fact that we don't need as many roads and parking lots in our cities, until we allow for our cities to be redesigned around the people living in them instead of the cars that are parked in them, them, then we're not happy.

John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. Since we first ran this episode last February, Lyft's valuation has more than doubled to over $11 billion. And by the way, John Zimmer will be joining us live for our How I Built This Summit in San Francisco on October 3rd. October 16th. There's lots more info and tickets available online at npr.org/summit. And please do stick around because in just a moment we're going to hear from you about the things you're building. You know that moment when you order food and suddenly everyone around you gets very interested in your dinner? Yeah, that's what Grubhub does— gives you deals so good you'll have to guard them. Gold Days of Grubhub Plus is here. 4 weeks of Grubhub's best offers all month long in May, only for Grubhub Plus members. And if you're not a member, you can sign up now for just 99 cents a month for 6 months. That's 90% off. Grubhub Plus membership auto-renews and terms apply. Sign up now on the app or at grubhub.com/plus/gold. Don't miss it! You may have heard the best voice in show business, Morgan Freeman, talking about a serious and underdiagnosed heart condition that's often missed: ATTR cardiac amyloidosis, or ATTR-CM. It's a condition that can greatly disrupt your life with symptoms like severe fatigue, shortness of breath, and carpal tunnel. If left untreated, ATTR-CM may become serious, leading to a shorter lifespan. Atrubi helps adults with ATTR-CM live longer and have fewer hospitalizations due to heart issues, so you can focus more on living for what you love. Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding, and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain. If you have ATTR-CM, talk to your cardiologist about Atruby and visit atruby.com/podcast. That's A-T-T-R-U-B-Y dot com slash podcast to learn more. It's time to get busy living. Brought to you by BridgeBio. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today we're going to update a story we ran about a year ago. This one comes from Kyle Ewing of Denver, who got his idea for a business in kind of a roundabout way. I got the idea when I was trying to create a product for students traveling abroad. This product was a backup copy of their passport. Kyle was trying to sell backup passports online that would be as durable as the real thing, but also tear-proof and waterproof. The problem was the market for this type of product doesn't yet exist. So I was trying to create the market, which proved to be very difficult, and I was trying to figure out what to do when the phone rang. And the guy on the phone, it was actually somebody who said, "Hey, Kyle, I love your passports. I even bought 4 of them for my kids." And he said, "All 4 of my daughters use the SOS World Pass.

I love it, but I have a question for you. Can I buy a case of your paper.

And at that moment, Kyle realized that the waterproof paper he was using for the passports was actually a better business idea than just the passports. That moment was me standing up out of my chair and spiking the pencil and doing a touchdown dance because it was an immediate lightbulb moment where I realized this failing business just grew legs and all of a sudden I had a million 1 ideas of what I could use waterproof paper for. And that is a pretty long list. Waterproof restaurant menus, waterproof children's books, waterproof maps, field manuals for the US Navy, nautical charts for the US Coast Guard. Now to back up just a little, Kyle is not an engineer, but when he was working on the passport idea, he made a bunch of calls to chemical experts and he told them he was looking to make paper that was totally waterproof, much more waterproof than, say, you know, just laminating something. So iteration after iteration, we finally got to paper that's both waterproof and rip-proof, uh, and something that can also receive and hold ink when it's been printed on. He eventually found a manufacturer in the US to make a polyester pulp that could be pressed and rolled into waterproof paper, but he wanted to tinker with the product himself, so he moved a laser printer into his living room.

But when I put it through my home laser printer, immediately white smoke came out of the printer and it smelled like burning plastic, and the entire printer was trash after that.

Kyle's very supportive wife Ashley came home that night, she smelled the burning smell, and she said, Kyle, I love this arts and crafts project you've taken on. But I think it's time to get to a more realistic product or business idea. But one printer and 7 iterations later, and Kyle says he came up with the most waterproof paper on the market. And he has the clients to prove it, including, yes, the US Navy and Air Force, several restaurant and hotel chains, university labs, even Google. A good entrepreneurial day is when you sit back, you look at your sales, or you look at you just got and you think, oh my gosh, this is a real business. I'm building something that matters and it actually is a success. Since we last spoke with Kyle last year, his revenue continues to grow. He'd rather not give the specifics, but suffice it to say it is in the millions. He now has a team of 10 employees and his list of clients is growing too. It includes UPS and the LA Kings. If you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're building. And thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. Please also subscribe to the show at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibt@npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet. It's @howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman. Ramtin Arablouei composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkanpour, Noor Kudsi, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is JC Howard. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR. [FOREIGN] [Speaker:JAY WILLIAMS] We all have moments where our limits are tested. What I want to talk about is how we define those limits and what it means to exceed them. I'm Jay Williams. Check out my show, The Limits, where I talk to people who have overcome theirs and achieved great things in business, sports, and culture. Listen to The Limits from NPR.