🚗 Lyft's Bold New Strategy (with CEO David Risher)

Summary

The Best One Yet – November 21, 2025

🚗 Lyft's Bold New Strategy (with CEO David Risher)

Episode Overview

Jack Crivici-Kramer and Nick Martell sit down for an in-depth, fast-paced interview with David Risher, CEO of Lyft, who took the wheel in 2023 during a period of intense turbulence for the rideshare company. The conversation is energetic and candid, covering David's turnaround strategy, customer obsession, product innovations like the women-only "Women+ Connect" mode, Lyft's unique company culture, and Risher's own leadership style—including literally driving customers around as a Lyft driver.

The hosts bring their signature blend of business insights and playful banter, peppered with memorable stories and actionable takeaways for ambitious listeners interested in leadership, tech, and company strategy.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. David Risher’s 100-Day Turnaround Plan

• Background: When Risher joined (April 17, 2023), Lyft’s stock was stagnant and the company had “lost its way.” Lyft was trying to “do too many things,” overcharging customers, and underpaying drivers.
• Customer Obsession as Core:

  "Customer obsession is what's gonna drive profitable growth."
  —David Risher (03:42)

• Main Actions:
  • Immediate fare reductions for riders
  • Increased driver pay to retain and attract more drivers
  • Cut 26% of staff (saving $330 million), reinvesting in customers and the core rides business
  • Refocused leadership and senior management around serving both “customers” in every car (riders and drivers)

2. Focusing on Core Strengths, Not Diversification

• In contrast to Uber, Lyft doubled down on its core rides business, while Uber succeeded with diversification (notably food delivery). Risher says Lyft’s past leaders made “a lot of small bets,” leading to lack of focus.
• Strategy:

  "You better have a pretty big vision for what that own way looks like. And I think this was an area where [Lyft] got a bit confused."
  —David Risher (33:11)

3. Innovating on Product and Driver Experience

• Women+ Connect:
  • A safety-focused ride mode where women drivers and riders are matched if both opt in.
  • Originated from “DIY research” and launched within months of Risher’s arrival.

  “This is not a new idea… But the problem with big ideas is they're so easy to shoot down.”
  —David Risher (09:09)

• Ride Quality Basics ("Hygiene"):
  • Risher’s team reduced driver cancellation rates from 15% to under 5%, improved pickup times by up to 3 minutes, and launched Lift Silver (a senior-focused product).
  • On data vs. intuition:

    “So much of doing the right thing really is kind of looking deep in the mirror and saying, what's the right thing to do here, you guys? Stop frigging getting all confused with all this data stuff.”
    —David Risher (25:04)

4. Driving for Lyft as CEO

• Risher regularly drives passengers (every 6 weeks) to stay attuned to both rider and driver experiences.

  "I started driving… before I became CEO. I just wanted to feel what it felt like…"
  —David Risher (10:59)

• Shares funny and insightful stories, like giving a ride to an employee who tipped him within seven seconds (14:14).
• Most meaningful lesson from the road: Surge pricing (aka “primetime”) is a stressor for regular riders. Inspired Risher to develop "pricelock," allowing customers to pay a small fee to lock in ride prices.

  "Surge pricing… it's an economist's dream, right?... But it's a rider's nightmare."
  —David Risher (15:06)

5. Cultural Mojo and Differentiation

• Lyft has fostered a friendlier, more communicative community compared to competitors—"people in the backseat are more likely to talk to [drivers]" and tip better (34:25).
• Risher is proud of this and it’s reflected in rising driver satisfaction (27% preference for Lyft over Uber).

6. Avoiding “Inshitification”

• Lyft is actively working to avoid the gradual degradation consumers experience as companies seek to monetize products more aggressively.
• Risher credits the term to Cory Doctorow and stresses hands-on, “customer-obsessed” leadership (22:06).

  "There's a tidal pull towards inshitifcation… you keep at it because you know that in the long term, that's how you're going to build the absolute best company."
  —David Risher (23:04)

7. Waymo Partnership and the Future of Autonomy

• Lyft is both partnering with and competing against Waymo (autonomous vehicles), jointly launching in Nashville where Lyft manages the Waymo fleet.
  • “We are frenemies. Right now in Nashville, we’ll manage their fleet—cleaning, charging, and so on. Both companies hope this ‘situationship’ blossoms into something beautiful.”
    —David Risher (39:35)
• Lyft positions itself as the brand focused on human connection, even as it adopts autonomous and AI technologies.

