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- [00:01]
Adobe Advertiser
Support for the show comes from Adobe Express. These days there are a million different ways to reach your customers, but that can also mean a million different pieces of content.
- [00:10]
Scott
It can be overwhelming.
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Adobe Advertiser
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- [00:48]
Scott
Today's number 6600. That's how many Americans applied for UK citizenship last year. A record high ed. Did you hear about that tragic auto accident where Meghan Markle was disfigured and burnt alive?
- [01:00]
Ed
I didn't.
- [01:01]
Scott
Well, we can. We can wish, can't we?
- [01:06]
David Risher
Listen to me.
- [01:06]
Adobe Advertiser
Markets are bigger than us.
- [01:08]
David Risher
What you have here is a structural.
- [01:09]
Ed
Change in the wealth distribution.
- [01:10]
David Risher
Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it.
- [01:15]
Scott
What did the American say when he was watching the British porno?
- [01:18]
Ed
What?
- [01:19]
Scott
The British are coming. The British are coming.
- [01:21]
Ed
I heard that one.
- [01:22]
Scott
You heard that one.
- [01:23]
Ed
I've heard that one.
- [01:24]
Scott
You know what? You and I have really never shared? I don't know how you feel about Harry and Meghan. How do you feel about them?
- [01:29]
Ed
I hate them. I'm a huge. Yeah, I really do not like Meghan Markle.
- [01:34]
Scott
I love the story of a 40 year old divorcee saving a prince from the horrors of Buckingham Palace. Do you remember when we were at the Soho House in Austin for south by Southwest where your very generous boss decided to take the whole profit to media team? Just saying. And we saw Meghan and Harry. They were eating next to us. Were you at that?
- [01:53]
Ed
That was the one dinner I did not make. The entire team sat next to them and I was. I think I was busy in my hotel room anxiously prepping to do my first live podc. So I didn't see them, but the rest of the team did.
- [02:06]
Scott
Okay, so let me just tell you after seeing them, I 100% get it. She is so scorching hot.
- [02:12]
Ed
We all knew that.
- [02:14]
Scott
I feel bad now making fun of them because I just totally get it. I 100% get it.
- [02:19]
Ed
A few years ago when you wrote a post about Harry and Meghan and you had one line that I think was my Favorite line that you've written before and you were talking about how Megan's terrible for all these reasons. And then you're like, but we have to give her credit for doing something that we all strive to do, and that is convince our spouse that their family is terrible. Which I totally. But I've never heard of, put it that way. It's very true. It's a favorite. Yeah, Your family's awful.
- [02:53]
Scott
Let me give you a little inside tip, little pro tip, by the way.
- [02:57]
Ed
Just to be clear. I love my girlfriend's family. I'm totally kidding. If anyone's not listening, I love them.
- [03:03]
Scott
You're still working it. I, I get it. I get it. You're still trying. Anyways, let me give you a little tip because I get the sense you're barreling towards, towards marriage and kids and all that good stuff is that once the key to having a great relationship, I have the best relationship with my in laws. There's only two things you got to remember. One, don't communicate with them. Right? That is when it all comes off the rails, is when you start talking to them and all of a sudden you're, you're sort of like you're interested to ask your father in law why he likes Trump. Okay? Just don't, don't talk to them and hope they hope they speak really poor English. Actually, my in laws speak pretty good English, but it's not their first language. And my father in law doesn't. He doesn't hear it just works out so well. And just buy the dad a Mercedes every three years. Boom.
- [03:51]
Ed
That's not that great advice. That's not that actionable for me right now, aside from buying the Mercedes. But what else, what else can I do?
- [03:58]
Scott
I think that's the key. I remember, although I knew I liked her, I knew I liked my current partner's mother when I picked her up and I was going to basically taking her to New York with me and I heard her over saying to her husband, he didn't even bring a goose. Like I'm taking their daughter. I should have brought a goose or something. I thought that was funny. Like your mom said, I should have brought a goose for you in exchange for you. You're worth a goose anyways. Ed, what's going on?
- [04:30]
Ed
Didn't understand that one as much as I usually do, but I rarely do.
- [04:34]
Scott
So the British are coming anyways. All right, get onto the headline. Oh, wait, we don't have headlines today. What's going on?
- [04:41]
Ed
No, we don't have headlines today. We've just got a conversation. We're speaking with David Risher, who is the CEO of Lyft.
- [04:48]
Scott
What an amazing company. They're just dominating right here. Oh, wait, nevermind, nevermind. Sorry about that. Sorry about that.
- [04:54]
Ed
Ed, careful.
- [04:55]
Scott
He's actually a really nice guy. He texts me.
- [04:57]
Ed
I know.
- [04:57]
Scott
That's the problem. Ed, just as someone who's clearly strategically absconding my identity, pretty soon I'm gonna walk into my house and you're gonna be there with your socks off, hitting my kids. Like, you are definitely usurping my identity right now. Don't get to know these people because you like them and you stop speaking openly and honestly about them. And I've gotten to know David a little bit and I like him. He's a very nice guy, very thoughtful.
- [05:21]
Ed
Should we bring him in?
- [05:22]
Scott
Let's bring him in.
- [05:22]
Ed
Okay, let's do it. David, thank you for joining us on the program.
- [05:27]
David Risher
Super good to be here.
- [05:31]
Ed
We're going to start with. I mean, we have. I have a lot of questions to ask.
- [05:36]
David Risher
Okay, lay them on me.
- [05:37]
Ed
We're going to start with just Lyft and the ride sharing market specifically, and then we'll get into some broader topics about you and about your career. We were just talking off Mike earlier you wrote a senior thesis that was somehow more boring than mine, which we can maybe talk about later. But for now, let's start with Lyft. You are the CEO. You became CEO back in 2023. And at the time, Lyft had about 26% market share in the U.S. the rest was Uber. Today, Lyft's market share is larger. It's around 30%, little higher. But the rest is still Uber. And Uber's at this gigantic $200 billion market cap. Lyft is at 7 billion. So I know I'm sure you get this question all the time, but it's sort of the question that we all have to ask, and that is, how are you competing with Uber?
- [06:39]
David Risher
The other guys, they, they do their thing, but I'm actually much more interested in the 160 billion billion rides that people take every year in their car, in their own private car, just in North America. My biggest competition is actually inertia, you know, and the couch and your own car. Like that's the competition. And so when you. I mean, it's great that we picked up share. I'll tell you about that in a second. But what has really driven our growth, and it's been very significant growth. You're talking about 13% well, 15%, 17%, 19%, 15%, 14%. Now on sort of $16 billion of booking, 800 million rides a year, 1.5 million drivers on the platform. These are big numbers. How do you grow such big numbers? You don't just compete against your competitor. In fact, if you focus on that, you lose. What you do is you focus on your riders and your drivers. That's how you win. And that's why we're now, you know, making money printing cash. Our service letters are better than ever, you know, and on and on and on. And in a way, that's the answer to how you compete with the other guys, too. You just do better. You just do better. And that's why we've picked up share.
