Interview (Robert Scoble with Logan Green) about Lyft, Zimride's on-demand local ridesharing product. Covers how Lyft differs from taxis/Uber (peer-to-peer model), driver vetting and training, pricing (roughly 80% of a cab; Lyft takes a 20% commission), legal positioning (use of optional donation model), insurance and safety checks (background and DMV checks), early operational metrics (San Francisco only, thousands of downloads/ rides, ~10-minute pickup target), company history/funding (Zimride ≈4–5 years old; investors Floodgate and Mayfield), and platform availability (iPhone live; Android coming in ~4–6 weeks).
Questions this video answers
San Francisco.
About 4–5 years.
About 80% of a cab fare (i.e., roughly 20% cheaper).
Drivers keep 80%; Lyft takes 20%.
About 6% accepted.
It's not Uber. What is this?
This is, this is Lyft. This is Zimride's latest ride sharing product for local rides on demand. It's like your best friend giving you rides on demand.
And who are you?
I'm John Zimmer, one of the co founders of Zimride.
And what is Zimride?
Zimride is our long distance rideshare service that we've been doing for five years. So if you want to get a ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, you can buy a seat for 35 bucks.
Yep. And we've talked about that in a separate interview. It's a pretty cool service. So this looks sort of like other taxi services. Uber's not alone now. They have like three or four competitors around the world. Yeah, this looks similar, but it's not.
No, this is peer to peer. So we're big fans of what Uber has done and we're trying to bring that to more of a peer to peer system. So we are meeting, interviewing, background checking regular San Francisco people and training them and then they are giving rides to their community.
This is pretty crazy. And how much do these rides cost?
The cost about 80% of a cab.
Okay, so like across San Francisco probably cost $15 or something like that. $10?
12. 15 bucks?
Yeah, yeah. And so in Zimride or in Lyft, what does it would cost?
Oh, so maybe $8. If it's 15 bucks, it'll probably cost, you know, 11, $12.
Okay. And so is it as reliable as cab or. Explain to me how many users and what cities you're in.
So we're just in San Francisco right now. We have thousands of downloads in the. We've just been live for about two months now. Yeah, thousands of downloads, thousands of rides, and can't say exactly how many drivers, but usually you can get picked up within about 10 minutes. We're working towards five minutes. Okay. So yeah, it's working well. We've got some great feedback.
And how is this industry legislated? Are you allowed to, you know, if I wanted to be a driver, am I allowed to do that?
Yeah, we'd love to have a driver.
Am I going to get sued someday from the city of San Francisco because I don't have a taxi license or because, you know, in New York a taxi medallion is around a million dollars, if I remember right. Right. So they're not too happy with you disrupting the taxi industry, I would guess.
Yeah, I mean, new competition, new technology has the ability to disrupt and I'm sure People that already have an interest are confused by modern technology and things that we can do. But we've had several transportation lawyers give us their legal opinion that what we're doing is 100% legal. And, you know, part of the structure of that is that at the end of a lift, you're given a suggested donation, and you have the option to adjust that up or down. So by making that an optional donation at the end, we're allowed to fit into certain exceptions within the legislation.
Very cool. What happens if I get hurt in an accident, you know, riding in somebody else's car? Do you have insurance on them, or does the driver have insurance, or do you guarantee that the driver has insurance? Explain how that happens.
Yeah, so part of our review process is to make sure that drivers have current, up to date personal insurance on their car. We also do a background check. So we look at criminal. Any criminal activity, they wouldn't be allowed in. We look at their driving record, DMV check. So we look if they have any accidents, any speeding tickets, and we would eliminate people that are not safe drivers. We then do a personal interview with each driver and then a personal training session of the applicants to be a driver. And you can apply to be a driver at Lyft. Me. L. YFT me. We accept about 6%, and we got a great range of demographics. We have over 40% female currently driving for Lyft.
Very cool. So what are you learning by building this company?
We're learning that people actually really miss community and miss getting to know people. We have Lyft drivers that are connecting with new friends in the city because they're meeting these passengers. Social networks are allowing us to get more personal with technology. So when you have a cab or something else, it's a lot less personal. It's a lot less human. What Airbnb has done for travel. I just recently started, stayed at an Airbnb property in Spain. I got to know the host really well. I got to visit the city in a way, you know, and through their. Through their eyes and with their help. And we're doing the same thing for transportation, and people really miss that.
Very cool. How much does the driver get to keep? So if it's a $10 fare, how much do you keep and how much does it?
So we're doing 80%, 20%.
Very cool. And how are you guys funded? Tell me a little bit about the company. You've been around a couple years now, right?
Yeah, we've been around five years.
Five years.
Really? Really? Four years. Five years. Ago, I was sitting at a desk at Lehman Brothers. Logan and I were starting it then. But four years ago, we came out here to the Valley. We were funded by Floodgate. Manu Kumar and then recently by Mayfield.
Very cool. Good investors.
Yeah.
Well, cool. Anything else we should talk about?
I shouldn't forget Keith Raboy was also in that show.
And you're available on iPhone and Android.
Or right now, iPhone. Give us another four to six weeks and we should be out on Android as well.
Very cool.
Yeah, awesome. Cool.
Well, thank you so much. Where do we try it out?
Try it out at Lyft. Me L. Yft. Or just go to the App Store and download Lyft. And actually, when we were in Austin, you said you were hoping we had met, and you said it would have been nice to get a quick lift home using Zimride. And so now hopefully we're getting closer to realizing that.
Very cool. This is going to be very helpful around the world. So thank you so much.