8. AI and Technology at Lyft

• AI is used to empower human drivers rather than replace them (e.g., AI Earnings Assistant helps drivers plan their week for optimal earnings).
• New features like accomplishment letters synthesize feedback for drivers using AI.

9. Financial Highlights and Company Momentum

• Since Risher’s appointment:
  • Lyft’s stock has doubled; market share in the U.S. is up about 5% (to ~31%).
  • Achieved four straight profitable quarters and generated $1 billion in free cash flow in the last 12 months.
  • Ride growth is the highest in company history; Halloween 2025 was their best day and hour yet (17:27).

  "When I joined… we were consuming about $300 million. So from negative $300 million to positive $1 billion… that's a big deal."
  —David Risher (35:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On company focus:

  "If you don't do well by [riders and drivers], nothing else matters."
  —David Risher (06:35)

• On decision-making:

  "So much of doing the right thing really is kind of looking deep in the mirror and saying, what's the right thing to do here, you guys? Stop frigging getting all confused with all this data stuff."
  —David Risher (25:04)

• On company metrics vs. customer experience:

  "[Lyft's] ride completes as a metric of success... most of the time when [driver cancellations] happen, you get rematched. But if you're looking at customer annoyance... you focus on this a lot."
  —David Risher (24:03)

• On business strategy:

  "Lyft is focused on being the number one ride hail for both drivers and riders, while Uber is distracted with other things. Lyft nails the basics."
  —Summarized by Jack (51:41)
  "Super well put." —David Risher (51:56)

• On personal purpose:

  "I am a purpose driven person... I joined Lyft because I want to bring people out of their bubbles, off their couches, off their phones... somehow, for whatever reason, that's what I find super motivational."
  —David Risher (55:34)

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Significant Timestamps

• David’s origin story & first 100 days: 02:33–04:01
• Women+ Connect feature & innovating for riders/drivers: 07:31–10:31
• Driving as CEO – stories from the road: 10:59–14:22
• Big lesson about surge pricing: 15:06–16:06
• Amazon roots & “Every page must sell” philosophy: 16:51–17:50
• How Lyft avoids inshitifcation: 22:04–24:57
• Reducing cancellation rates: 24:57–25:30
• Market share growth, profit milestones: 35:13–36:57
• Waymo partnership & the future of autonomy: 37:18–41:57
• Embracing AI for drivers, not against them: 42:20–44:22
• Product brainstorming & customer clubification: 46:14–47:25
• Personal productivity & time management: 49:37–50:37
• Near-term product vision (“Instant Match”): 50:59–51:37
• CEO’s final summary & purpose-driven leadership: 55:34–56:29

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Tone and Style Notes

• Jack and Nick sustain a playful tone with inside jokes (“two Lyfts,” “situation-ship,” “slammin’ salmon curtain”).
• Risher is frank, thoughtful, and occasionally self-deprecating, balancing serious strategy with personal anecdotes.
• The episode is brisk, high-energy, and loaded with actionable nuggets, leadership wisdom, and moments of genuine candor.

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Takeaway

David Risher is leading Lyft with relentless customer focus, lean execution on the basics, and a willingness to innovate on both products and company culture. He embodies “serving and connecting,” with a leadership style rooted in purpose, transparency, and first-hand insights. Lyft’s current momentum reflects a back-to-basics strategy—making every ride better for both drivers and customers—while embracing new technology and partnerships to prepare for the next era of transportation.

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Listen for:

• Play-by-play of Lyft’s dramatic turnaround
• How a tech CEO moonlights as a rideshare driver
• Anecdotes about company culture and customer-centric decision-making
• Product ideas and future bets—robotaxis, instant matches, and more

Memorable sign-off:

“David Risher wants you to get in the car and then get out of the car.”
—Nick Martell (56:29)

Transcript

[Nick]

Yet he is. Look out for that white Toyota with the license plate ending in tboy because.

[Jack]

We'Re hailing an interview with the guy who connects your hail to that Honda.

[Nick]

David Richard didn't invent, found, or create the ride hailing industry, but now he's.

[Jack]

The leader of Lyft. Yeah, he's the CEO of the Pepsi.

[Nick]

To Uber's Coke, but Bessie's. This guy ain't just the CEO. He is the ultimate early hire because.

[Jack]

This guy was employee number 37 at.

[Nick]

Amazon, and then he quit the entire tech industry to give away books around the world.

[Jack]

And he's the only tech CEO whose favorite show is Reading Rainbow.