- [07:35]
Ed
Is this a question you get all the time? I'm assuming it is.
- [07:39]
David Risher
I mean, it is and it isn't. So people talk a lot about the competition. The funny thing is that I actually think it's part of the problem of the rideshare industry, or maybe has been for a while, is I think it got people stuck in this sort of zero sum mode. You know, they win, you lose, you win, they lose. And I think it sort of ignored the much bigger question, which is, this is a good product. This is a product that's part of people's lives, at least from our perspective, 2 million times a day, 800 million times a year. So for me, the bigger question is, why haven't we all grown more? And I think the answer is a lack of innovation. And I think part of the lack of innovation is because there's been that whole competitive dynamic and so focused on each other instead of focusing on customers. So that's the big shift for me.
- [08:19]
Scott
So what is that tangible differentiation? Why do you think you're able to grab share if. If you're on a very basic level, Is it a cost advantage? Because is it a culture advantage? You know, Coke and Pepsi, what? Why is Pepsi different here?
- [08:36]
David Risher
Our purpose is to serve and connect. That's what we do every single day. We wake up, we've got 3,000 employees, we've got 1.5 million drivers. And the idea is, how can I serve riders and drivers better than they've ever been served before? And how can we connect them to the people and places they love? So that's where we start. Okay, so how does that manifest itself competitively? Let's look at drivers for a second. Drivers right now have a 29 point preference for driving on our platform versus on the other guys. 29 points. That's internal data that we do every quarter. We can share the data with you. And it's been a remarkable sort of divergence over the last year in particular. So that's a form of competition, right? We're competing for the same driver base. How are we winning? Well, we have a 70% earnings guarantee. We have an AI assistant that helps people plan their drives. We have a accomplishment letter. So you compete at sort of the street level, and you say, how can we grab more preference from drivers? And when drivers drive more for you, it allows the marketplace to work better, you know, yada, yada. Okay. How do you compete for riders? We give better service. Now, people don't necessarily know that right now. And I grant you that. I grant you that right now. Yes, we have a small price advantage, but frankly, that's tiny. And we compete frankly on price, sort of by matching. Like we, you know, that's not really sort of a competition area as much for us. We really want to compete on service. I'll tell you something, today, we will pick you up about 30 seconds faster than our competition does on average, which is very significant considering we're a third their size. I will tell you that our driver cancellation rate, and it's a lot of data, but here we go. When I started was about 14%. So 14% of the time, a driver would cancel on you. Now it's down to 4.9%. So we just over and over and over and over again provide better service. And the reason that that or the way that shows up and the reason, therefore, it allows us to kind of claw back share is because it increases new rider activation, for sure, but frequency, and that's a huge part of it. A lot of people know about rideshare, but people only take it two or three times a month. If we can do better service, they come back to us, they ride. Why we've been growing so much.
- [10:38]
Scott
Fortunately or unfortunately for you, Uber's become a verb or synonymous with ride hailing. And so you have to, you know, you're AIs, you need to try harder. But you're finding that consumers, are they more loyal? Is it that. That what sounds like a better offering or. And by the way, I think focusing on the drivers is actually a very smart thing to do. But do you see in consumer survey data that your riders are more loyal and willing to pay a price premium, or how does that manifest in terms of consumer feedback?
- [11:16]
David Risher
So the short answer is they are more loyal and they are getting more loyal every day. So our frequency has never been higher. Both Our new riders and our frequency has never been higher. I'm going to take a little bit of a side and I'll come back. I drive for a Lyft about every six weeks. And one of the things that I hear, I hear a couple of because. And I always ask, I ask, why did you choose Liv today? And typically the responses come in a couple categories. Some are functional. You know, you were faster than the other guys, you know, lower eta, your price was lower. Sure. Then there's what I might call partner driven. You know, I'm a Chase Sapphire reserve holder, says a rider. And therefore, because I get points, I use you guys, you know, these sorts of things. And we have a lot of part. DoorDash is a huge partner of ours. A huge, huge partner of ours. And that becomes a big, significant growth driver. So those are sort of semi functional, kind of maybe, maybe functional adjacent. Then you get stuff like, I like your values more. I just think you're a better company. I can feel it. I can feel the way your drivers talk about you versus the other guys. Then you get a whole bunch of other things. The way it shows up most consistently on the financials is growth. And again, taking share. As Ed mentioned, when I started out, we were 26%, then 27%, then 28%, then 29%, then 30%. We're touching 31%. It's not what motivates me every morning. It's a trailing indicator, but it shows that, you know, step by step by step by step. And then there'll be some step changes, which maybe we'll talk about another time, but things like lift silver and some other things that really expand the market. So it's tricky. Look, it's a, it's a duopoly. I mean, let's use the word, right? And there are two people are fighting it out every single day. And we, we, we fight super, super hard. I think it's great for frankly, the whole industry. It, you know, grows the whole tam because you got two people who are fighting for every single thing and then little by little you pick up share. And so, you know, start 26, then you go to 30, then maybe you go to 35, maybe you go to 40, and maybe the market goes, you know, and doubles and doubles again as, as, as new things happen.
- [12:59]
Ed
I think one of the big topics also right now in ridesharing, one is delivery. And that's been a big investment from Uber. And you mentioned that you have this partnership with DoorDash, which I would like to hear more about. And the second is autonomous driving. And you've obviously got Waymo, which is expanding. You've got Tesla rolling out their Robotaxi. I know that Uber is also working on a lot of autonomous vehicle projects. They're partnering with Waymo. Talk a bit about what you're doing in terms of delivery and also after that in terms of autonomous driving. Do you see? It seems as though that's where ride sharing is headed at this point. That's how these companies will expand. I'm wondering if you view that the same way over at Lyft.
- [13:51]
David Risher
We decided a while ago. So as you mentioned, I've been in the job now about two and a half years, a little less, and my big focus right from the beginning is customer obsession is what's going to drive profitable growth. And as you mentioned, when I started we were losing money, now we're making money. So the thesis is sort of being proven out. One of the sort of, let's say, corollaries to that is focus really helps. And so we're really focused on rideshare and doing great rideshare experience. And thus for that reason we've decided that partnership is a better strategy than trying to incorporate food delivery. Ourselves, we partnered with the best in breed. Doordash actually dominates the other guys in food delivery, certainly in the United States and in actually much of the world. And it's a great partnership and it's one of those partnerships. It's quite, it's early, it's only been about six months. But gosh, man, you look at the number of, I mean, we blew away. So Tony, who's the CEO of DoorDash and I were on sort of a daily email the first couple of days. We lost a partnership and we each had our own internal goals of how many people would link their accounts over the first, you know, day, week, month. And I mean, we blew them away. We basically, what we thought was going to be a six month month project turns out to be like a three week thing of activation. And you know, literally over a million riders linking their accounts just in the first couple weeks because they got points and rewards on both platforms by doing so. So long way of saying, I think partnering with the best of breed is great. And if your riders can literally, you know, order DoorDash as they're coming home at night and get a bonus from it so that by the time it's home they've got, you know, an extra perk, they maybe got a discount on their ride and their food's been delivered, it's great from a rider perspective and, and does everything you, you, you want it to do.
- [15:18]
Ed
I think that's a good lead in to the AV question, because I think one of my big questions about AVs is how is the business going to work? And so far it has been largely a partnership setup. There are questions over how viable that is, especially when it comes to Uber, where there are questions over, you know, does Uber lose some leverage if the only way that they're getting into autonomous vehicles is through forming these partnerships where they're reliant on other companies to build those vehicles for them? There was a time when they were maybe going to build those autonomous robo taxis themselves and they decided, no, we're going to take the partnership route, which is what you've done as well. You've decided we're going to partner with doordash instead. So I guess I'm interested in why does the partnership route make the most sense and how will that play out in the robotaxi business in the long term?
- [16:14]
David Risher
Is that the lift strategy, the networks that create hybrids between human driven and machine driven, robot driven vehicles, they're going to win. And the reason they're going to win is because from a customer perspective, of course, AVs are novel right now, but eventually they just become commonplace. They're just another way to get around. They have certain advantages, they have certain disadvantages. They don't pick up your luggage for you, but they don't listen to you while you're talking on the phone. Okay, so you're going to want them as part of your network. Absolutely, you are. But you can't only have robo taxis. You can't. They're just not enough. They're not enough at the end of the Taylor Swift concert. They're not enough at 5 o' clock at night or 9 o' clock in the morning. They're not enough when it starts to pour down raining and everybody wants to take a ride share. They're not enough because in rural areas it's going to take years and years and years. Even the most aggressive estimates. Now I'm going to set Tesla aside for a second because they're very hard to model. But the most aggressive estimates, which is a funny understatement, hard to model anyway. So like, but it's, you know, maybe it's 30,000 cars by 2030, something like that in total in the US that are, that are robotaxis. Okay. Again, we have 1.5 million drivers on the platform. Each one of them has a car and the other Guys have, you know, call it a similar number, maybe bigger. So, so, so you, you're going to want some sort of hybrid because most customers aren't going to want to have five different apps depending on what city they're in or whether it's raining or not, or whatever. Whatever. Okay, so now the question becomes, well, do you want to sort of fully integrate or do you want to partner? And I'm going to get like, Scott's a professor. I'm going to professor for a second. Apologize in advance. But like, think of the whole value chain here. Like, you've got the OEMs, the people who make the cars, okay? Then you've got the tech providers, the AV tech providers, right? That might be a mobileye or might be a waymo. Then you've got the whole financing thing. Somebody's got to buy these things and own these things. They're expensive assets. Then you've got what we call fleet management. Someone's got to keep them clean, someone's got to keep them maintained, someone's got to keep them ready to go on the road. Then you've got all the, what we call marketplace, so the supply, demand matching stuff. And then you have pricing and eta, customer service, all these other things. So each one of these is its own thing. And you could try to do all of those things. Sure you could. You know, that would be an unusual strategy because most people aren't great at everything from, you know, making cars and tech to customer service and marketplace and all the rest. You could do it though, if you tried, but it's very, very expensive. Or you can say, well, let me specialize. So what we specialize is in the marketplace stuff and the demand management. We've got 3 million people every day open up our app and then we have this whole thing called Flex Drive, which is a fleet management system that runs about 15,000 cars on it right now. It's garages, it's maintenance, it's all kinds of stuff. It's charging, it's tire pressure, it's all the stuff to keep. All that, that's an asset we have. So we believe that our assets, all of our customers, all of our customer service, all of our demand management, all of our pricing, all of our ETA estimation gate codes for millions of planned communities, pick up and drop off, like all these things that take years and years to build, plus fleet management, that's what we bring to the table. The last thing I'll say is, and you kind of mentioned this before, of course, if there were only one supplier of AV tech. That'd be awkward for us because then we'd be beholden to somebody who's got tech, which is. Which is pretty cool. It's safe and novel and all sorts of cool things. But that's not the case. That's not the case. There's so many. You just. You can't even throw a stone without, you know, of course there's mobile, of course there's Tesla, of course there's Waymo, of course there's Zoox, of course there's. And then you get to the Chinese guys. Of course there's pony AI and there's we ride and there's Baidu and there's byd, and then you get to the people you haven't even heard of yet. Maybe Nvidia gets into the space. Maybe, you know, OpenAI gets into the space. And then there are guys in the garage who are just thinking about it today, who haven't even thought about it, you know, how they're going to solve all the. So I think the chance of there being, let's call it, supply concentration is very, very low. I think the chance of demand aggregation mattering a lot, and fleet management and pricing always being important, plus a hybrid network of, you know, millions of drivers, very high. And that's why I think we win. And I, And I think we've become the best way for people to commercialize these very expensive assets, put them on our network and just go, go, go.
- [20:03]
Scott
So you have about 24 million, my understanding, is, active users on your platform, which is a lot of people, and consumers are lazy, or I find they are, and that is they're used to your app, they're used to your interface, and so they're just inclined to, you know, get their. Get their ride to Lyft. Do you think? What's your gut telling you? Do the Waymos and the. In the Teslas and potentially the Nvidias and the other people that come in, do you think they sit back and say, okay, we want to be the operating system and the technology and partner with the people who already have already acquired these people and are used to a certain user interface, the Lyfts and the Ubers of the world, or do you see them going vertical? Are you. And what is Tesla's. To the extent you've had conversations with them or. Or not, what does your gut tell you? Are these companies going to be suppliers or are they going to go vertical and then compete against you?