[Nick]

When Lyft hit a traffic jam back in 2023, Jack, who did the company call?

[Jack]

David freaking Risher. Besties.

[Nick]

This guy traded philanthropy for pink mustaches and has been leading Lyft ever since.

[Jack]

And under his watch, Lyft cut corporate clutter, refocused on rides, and launched a women's only option.

[Nick]

Oh, and he launched a Waymo deal. Since David took over, Lyft's stock has.

[Jack]

Doubled, which means Lyft is now worth two less.

[Nick]

David. David is so different. He dropped the word and shitification in.

[Jack]

An earnings report, and he declared war against surge pricing.

[Nick]

He even drives as a driver for Lyft while being the CEO of Lyft.

[Jack]

So there's a 0.01% chance that if you hail Lyft in San Francisco, your driver is the CEO.

[Nick]

And Yeti, since Lyft announced earnings the day before this interview, we will jump in T boy style to those numbers too.

[Jack]

Besties, please welcome the king of carpools, the maestro of miles, and the Wakanda of wait time.

[Nick]

Just don't cancel this interview before he arrives in the recording studio.

[David Risher]

Out.

[Jack]

David Risher is the CEO of Lyft.

[Nick]

Hold on to your chassis, because today's interview with David is the best one yet.

[David Risher]

There we go.

[Nick]

David, welcome to the show that was.

[David Risher]

On T Boy Insane. Thank you, gents. Thank you.

[Nick]

We are happy to deliver this for your annual report as well.

[Jack]

I want to explain that two lifts thing that we mentioned.

[Nick]

Yes, that we should bring that up.

[Jack]

Before you took over as CEO. Lyft stock didn't move much, so we actually decided that Lyft's market cap was gonna be our unit of measurement.

[Nick]

Yeah, it's basically a $5 billion company. So, like, if a startup raised capital and was worth 10 billion bucks, we'd say that startup is worth two Lyfts.

[Jack]

Or if Meta announced earnings and jumped like 4%, we'd say. They added two lifts of market cap just in after hours trading.

[Nick]

So we got a problem with you, David. Ever since you took over, Lyft, stock's going up and we can't use it as a unit of measurement anymore.

[Jack]

You're really messing with our measurements.

[David Risher]

I am so sorry that I completely screwed it up here for you guys.

[Jack]

So, David, now that you're the CEO, can you bring us back to the first 100 days when you took over the company? Those first 100 days are key. We learned it from FDR. Yeah, we understand that you laid off half the staff. What else was part of your 100 day plan?

[David Risher]

So this was April 2023. April 17, 2023, actually. And as you had said, the company had sort of been stuck at 5 billion, which is not a very big number compared to where it went public.

[Jack]

We.

[David Risher]

But more than that, I think it had a little bit lost its way. It was trying to do too many things. And as a result, what was happening is we were overpricing, we were underpaying drivers. We weren't necessarily sort of delivering excellence every single day. And the company, as I say, kind of lost its way a little bit. And so I did have a hundred day plan, actually. It's really interesting you bring that up. The board, when they interviewed me for the job, asked me to put together a hundred day plan. And I still have it. And it literally said things like, okay, it didn't start with we need to reduce staff. It did start with we need to reduce pricing and we need to increase driver pay. Because if you don't do that, you don't have a business, particularly if you're in a competitive marketplace. And the result of that, or the way we had to pay for that was reducing, was actually 26% of the employees, which was $330 million of annual cost. And then we could plow that right back into riders and drivers. And so the big picture is we moved from kind of doing a whole lot of things to being customer obsessed. And my basic thesis at the beginning was customer obsession is what's gonna drive profitable growth.

[Nick]

Yeah, we got a lot more with David, but first we gotta hit a quick ad.

[Jack]

I recently got a booking request from somebody who said, I'm a 75 year old professor from Michigan. Me and my academic pals are having a ski trip. I love your place.

[Nick]

Lovely. So what'd you say back? You write back to the guy.

[Jack]

I responded that I went to the University of Michigan for two graduate degrees. Nick. It turns out he did too. In fact, we worked in the same econ department when I was a TA there.

[Nick]

It's a match made in platform history.

[Jack]

Man, this guy hasn't arrived yet. But I love these personal connections I've made as a host on Airbnb and Besties.

[Nick]

We've told you that your place is probably perfect for someone else to stay at as well.

[Jack]

We haven't told you about the wonderful human interactions you can have as an Airbnb host like mine with this 75 year old PhD who loves the Michigan Wolverines as much as I do.