- [20:57]
David Risher
I think you right now are sitting in the boardroom of Waymo and asking yourself that question. And I think the answer right now, and I'm not betraying confidences, I think you can just see this as you look at what the different companies are doing is people right now are going for optionality. Right. It's very. Again, we can come back to Tesla because it's a bit of a special case, it's more of a future possibility rather than a present day thing. But if you look at the present day, and let's just look at Waymo, who's, you know, obviously very, very advanced in this, in this space, they are simultaneously promoting Waymo one, which is their own product, as well as partnering with others who can provide the demand for them. And then they're effectively the supplier. And it's possible that that is stable. I mean, in other words, that you can do both. Right. Many companies have done this, they have their first party apps and then they let third parties on the platform. Right. That's, that's a way that companies work sometimes. I happen to believe, of course, I'm partisan, but I also think that there's some data to back this up that the dominant strategy will be the partnership strategy because I think it's more capital efficient, it's very expensive to build and run a rideshare system. It's very, very expensive. Again, you have to think, go down a path for 2 seconds, 3 million people a day open your app. Every single time they open an app, they're seeing, you know, five different. Then they put in a destination, they're seeing a whole bunch of different prices. Every one of those prices has to be calculated in real time. Every One of those ETA's has to be calculated in real time. Those routes have to get vended out to a bunch of different drivers. And then depending on race dynamics, you know, whatever you got to the supply is not constant. Drivers are coming on and off the platform. You say, well, maybe EVs aren't, but they need to be because guess what? Sometimes you're going to have a lot of demand, sometimes not so much. It's a math. The math problem is huge. The compute is huge. And then there's all the customer service and all these other things. The point is the building and maintaining that and getting it better every single day for every single airport and every single small town. And now over in Europe as well, it's expensive. So I think if you're sorry for the long answer, but I think if you're the rational player says I will mostly focus on building something that is unique and super high quality and super safe. And I'm going to try to sell it to as much many people as possible. Maybe I'll experiment with a little first party self myself. Maybe that's so that I can understand. Hotels do this right? They own some properties and then they vend out a lot of the rest to franchisees. Maybe it becomes a little like that, you know. So I think it'll be a mixed model, but I think the dominant thing is going to be I want to sell and commercialize as many as possible, as much of my tech as possible. And that's best done to marketplaces like us who are willing, you know, buyers and we've got, you know, tens of millions of riders who, to your point, are already used to a certain thing and trust a certain thing.
- [23:34]
Ed
We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, be sure to give profit. You market a follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:50]
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- [25:09]
Ed
We're back with Prof. Markets.
- [25:10]
Scott
So I think of you as the number two that needs to be in the way. You continue to grab market share is through focus or just owning certain, I don't know, you become known as the company that has better service or is better to your drivers or is especially strong in rural areas versus urban or vice versa. When you look at the different points of differentiation or growth, it could be autonomous, it could be food delivery, it could be a messenger service, it could be a luxury offering, it could be partnering with new types of transportation, vertical takeoff and landing, which I'll come back to. What growth channel are you most excited about and think, okay, if I was going to double down on something in trying, I mean, to be, to be blunt, I've gotten to know you and I like you and I'm rooting for you, but I don't immediately feel a point of differentiation from you guys. I don't immediately go. When I think of Lyft, quite frankly, your brand association is. You're the number two. That's not the brand association you want. If you were going to over invest in an area and say in five years, I want Lyft to be known as the guys who are or the ride hailing company that is really good at X. What is that?
- [26:23]
David Risher
I want to be known for great service. I really do. And I'm talking about exceptional service. I'm talking about every single time you order a Lyft, you know what you're going to get. It's going to be fantastic every single time. And if you have a problem, we're always going to make it right. I'll give you a tiny example of how we do it today. Today, if you use this for a scheduled ride to the airport and we're more than 10 minutes late, we pay 100 bucks, up to 100 bucks even to take the competition. I don't care. And no questions asked. And guess what, guess what. Our payout rate is 0.01%. You know what I mean? It's like we've gotten that really, really good. Our black offering, our luxury offering, it's relatively small now. It's not been an area of investment, but it's doubled year on year just in the last year as we've started to focus on. So if I have to say, number one, let me ask, answer the question. Also a different way. I think it's not just about what we're better at, what we're unique at, but also how our customers think about us, how they perceive us. I want our customers to say, you know what? And I'm talking about our riders now. I'm not doing this just the default. I'm making my own decision. I'm making my own decision. I want to support a company that treats its drivers better. I want to support a company where I know I'm going to get great service. I want to support a company that has values like mine. Totally agree with you because you can hear the number of words I'm having to use to answer your question, that we continue to have work to do to refine that, that value prop. And in my two and a half years, the first focus has been getting the basics right. And now. And now here's finally the answer to your question. An enormous focus on brand is going to be one of our big pushes. It has to be. It has to be. There's so many products out there in the world where people are making the decision based on their heart, based on what they think in love and fall in love with. And of course, rationally, I got a great service to pick me up super fast, but they also got to fall in love with this. And so that's my big thing over the next couple years is how do you get love going?
- [28:01]
Ed
I love your focus on customer obsession and on service. And I think this is probably a good moment to look at kind of your career path, because I know that you were an early executive at Microsoft and then you were an early executive at Amazon too. In other words, you worked very closely with two of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, and that is Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
- [28:27]
David Risher
Yeah.
- [28:28]
Ed
And Bezos is sort of the king of customer obsession and of just dialing in on service and how important that is. So my question, what did you learn from those two about entrepreneurship, about business, or even just about life in general?
- [28:46]
David Risher
What I really learned at Microsoft, and some of this really was, I mean, I didn't work for Bill, of course, I worked for somebody who. Somebody. But I saw him in action. Is just the focus of being a fierce competitor. A fierce competitor. Oh, my God, was he fierce? And it's so interesting because so in the package software world, so much of the. You have this crazy network effect, right? Like once people start to use Excel, once it gets over 50 or 60% of your company, it's going to go to 90%. And he knew that. He was like, we got to. I mean, this is not his words, but this is the vibe. It's like you got to get to, you know, you got to get to a critical mass and then you move on to the next thing. I remember someone asking this question, you know, how much time you spend thinking about Excel? And he's like, ah, not so much because they've kind of already won the thing. So like, so the sort of, frankly, winner take all mentality, he was super aggressive. And I, and I learned a bunch from that. I had a million pictures up in my office of literally CEOs of competing companies. And I would, you know, throw darts at him, stuff like that from Jeff, customer obsession. And, you know, and it sounds trite now because people have said it so many times, but I mean, he really was a Deep believer that, you know, everything is one click away from everything else on the Internet. And so if you don't just fight every single day, wake up every morning, is terrified that your customer is going to abandoned you, you know, you're losing. And I've really, you know, I brought that to lift. We talk about our values a lot. Customer obsession is, is number one by far. And then I want to say something else, if you don't mind. So I then I went on and did a bunch of other things, including running a nonprofit for many years, for about 12 years that I founded myself getting kids reading called World Reader. I bring that up because from there I really learned a sense of purpose. And in that case it was getting kids to read. Now it's serving and connecting at Lyft.
- [30:17]
Ed
One of those principles that I really respect that you mentioned that you do is that you drive. You are a Lyft driver and you do it regularly. And I'm pretty sure Waffle House has a similar system where I think they say that the CEO has to be a line cook one day of the year. And I think there are probably some other companies that do this as well. But in other words, you know what it's like to be, to be a driver. Tell us why that's important to you and tell us what that does in terms of customer service and how that benefits the company.
- [30:57]
David Risher
So I mean, I have to say first, almost selfishly, I just love it. I love it. I do it every six weeks or so and it's just super, super fun. I literally go, I don't tell my comms team, I don't tell anyone else. They all go bananas when this happens. But I'm like, look, I'm just going to get out there and drive for two, three, four hours in the Bay Area, which is where I live, and it's so great. So first, here are the things. First of all, you learn what it's like to be a driver. You learn the stress you're under. You learn the stress you're under simultaneously trying to figure out what the person in the backseat wants, where you're going to go, whether you're going to take another ride afterwards. And you have all these interesting tools which tell you where the demand is. And you can draw a circle and say, I only want to drive within this area because I got to get home by 5 o' clock to see my wife or whatever it is. So it's more complicated than people realize to juggle all this stuff. And so you get a real sense of that. And so inevitably, you know, I come home just on the driver's side with a whole bunch of ideas for the driver team about ways we can make this information a little easier to understand, you know, make this a little bit bigger or change this, whatever it is. Then from the driver side, it's great. Excuse me? From the rider side, it's great. It's great. Like I always ask, you know, how come you chose this today? How come you chose Lyft? I don't say us. And you know, sometimes people are very precise. Sometimes people are not. By the way, sometimes people don't want to talk. You can kind of tell that, like the first 10 or 15 seconds.
- [32:11]
Ed
I think you might have drove Scott.
- [32:12]
David Risher
Yeah, that was Scott. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [32:14]
Ed
Shoot, shoot, shoot.
- [32:14]
David Risher
I think I drove you too well. But I'll tell you such a funny story about this. I have a billion. A lot of people get in and you can tell, like, their vibe is not like, I now wanna have a 15 minute conversation. But if I ask, how's your day going? Oh my God, it's like I'm the bartender, I'm like frigging shaking drinks up at the front of the car, like talking to them about their recent divorce. There's a woman I picked up at 11 o' clock in the morning and she had just spent the night at a guy's house. And I said, what's going on? She said, well, he broke up with me a year ago, but then my boyfriend broke up with me last night, so I went over to his house. Anyway, we ended up having a conversation about making wise choices, which was super fun. Then another conversation with a guy that wanted career advice when he found out who I was. We spent another 15 minutes in the car after the thing was over. My favorite ones are ones where I really learn something about what the rider wants. So there's a woman named Anne, and I picked her up in Sausalito a couple months ago. Actually, it was last year at this point, time flies. And she was so stressed out because she said, every morning I wake up and the prices bounce around between San Francisco and Sausalito and San Francisco a ton. And if it's less than 20 bucks, I'll take a lift. If it's more than 40 bucks, I'll stay home. It's 30 bucks. It's kind of a crapshoot. But today it's somebody's birthday in my office. She had donuts. So anyway, literally, so we have this whole conversation. So at the end, I'm like, well, I'm the CEO of Lyft. So she goes bananas and all in the car, which is, which is super fun. And then we start to develop this product called pricelock. And it really was for her. It really was for her. I wanted to lock the price in. So now for 299, I'm going to always be closing 299. You can lock in the price for a certain route. It stops all the bouncing around. It's a great product and people love it. I was actually just on the phone with her a couple of weeks ago. She actually talking about some other stuff because now she's I user to kind of ping her from time to time. And so that's kind of what happens. So the, you know, the short answer is not only do I learn a lot, but I, and I get conviction around certain things. Conviction, like we have to solve this problem, we got to deal with it. But I also, and it gives me frankly some sort of moral authority, you might say, beyond just, I'm the CEO, so you know, that's so that's helpful. But it also just reminds me every single day what an important part of people's lives we are.
- [34:10]
Scott
So, David, as you are a driver, if you've ever had a passenger say one of the following things, just drive please, or you're going the wrong way, or just do what the fucking app says, boss. It's not that hard. Then you may have driven me. You may have driven me, by the way. I think I probably have the lowest. I'm not one of those people. That's really nice.
- [34:32]
Ed
You're probably banned from the app. That's why you use Lyft.
- [34:34]
David Risher
Yeah. I don't think you actually are allowed.
- [34:36]
Scott
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's it. Anyways, making friends wherever I go, I could tell. David, I'm just sort of curious to get your 30,000 foot view on where do you think generally transportation, when you think about electric or rail or a super app, like what trends do you see in transportation? And you and I have had some really interesting conversations about trying to get people out of their house and get them connected. But more broadly, even beyond kind of ride hailing, do you see any big, big trends in transportation?
- [35:13]
David Risher
The rite of passage of the 16 year old of getting his own or her own, their own driver's license is kind of done.
- [35:19]
Scott
So strange, isn't it? Where did you grow up? It was everything.
- [35:22]
David Risher
When I was growing up, it was everything. I grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. I'm not proud to say this But I failed my first driver test.
- [35:27]
Ed
Me, too.
- [35:27]
Scott
Oh, Ed. What a mistake for Ed to let me know that. Oh, my God. Oh, you're gonna regret that.
- [35:34]
Ed
Me and the CEO of Lyft, I'm in good company.
- [35:37]
Scott
Oh, my God. I'm literally the you that has leverageable information against Ed Elson now.
- [35:43]
David Risher
I'm sorry.
- [35:43]
Scott
Go ahead, David.