[Nick]

Yeah. It just feels good knowing that while you're making money, someone else is enjoying your place too. And you got a connection.

[Jack]

Hosting on Airbnb can provide you with another income stream and another source of life satisfaction, whether you're a Wolverine or a Buckeye.

[Nick]

Besties. No joke. Jack's very satisfied.

[Jack]

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[Nick]

Yetis. You know what time of year it is? It ain't engagement season. It's postponement season.

[Jack]

Not like postponing your wedding. We're just talking about postponing a social event.

[Nick]

Yeah, like days getting shorter, air is getting colder, you're taking a rain check.

[Jack]

Winter is coming. It's the time of the year that people start to get disconnected from friends.

[Nick]

Okay. But then when you do finally meet up with your buddy Timmy and your friends, it's exactly what you needed. And you think, why didn't I do this sooner?

[Jack]

And for us, that's what starting therapy was like.

[Nick]

That's right. Jack and I are in way better control of our feelings. We know ourselves much better today than we did five years ago in our pre therapy era.

[Jack]

Well over 5 million people worldwide have chosen BetterHelp to start therapy with over 30,000 therapists on that single platform.

[Nick]

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[Jack]

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[Nick]

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[Jack]

Help. H E L P.com t boy, Jack.

[Nick]

And I talk about financial trick shots on the show a lot. Ways to do a small thing that actually adds a large amount of value. What else Was on that 100 day list? Like, were there crazy ideas that, like didn't happen. Were there, you know, like Lyft launching a swimming pool sharing service? Was there, you know, financial trick shots on there that were small ideas with a big gain.

[David Risher]

What else was on it? Okay, super interesting. So big picture. So the first thing was, was this customer obsession thing. And I know it sounds trite, and I know it sounds, you know, overused, and a thousand people say it now, but really refocusing the culture of the company on, we have two customers in every car, a rider and a driver. They both matter, and if you don't do well by them, nothing else matters. Okay, so that's sort of the thing that we just said over and over and over again. And then there's this whole range of things you have to do once you decide that. First you have to decide, do you have the right people around the table? Right. Do you have the right senior leaders? And the truth of the matter is some yes, some no, right? So we made some changes there. Second thing you have to decide is, do you have the right value proposition? As I say, we didn't. We weren't paying drivers enough. We were charging too much, so we had to adjust those, and we did that pretty quickly. And what's interesting in this marketplace is that, you know, it's expensive, but, gosh, you can see the results pretty fast. I mean, literally in hours, you can see the result of a move like that.

[Nick]

Like, you change the fare and suddenly you're Getting more rides 100%.

[David Risher]

100%? Yeah. On the driver side, if you figure out a way to increase driver earnings, more drivers come onto the platform. And I'm talking literally in hours. And then on the rider side, if you lower your fares, because a lot of people are pulling apps out every day and switching between two and so on and so forth, and they'll move pretty fast if you do the right thing. So that was number two. Number three is we had to start innovating again. So Lyft was the early innovator in rideshare. I mean, the other guys, look, they had kind of a black car service. It was sort of a variation on a theme that existed, which is black car comes, picks you up fine. That been around for a long time. If you live in New York City, which you guys did, you know, that's been around forever. Lyft was really the one that said, you know what? How about if it's a dude in a Prius? You know what I mean? How about if it's somebody in his own car and anyone can kind of do it as a way to make money. So that was the big innovation early on, as well as the pink mustache and the branding and kind of making it kind of everybody's the. Instead of sort of a niche thing. But anyway. But frankly, they kind of lost it. John and Logan would say the same. They lost a little bit. Covid was super rough. Anyway, so innovation comes back. So literally nine o' clock in the morning on that first day, we talk about some of the basics and I'm literally like getting my computer and logging into Slack and all this sort of stuff. And then 10 o' clock, we have the first meeting on what's come to be called Women plus Connect. You guys just mentioned it, a women only mode. And that was a big, big deal because I was saying to the company, look, it's not just about cutting costs. It's not just about changing prices. It's not just about. Also about innovating again. And that was literally the first real meeting I had at Lyft that morning.

[Jack]

I think women make up half of the riders at lyft, but only 25% of the drivers.

[David Risher]

That's right.

[Jack]

But women, for safety reasons, may want to hail a ride by a female driver.

[Nick]

And so that just launched, but we're saying like over two years ago, that was like, in the original plan.