- [35:44]
David Risher
I. And I got to tell the story because I felt so misled. It was. And it's a total trick. It was a total trick. Like, it's one of those closed courses, and you finish, you parallel park, which was like. That's the thing. I was like, you got to get the parallel park. You parallel park. Then you pull up and. And the. And the instructor's like, that's great. Now just go over there by the wall and, you know, we're all done. And what you don't see is the stop sign that's right there. And you don't act. You don't do a full stop because you're just. So anyway, I blew through it, but bummer. But anyway, pass the second time. Long story. So back to the thing. I think freedom is what that was all about, right? I can do my own thing. I can make my own choices. And now you have different ways to have freedom. And mostly, frankly, you know, us and the other guys, you jump in the car and whatever. So that's a. That's a big, big shift, then, the car ownership. What's your first car? Right. I still remember my first car. I was at Honda Accord. My mom actually gave it to me. It was used. It was her boyfriend's. You know, all this sort of stuff. I drove it senior year in college. You know, it was kind of my thing. Chick magnet. I don't want to brag, but whatever. Anyway, that's kind of gone, too. I mean, of course, people will eventually buy their first car, but it'll be later in their life. So these are sort of very foundational sorts of things. Let me flip to the other side for a second. As you get closer to end your life. We're all getting older, right? It's happening. And demographically, just. Also just laws of physics. I'm going to promote a second. We just launched a product called Liftsilver a couple months ago. It's all about getting older people out and engaged, because that's how you lived your best life, is when you're out, engaged, and you're at your kid's soccer game or you're at your doctor's appointment that you didn't miss. Because you don't want to drive yourself because you're worried about driving whatever it is. Anyway, it's been a massive hit. Massive, massive hit. Taken off much faster than I hoped. And I was hoping, I had big hopes. Literally, people hugged me because of this product. So I think if you look at both ends of people's lives, transportation is going to play a new role, largely because other people are doing the driving. And you don't have to. You can text, you can do whatever the frig you want to. You know, you can enjoy your life while this is happening. So what does that mean? That means and then autonomous, of course. So as autonomous happens, it's not just about somebody else driving the car or the car driving itself. It's about, you know, lounge mode. You're gonna be reclining, you're gonna be going to sleep, you're gonna be in your camper, you know, at night, and then it's gonna. You wake up the next morning and there you are. Yellowstone. It's driven you all this sort of stuff. So. So I think. And then when you think even bigger, you mentioned things like vertical takeoff and landing. Like that is gonna happen. You can't. I'm in New York City right now already. I've had a conversation about some guy actually works for us. He's an amazing guy, but he was frustrated about how long it took him to get to his. To a vacation house in the Hamptons, just like everybody does. They're frustrated by that. And inevitably he talks to helicopters and drones and all this things. So I think maybe a very long way of saying the transportation, I think for some period of time was super novel, right? Model T. Oh, my God, it's not a horse. Amazing. And then it was kind of everywhere. And then there's the highway system, right? Then it's big open Road and Route 66 and interstates and all this sort of stuff. And then, you know, trains were cool, and they were kind of not cool in the United States, and then planes were cool, and then they're kind of annoying. And like, all that stuff is. Is true. And I think there's another big thing, and I think it's when it becomes kind of cool and fun again because autonomous drives you there because you don't have to actually do a lot of the work and you can live your best life. And it's going to get in my. You know, I will bring it back to that. I want as many people off their frigging couch and not watching, you know, Netflix or getting food delivery as Much as I like that, and they're great partners of ours, but man, I want them out in the world. Out the world. That's how we live our best lives.
- [38:52]
Ed
Just from an organizational perspective, like how are you supposed to maintain strong service when you're managing a company of thousands of employees? Just for context, I'm reading this book, Unreasonable Hospitality right now, which talks about all this stuff in terms of the restaurant industry. And it's hard to do that at a restaurant where you're managing 20, 30, 40 people. And I can just assume that as you scale, it becomes increasingly difficult not only to manage, but also just to have any contact with the customer experience. You become so detached when you're managing this large of an organization. So just give us some of your management philosophies on how you maintain service as you scale and as you build out a company of literally thousands of people.
- [39:50]
David Risher
I love every single thing about this question. First of all, I read Unreasonable Hospitality about a year ago. It actually. And it changed my life because I started to think about this very, very directly. Let me give you a little bit of data. So we have 3,000 people who are employees at Lyft, but we have 1.5 million people who drive on the platform. They are independent contractors. And it's not just a legal distinction. What it is is an acknowledgment of what you're saying. It is very, very distributed. Right. And people drive for all sorts of reasons. All sorts of reasons. Okay, so I actually put this question to two super interesting people over the last six months. One was Thomas Keller who runs the French Laundry, as you know. One was Eric Rupart who runs Le Bernardin in New York City. And both of those. And I asked the same question about how would you create the level of culture around service not just for the 30, 40, 50 people who work for your restaurant, but for one and a half million people who don't even work for. How would you do that? And both of them are so interesting. I mean, they get thousands of questions and mostly like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. Both of them, and I don't think I'm speaking at a school here to say like they stopped in their tracks. They're like, that is a mind blowing question. That's a mind blowing question. Let me help you think about that. And so both of them gave me some ideas. But I can tell you that that is what I'm hell bent to solve that problem. Hell bent to solve that problem. And I hope 10 years from now when people look back and they say, you know, what did this guy do? Oh my God. He somehow figured out a crack. He, they, the team figured out how to crack the code on getting one and a half million drivers to level up their service to a level of consistency and excellence that you might typically see in a high end restaurant. Let me say one last thing. From a million miles away, you think driving, you have a certain sense of what driving is. And it may be sort of a transactional sense. People do it when they can't get another job or when they need extra money, whatever. People drive for all kinds of reasons. But here's what's true. Drivers really like driving, most of them, some of them don't, but most of them really like it and they actually have a lot of pride. So what we try to do is we try to say, okay, drivers, it's not just about how much money are we paying you? It's not just about, it's how can we help you move through your life? And so we have this accomplishment letter thing. You can literally as a driver come in and push a button. It says, Scott started driving. It's AI driven. Scott started driving 18 months ago. He's a super grouchy driver. You should never have. No, that's not at all. But like he's one of our top 5% drivers. You know, he always shows up on time. Here are three comments that are sort of representative of his driving skills. And we have stories. And then, you know, I would hire Scott for any service oriented job you're looking for. So that could be a baggage handler, it could be a front receptionist at a, at a hotel. We have amazing stories. There's a guy who did this and literally he couldn't get a job. Then he attached his reference letter and now he's working at IKEA in exactly this way. So such a long way of saying, but I hope you're getting the point. If we invest in our drivers and we help them understand that they're not just in the driving industry, they're in the service industry. And we help support them, not just by paying them in a certain way, but actually by supporting their life dreams and we do a bunch of other things with them to upskill and so forth and so on, I think we have a shot. And then we're very clear on what our values are and what our expectations are and take our incentive systems and align them. We have a driver loyalty program that is now starting to reward drivers for, for exhibiting better service and a new feedback mechanism that allows riders to help drivers see how they can improve their service. Then you can start to create a sort of a flywheel ecosystem that I think really does level up.
- [42:54]
Ed
I just learned from your answer that Thomas Keller, one of the greatest chefs of all time, is advising Lyft on how to run the business, which I just love. And yet we're not hearing any of the advice. We can't get a nugget. We can't get just a little bit.
- [43:12]
David Risher
Did you see what I just did there? I just completely jumped over that. 100%.
- [43:16]
Ed
We can't hear anything.
- [43:17]
David Risher
Totally, totally.
- [43:18]
Ed
Yeah.
- [43:19]
David Risher
100%. All I can tell you is he was very interested and I do have an excellent selfie of the two of us standing together.
- [43:23]
Ed
Oh wow. Okay. Well, maybe you can send us the selfie because that in and of itself is fascinating.
- [43:30]
David Risher
Happy to joke. He might be surprised to hear that he's advising us. By the way, I think it was a little bit more of a one and done type of conversation. But anyway, I'll send you the selfie and who knows, maybe, you know, we'll see.
- [43:42]
Ed
We'll be right back.
- [43:53]
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- [45:21]
Ed
We're back with Property Markets. One of the things that we have been talking a lot about on this podcast in relation to what has been happening in Politics. We have been somewhat surprised at the lack of pushback from the business leader community against some of the policies that we've seen. We could talk about immigration policies, but more so what we're seeing with tariffs and the ways that that is affecting our economy and the ways that it is going to affect our economy. And we have been surprised by how many public company CEOs are kind of shrugging or capitulating whatever it is, sucking up to the president. I'd just like to get your perspective on that point. How do you feel about your role as a public company CEO, as someone who runs just a very large public company? Have you been surprised by this, too? And do you have any thoughts on this topic?
- [46:32]
David Risher
I have been surprised. I do have thoughts. I think the fear of retaliation is real, and I think that stops a lot of people from saying anything. You know, I think there's a general view of let's not be the tallest. Poppy is sometimes the term people say so that I don't get targeted. Frankly, I think that's. That's a big part of it. I will also say I've been disappointed. I think there are executives who had the opportunity to speak up and chose not to, and I think they probably could have, and I think that the world would be a little better as a result. Now, I also have to say I've spoken to people in the current administration, and there are some very, very competent people there. Competent, that sounds like a backhand account. But very, very passionate people who are actually really trying to do, you know, quote the right thing, unquote, trying to make business easier to get done, trying to, you know, reduce stuff that probably was, you know, made sense a certain time and no longer does. So I actually think there's some genuine. I'm talking about a slightly different level maybe from what you're talking about, but I think there's some genuine desire within the administration to do the thing that sort of everyone kind of wants, which is like, let's get rid of stuff that doesn't make sense and let's sort of be, you know, kind of a raging centrist. I think, Scott, you say this sometimes. I'm talking about from kind of a regulation perspective and whatever. So. So anyway, that's a little bit of a side point, but I just wanted to make sure that folks heard that. I did a little video a couple weeks ago where I talked about values and the importance of leading with purpose and some of the values that we demonstrate as a rideshare business. We have a product called Women plus Connect, that allows women to preferentially choose each other as rider, driver. And it makes them feel safe, it makes them feel secure. It drives our business. A very popular feature. It's the type of thing that I wanted to speak very clearly about and say, this is something that we'll continue to be committed to and are continuing to actually invest in. I could sort of go on and on, but. So we talk a lot about how our values show up in the way we do business and that those values strengthen our business. It's one of the reasons why we are gaining share on the other guys is because people respond to it. We're targeting communities that maybe other folks are overlooking. So I think if I wanted to sum it up, I might say my surprise comes both from a little bit of a values perspective, but also I think there's a way to sort of, you know, you might say, thread the needle. Like, really kind of say, I'm going to stand up for my values and it's going to drive my business forward. And if you don't like it, challenge me, because I'm okay with that. I think I'm on the right side of this one.
- [48:40]
Scott
You have a very impressive background. I don't know many people who started at Microsoft, went to Amazon and then spent 12 years trying to help encourage kids to read and then went back to be the CEO of a public company. We're the same age. You're obviously economically secure. You've checked a lot of boxes. What's left for you? What does success look like for you in five or ten years? If you think these are the box or boxes left for me to check, what are those things?
- [49:06]
David Risher
Look, I first want to acknowledge I have been super, super lucky. And I've. And I've made some good choices along the way. Of course, both those things are true. I was the 37th employee at Amazon. Like, that's a. That's, you know, you don't. You don't get to, you know, not that many people get to say that, actually. I think just one. Okay, so. So I don't know that I have a super clear view of what's next. I can tell you I'm absolutely loving my job. I literally jump out of bed even on Saturdays. I find my wife is like, David, you know, I'm like, I wish it were Monday. My wife's like, settle down, David. Just settle down. But now let's zoom out. Every Saturday morning, I do something. I should do two things Saturday morning. And you might find both these interesting. The Second thing I do is I write a letter to our board of directors every single week, email every single week. And it's always structured exactly the same way. The good, the bad, that's it. Then there's some data that's consistent from week to week and maybe a few pictures that tell a story. But the good and the bad, I find it very grounding. I think it kind of helps me think of what we accomplished over this week and what we're kind of up to, and it helps keep the board very involved. And so the board meetings tend to be much more productive as a result. That's a total side comment, but it's just part of how I set my Saturday morning. The first thing I do is more important, which is I write in a physical journal for about a half an hour about typically four things. All right, how's my work going? How's my relationship with my family? I have two daughters, I have a wife, I have brothers. And so how's my relationship with my friends? Right? Am I reaching out to them? Have I talked to somebody in this last week? Do I have plans to talk to somebody in this next week? Whatever it is? And that has my health? And by health, I mean not just of the basics, like do I have a cold or not or whatever it is, but like, you know, if I got in the gym, if I kind of stayed active. So I don't know. And on all those, I don't sort of give myself a five star rating or whatever, but I kind of just reflect on each of those things for a little bit. And I suspect that at age, I'm turned 60 years old in a couple days, you know, then I'll be 70, then I'll be 80. I have a goal of living to 100, hopefully healthily. So I hope, number one, I'm alive and on that path. Number two, I hope I'm still thinking about those four things and that I'm making progress on all four of those and still loving all four. So that's going to be the. That'll be the framework. I don't know the specifics.
- [51:01]
Ed
Done with questions, Scott. I'll wrap us up.
- [51:03]
Scott
Yeah, I am.
- [51:04]
Ed
Okay. Okay.
- [51:05]
David Risher
Scott was taking a moment to reflect on that.
- [51:08]
Ed
Scott was reflecting on his health.
- [51:09]
David Risher
He was thinking, I could see.
- [51:11]
Scott
I was just thinking, how can you be. How can you go to Princeton and fail your first driver's test? That's what I was thinking.
- [51:19]
Ed
Well, you know what? I'm just reading David's bio. David is also a tiger, so that's Two for two.
- [51:25]
Scott
Princeton, Harvard, Amazon, Microsoft. Yeah.
- [51:29]
Ed
Jesus. Just before we close here, David, any advice that you would give to young people starting their careers? I mean, a lot of people look up to you. You kind of reached the heights in business in a lot of ways. What advice would you give to a young person who's just starting out right now?