[David Risher]

It actually launched in November of the first year. It's been building and building and you've probably seen more and more about it, but it actually launched about four or five months after I joined. So, yeah, so the concept is exactly as you said. So woman, particularly maybe in a new city or late at night. You know, many women that I talk to, and this is just literally DIY research. This is just David saying, okay, you know, how can we create something that is truly differentiated from the other guys and is clearly something customers want? And there are a lot of women out there who say, you know what? I just don't always feel comfortable in a car driven by a man. Okay, so this is not a new idea. It had floated around the company for a while. But the problem with big ideas is there's so. And this is Jeff Bezos talking. They're so easy to shoot down because they're complicated and you haven't thought through the details. And there's always, you know, there are legal complexities, there's societal things, all these different things. And so there are a hundred different ways where people figured out a way to shoot it down in the past. And so I was like, at 10 o', clock, I heard about all Those things from about 10 to 10:05 and about 10:06, we said, okay, that's cool. Glad you've educated me on that. Now let's get to work. Let's get to work. Like, how are we actually going to do this thing? We launched in November, and it has been one of the most popular features we've launched ever in the company's recent history. Once a driver turns it on, because both the driver and the rider have to opt in, drivers never turn it off. And some of the best stories I hear from drivers are one where two women in the car, and they're just like, it was just a different vibe. And I just really appreciate your leadership and advocacy there.

[Nick]

Okay, so, Dave, that's a win. Jack and I were curious about one of the big ideas you may have had that failed, but we also just have to go deep on something you just mentioned, which is you said, I kind of like, pick this up just from listening. You drive for Lyft as the CEO of Lyft. I mean, this is like the ultimate undercover CEO situation. But you're not undercover. You're just doing it. Can you tell us what that is? Like? Like, do you get in the car and how do you reveal it to somebody? It's like cash cap.

[David Risher]

So first of all, the first thing I should say is I love this part of my job. And I actually. I started driving, actually before I became CEO, I started driving about. I think it was four or five days before I had joined the company as CEO, because I just wanted to feel what it felt like. You know, I wanted to learn what the driver experience was, and I wanted to hear from riders what it is that. That they. How they experience the ride. It's great. The answer to how I reveal it is I don't. Until about two minutes till the end.

[Nick]

Okay.

[David Risher]

And then all hell breaks loose. It's 50% like, okay, we gotta take a photo. But then. But. But first, it's like, you're.

[Nick]

I didn't get believe you.

[David Risher]

There's no way. Like, their phone is out in about 10 seconds. They're like, if you're bull, I'm gonna be so pissy. One star.

[Nick]

One star.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[David Risher]

100%. But, yeah.

[Jack]

So.

[David Risher]

And I do it maybe every six weeks or so. And it's just a great way to understand what it is that riders are going through. And I have so many fun stories about it. That one of the fun things about being a driver is particularly, actually, by the way, if there's a couple in the back of the car, they kind of forget you're there. So they say all kinds of crazy stuff. So that's one whole interesting thread that we could kind of pull if you wanted to.

[Nick]

Yeah. Can you tell us one funny story and then also one like, serious? You learn something. Is the CEO story.

[Jack]

Sure.

[David Risher]

On the funny side, I might give you two on that one. One of the funny ones was picking up a woman about 11 o' clock in the morning. And the person who'd hailed the lift was named like, Charlie or something like this, or maybe Charles. And I said, you don't look like a Charles. And she said, yeah, Charles was my boyfriend a year ago. So then she starts talking. My boyfriend a year ago, and I broke up with him about a year ago today or ish. And then last night, the guy that I broke up with him for broke up with me. So I called Charles last night, asked if I could come over. And then she just kind of stopped talking. And I'm like, and it's 11 o' clock in the morning. And she was like a little embarrassed. And so anyway, after we stopped the car, I kind of said like, can we talk about choices? You know what I mean? It turned into a therapy session a little bit. Can I talk about it a little bit? Yeah. So it turned into a little bit of a therapy session and it was super fun. She was a very interesting person and she shared some life experiences with me and I shared some with her. I'll tell you one other very quick one. So it was a Friday morning and I picked. It was my second ride up in the morning. And you can see, by the way, when you pick a person up, you can see what the destination is, where you're going to drop them off. Right. This is one of the innovations, actually, that we put in a couple of years ago. Really helps drivers plan their day better. Anyway, so I see that the destination is actually Lyft's headquarters. I'm like, well, that's a funny coincidence. And then so I get out of the car to open the door and it turns out it is probably a 25 year old, you know, fairly young woman who works for Lyft. Wow. And she kind of looks up and she does a double take and honest to God, her face goes white because you can see in her head like, okay, what's about to happen is I'm about to be trapped in the car with the CEO for the next 20 minutes and what are we going to talk about and whatever. And it's funny, I was telling my daughter this Story, she said, one of my daughters. And she said, you know, dad, if that happened to me, I would have been like, oh, I am so sorry. I left some up in the apartment there. I got to go back upstairs. Why don't you go on? I'll get the next one. But anyway, to her huge credit, she gets the car. And then we had a great conversation. Actually, she works on the driver's team. The funniest part, though, is she gets out of the car. And as a driver, you can't really see. Typically, who tips you? You can kind of see it at the end of the day, but if a tip comes within about 30 seconds, you get a little pop up. Honest to God, seven seconds out of the car.