- [51:48]
David Risher
I mean, the first thing I would say is don't stress about the future so much. Gosh, there are all sorts of reasons to worry about the world right now. I think we're gonna be okay. And I think, particularly when you're in your 20s, you're getting so much incoming of all the stuff going on, and you have so much pressure to sort of like, what is my thing going to be? What's my career, whatever. And I'm really like, gosh, your 20s is your time to explore. So the first thing I would say is reduce the stress, because I don't think it's going to help you. And second of all, take your 20s to just explore. Don't. Don't stress about, like, what is my career? I. Gosh, I could. In retrospect, I can tell you what a beautiful career I've had. And I've done all these. No, it was just all like, I did a thing and I was good at that. And then another thing, I was good at that. I. Phone call. I just took the phone call. I did a thing. So, like, anyway, number one, like, don't worry so much about a master plan when you're a kid. Just, you know, explore. The second thing, I think, and this is. I mean, the whole follow your passion thing is so trite. And, you know, people have all sorts of things about that, which I get. I've heard you talk about this, Scott, but I don't. And I also. I don't talk about quite that way. What I do say, though, is, don't follow the money. Don't follow the money. And that it's such a mistake I see people make because they think, oh, my God, I'm going to take this job because I'm going to make more money. Money effectively. And it's like such a dumbass thing to do. First of all, there's never enough. There's literally never enough. Quick side thing. My wife wrote a whole book on this topic. It's called we need to Talk A Memoir about Wealth. It's been. The impact wealth has had on our family. It's a very personal story. It's a memoir. I'm a small supporting character. Other people are big in the point is that one of the things she talks about is there is never enough. So don't be doing that because that's a dumb goal. You're setting yourself up for failure. On the other hand, do do the things that you're good at. You do do the things that you're good at. The things that bring you joy, of course, also what you're good at. Because if you're good at something, you will do better. And if you do better, you will get compensated. And if you are compensated, that'll make you not exactly happy, but it'll give you more options to do other things. And so, you know, I think probably every word on this topic has been said a million times before, but that's just kind of my philosophy. I'm a little bit of a don't over plan it, don't overthink it. Use a little bit of expiration time in your 20s so you don't get, you know, on that too early. But man, oh man, if there's one thing, don't follow the money because it's a loser. You'll never get there.
- [53:43]
Ed
David Rischer has served as CEO of Lyft since 2023 and as a member of the board since 2021. Prior to left, David co founded World Reader, a nonprofit organization that has helped 21 million people read, served as a senior Vice president of US Retail at Amazon and as a General manager at Microsoft. He holds a BA in Comparative Literature. Gosh, I can't speak today. From Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. David, thank you very much for joining us. This was great. And go Tigers.
- [54:14]
David Risher
Go Tigers. There you go. That was a lot of fun, you guys. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Scott.
- [54:18]
Scott
Yeah, that was fun. Thank you for doing that, David.
- [54:29]
Ed
Scott, what'd you think of that?
- [54:31]
Scott
So a quantitative observation and a qualitative. The quantitative one is I think he represents the company really well. I had no idea they had that level of market share. I thought, quite frankly, I thought, and this speaks to probably as a problem with his comms department, I thought Lyft was dying a slow death. I did not think they were grabbing market share. And given that the market is growing, I just didn't know that in the.
- [54:52]
Ed
US we should clarify the US Market share still a big deal, but Uber is still taking over the rest of the world.
- [55:00]
Scott
I would not have thought that Lyft was gaining share against Uber in any large market. It so and I look at their price to sales, it's one Uber's four Uber's more diversified, has more scale. I think they still lack real differentiation. I think they've got to make a big bet on something as opposed to just being. Right now, they're just known as the number two, and I don't think you solve that problem. And then my other observation is the reason I gotten to know David accidentally, because he shares a concern about young men, and we've gotten to know each other a little bit. And it's the reason why I don't get to know these guys is you'll like them. This guy is really likable. They're just aren't.
- [55:37]
Ed
We can't have CEOs on the podcast anymore. We're going to just start. We're going to become sycophants.
- [55:42]
Scott
Well, I've gotten to know this guy. He took 12 years off, I think, to. To work on a nonprofit trying to encourage kids to read. That's like. I'm pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg will never do that. But he's a. He's very. I mean, that guy's impossible not to like, in my view. And so I think he's in the right seat. I think they are struggling. They've got to make a big bet and be more than just the number two. When you hear their. Hear their brand name. What do you think?
- [56:09]
Ed
Yeah, I think it's really interesting what you say about the price sales multiple there. And that is. I mean, I agree. I really enjoyed that conversation. I really like him. But the question as a CEO is how can you increase those multiples? I mean, just as you said there, you didn't know that they had as large of a market share as they do in America. And whose fault is that? Well, that's. Com's. That's PR's fault, but it's also kind of his fault as the CEO by not communicating that message enough. And so I think that I would like to see more from him in communicating, actually. We are taking over the market in a lot of ways. And I also think that this was an opportunity. You asked him, what are your big, bold bets? And he said, customer service, which, you know, fair enough. And I really appreciate his obsession with that. I do think that's. That is important. But I also think that these podcasts are the moment to make that giant pitch. And sure, maybe Uber's going to start getting worried about it, and management will start, you know, looking at this podcast and saying, okay, Lyft is getting into this, but you also need to make the pitch to Wall street and say, this is the future. We're getting into Robotaxis and it's going to be massive.
- [57:31]
Scott
Yeah, he's the anti Musk. Musk basically strings together like bullshit and fairy dust and the market believes it. And he's quite frankly kind of honest and reserved to a fault. He's kind of reeks of integrity and doesn't want to get out over his skis. Whereas Musk is like, oh, yeah, I'm putting people on Uranus while I'm high on ketamine and I'm going to enjoy it.
- [57:55]
Ed
That seems to be, seems to be the problem, right? I mean, the problem isn't really the underlying business. They're actually doing a credible job there. The problem is selling to Wall street, to investors. That's why the stock's down.
- [58:10]
Scott
He's the CEO of a bygone era and that is he's under promising and over delivering. And that used to be what CEOs acted like up until about 15 years ago. And now CEOs over promise, hoping that their stock will go up and they can use cheap capital to pull the future forward. And he just, he, I don't know. I'm rooting for the guy. I may even download the Lyft app. Who knows? I just might get fucking crazy. I might go crazy tonight.
- [58:38]
Ed
I'm switching to Lyft. I'm a fan of David. I'm going to switch to Lyft as soon as we get off this podcast. Maybe that's just because, as you say, I like the guy and I'm becoming a victim of the likability of these people.
- [58:53]
Scott
Good.
- [58:53]
Ed
We need to stop having CEOs on the pod.
- [58:55]
Scott
There you go. No more. No Moss.
- [59:03]
Ed
This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Mia Silverio is our research lead. Isabella Kinsel and Dan Schlon are our research associates. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Property Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on Market Kids on Monday.
- [60:00]
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