[Jack]

Boop.

[David Risher]

You just got a tip.

[Jack]

Brownie points.

[Nick]

Good ROI on that.

[Jack]

Giving this feature an apple right there.

[David Risher]

Good roi.

[Nick]

What about anything meaningful that you learned for the company? We're like, oh, my God, I can't believe we're screwing this up.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[David Risher]

The single biggest one that I've learned and I've told this story before, was a woman named Anne in Sausalito. So Sausalito, for those of you who don't live in San Francisco, is over the Golden Gate Bridge, and she commutes into work every single day. So her story to me. So she gets in the car, she's actually got a bunch of donuts in her hand, and she says, I'm so glad the prices were only 25 bucks a day. And I said, oh, what do you mean? She said, well, the prices bounce around depending on whether it's raining or not, depending on this, that, and the other thing. And basically every morning I get up, and if the price is about 25 bucks, I'll take whoever's 25 bucks. If it's 30 to 35, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe, probably, I'll drive in if it's more than 40 bucks. Then I'll definitely drive in if it's a pain because I got to park all the sort of stuff. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, man. Like, this is literally what happens every single morning for her and stresses her out every single morning. And as I said, she had donuts today, this day. So she couldn't work from home because it was a coworker's business birthday. So she's like, I had to go in. Anyway, long story short, what I began to realize is that this thing, which in the industry is called surge pricing, it's an economist's dream, right? Like, this sort of balances Supply and demand. But it's a rider's nightmare. And I think maybe this is emblematic of the way that the industry had gone for a little while is a bunch of people sitting in rooms like, sort of thinking they're, you know, econometrics majors, whatever it is, as opposed to thinking like, what do riders actually like? And what drives them crazy? And this drives them crazy. And so since then, we've removed about $50 million of sort pricing, we call it primetime, annually from our systems. We do all sorts of other things to try to do other things that don't require us to do the search pricing. And we have now a product called pricelock, which was very much inspired by her, that allows you to pay $2.99 a month and lock in a price for a certain route.

[Jack]

You know, it's really wild that you drive for Lyft because you have an incredibly accomplished resume. We did some research on you. You were an early employee at Microsoft. You were employee number 37 at Amazon.

[Nick]

This is in the 90s. No, not trying to date you, David.

[David Risher]

I understand back in, like, dinosaurs were.

[Nick]

Roaming the earth, different digital era. That's amazing.

[Jack]

Now, I'm [e-mail] right now, and it's a letter from Jeff Bezos dated February 2002. It says, thank you, David Risher Besties.

[Nick]

This is an Easter egg, like, secret website. We will link to it in the show notes.

[Jack]

In that tribute from Jeff Bezos, he says, every page must sell, which seems to be a quote from you. How do you translate your every page must sell philosophy to Lyft?

[David Risher]

That is an awesome question. The short answer is, okay. Our purpose at Lyft is to serve and connect. Serve and connect. I want every single rider and every single driver to be served better than they've ever been served in their life. And I want to connect people to the people they love and the places they love. And I want to do it every single time. We do about 850 million rides a year. Two and a half million rides a day, by the way, we just did Halloween last week. You know, Halloween is one of our biggest nights, and it was significantly higher than any Halloween we've ever had before.

[Nick]

We heard it was your best day in history.

[David Risher]

It was our best day in history. It was literally our best. It wasn't just our best day. It was our best hour in history, our best day in history. Our best week in history in terms of number of rides, number of riders, number of all the things. And so. And I want every single one of those to be absolutely amazing. So that's, you know, selling in the rideshare world means you have an amazing experience, such an amazing experience, you want to do it again and again and again. That's what that means.

[Nick]

I just actually want to ask a follow up because Jack and I were also just amazed that you were employee number 37 at Amazon, which is, how do you identify these companies?

[David Risher]

Right.

[Nick]

Like, it's almost like you should be a venture capitalist. But, like, as an insight to share with our audience, we describe our audience as ambitious lineals. Like, how can they look for career opportunities at a company? What are the signals that a company or an investment is sending where you're like, I want to commit to that because that's going to be the next Amazon.

[David Risher]

You know, I don't know that I have a secret on this one. I can tell you that. Okay. There's a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. He wrote it many years ago and he studied companies, some of which typically in the same industry where one would do incredibly well and one would do just okay, you might think of, like today you might think of a Target and a Walmart. Both are successful, but Walmart is, you know, 10 times, you know, bigger than Target, as an example. And so anyway, he looked at these companies and he found many things, but one of the things he found is they got really good at understanding what they're really, really good at, for sure. What magic thing? And people talk about flywheels today, all sorts of things, but what magic thing they're really, really, really good at and kind of what drives their economics and so forth. That's a whole separate little story. But I sort of feel a little bit the same when I look at a new company that I'm interested in. There's some combination of, is there a really interesting customer problem to solve? Like, that's a really interesting thing for me. And then frankly, do I think that I can do something pretty good there? Can I add some value? And the thing that I don't do, and I think this is the part that is maybe the most interesting is what I don't do is say, where can I make the most money?

[Jack]

Right?

[David Risher]

I do not do that. And the reason I don't do it is because, well, first of all, like, chasing money is just. It's just a loser. It's just a loser. There's never enough. You will never be. It will never make you happy. I just, I can guarantee you. And I made a lot of money in my life and I Will tell you right now, it has never been. Because I've been interested in that. That's never been the sort of goal. If it's your goal, you'll be kind of upset with yourself for the rest of your life. On the other hand, what you do is you look at what's the minimum I need to do well, and then you go for the thing that you think is really interesting industry and something where you can do a really good job again. It's kind of broad, it's kind of cliche, but that's kind of what's motivated me over time.

[Nick]

It's like the David formula for happiness. Do you want to sum it up? Almost, because I feel like you're good at absorbing. Is it like. For your last point, David, it's finding the thing that is not related to money. Almost lowest effort you can make for the highest interest or happiness.

[Jack]

Is that how to.

[David Risher]

I don't know that it's lowest left. Let me look at it another way. If I look at some of the big decisions I've made in my life. Let's take an example. I joined Microsoft, as you said, back in the 90s, 1991. And I did it really because I thought technology was going to take over the world. Super cool. I'd been kind of a tech gig kind of, sort of a little bit. And I wanted to live in the Northwest. And it was kind of like that. It was kind of like. And I just thought it was a super cool company. I mean, it's frankly nothing more than that. But then why did I leave Microsoft and why did I join Amazon? And this was a crazy thing. I mean, it was actually a wild story where. So Bill Gates calls me into his office and he says, look, because this is in 1996. He said, wait a minute, you mean to tell me that you were going to leave Microsoft for some tiny little Internet bookstore that nobody's ever heard of? Like, that has got to be the stupidest decision I've ever heard anyone make in his life. And literally he was just sitting there and he was livid. You could just tell. And I don't think it was personal per se. I just think he thought it was a dumb. Such a dumb thing. He couldn't believe anyone on the planet was thinking this way. But my basic view is like, hold on, this is technology, which I've fallen in love with, and this is books and reading, which I've fallen in love with. So those two things come together. I think this is a big thing. I'm super Excited about it. Personally, I'm going for it. So I don't know. It's kind of like that in that if I look through my life, a lot of my major decisions have been frankly of that type.

[Jack]

Now that David dropped the A word, let's pivot to another borderline curse word.

[David Risher]

Okay.

[Jack]

Inshidification. You're the first CEO to use that in a financial report.

[David Risher]

Okay.

[Jack]

Nick and I describe that term as when a product gradually gets worse as a company seeks more and more ways to make money off of you.

[Nick]

And frankly, Amazon has initiatified a bit. Yeah, it feels a little bit.

[Jack]

When you search for pillowcases, you have to fight through 26 ads before getting the highest rated one.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And then they ask you, would you like to subscribe?

[David Risher]

Subscribe to pillowcases? No, I would not.

[Nick]

I think they default you to subscribe to pillow.

[Jack]

I've got six this month. How do you avoid the seeming inevitability of inshitification?

[Nick]

How can Lyft avoid inshidification?

[David Risher]

Okay, so first of all, I think you've described it super, super well. By the way, let's give credit where credit is due. Cory Doctorow was the guy who originally came up with the term. In fact, a funny coincidence alert. Corey literally wrote me last night because he had a not such a great experience with Lyft customer care. And so we're fixing his little customer care problem. And so. But in a sense, in a funny sense, that is the answer. That is the answer right there is you stay super, super true. Like, even if you get something. It was like 11 o' clock last night and I got a note and I sent it to our customer service guys and I said, we got to get on this thing immediately. And literally by this morning, he'd send me a note back saying, okay, that's all resolved. So there's a little bit of a. There's a tidal T I D a L pull towards insertification. Because as you say, as you grow bigger and bigger and bigger and you worry more and more about your finances and Wall street screams louder and louder in your ear and all these different things, you can get distracted and all sorts of decisions get made that are just not that customer focused. And frankly, this, this will sound a little maybe messianic, but this is what leadership is all about, is saying, you know what? We're just not doing that. We're just not doing that, and we're just not doing it. And it's hard. And every single day there are hard decisions you have to make. There are trades and you keep at it because you know that in the long term, that's how you're going to build the absolute best company. But I wish I could say something cleverer than that. I think that's.

[Jack]

And so if the competition inshidifies but you don't, you'll gain market share.

[David Risher]

That's it. That's it. Yeah.

[Nick]

Avoid inshidification.

[David Risher]

But I'll tell you, let me give you an example of what can make it hard. Okay, so when I joined driver cancellation. So driver cancellation, you'll all have experienced this thing. This is. You pick up your app, you summon a lift, the driver looks like he's coming towards you, and then 30 seconds, in two minutes, in whatever, he cancels the ride or she cancels the ride. And then you get rematched. I'll tell you why this happens in a second. But When I joined, 15% of the time, it happened 15% of the time.

[Nick]

15% of the time, there was a driver cancel.

[David Risher]

There was a driver cancellation, Exactly. Yeah. Now you might think to yourself, well, that sounds bad, and it is. But here's the thing. If you're sitting around looking at metrics, you might not convince yourself it's the worst thing in the world. Because most of the time when that happens, you get rematched with a new driver and the driver comes and picks you up and so the ride is completed. So if you're looking at ride completes as a metric of success, you're like, ah, we got bigger fish to fry. But if you're looking at like customer annoyance and like, how frustrating this is over time, do you focus on this a lot? But it's a choice and you can do a bunch of different analysis. And I remember people told me this was like, on week three, they're like, okay, we're gonna do a bunch of analysis that's gonna talk about, like, see whether if this happens to people. Cause it's work to figure out how to stop this from happening anyway if this happens, whether they're less likely to take future rides and whether this is really a problem. And I'm like, okay, you go ahead and do that work if you want to. But meanwhile, what I'm gonna tell you is it is so annoying that we just need to fix it. And so there was a lot of conversations about that.

[Nick]

Data signals one thing, but. But we've been on the other end of that. It is so frustrating. You can't explain that to Lyft. The data wouldn't show that.

[David Risher]

And it's such a funny Thing. This is one of the most common questions people ask me sometimes in the early days, particularly, how do you get such conviction on some stuff, even when you don't have the data to pick it up? And I'm like, again, you just kind of have to, I don't know. So much of doing the right thing really is kind of looking deep in the mirror and saying, what's the right thing to do here, you guys? Stop frigging getting all confused with all this data stuff. So Anyway, it was 15%. Then about a year later it was 10%. Maybe six months ago it was about 5%. I think we're at about 4.5% right now.

[Jack]

Congratulations.

[David Risher]

Huge, huge, huge change. But you have to focus on it. And frankly, sometimes you gotta put up with a lot of noise and kind of keep hold onto the signal pretty.

[Jack]

Hard because of those kinds of moves. In the last two and a half years since you took over as CEO, Lyft's market share in the United States has grown from 26% to almost 31%. That's huge.

[David Risher]

Thank you.

[Nick]

And the stocks doubled, basically.

[Jack]

What are the main things that have worked besides reducing the cancellation rate, that you can share?

[David Risher]

So a couple different things. With any business, there's some basics you have to do. Some people call these things hygiene. And then there's some things on top of that. Okay, so a basic thing, for example, is pick people up quickly. That turns out to be pretty basic in the rideshare world. Pick people up quickly and every single year. And again, this is hard, right, because again, two and a half million rides a day, that's big scale. How do you figure out a way to pick people up quickly? Well, frankly, you kind of grind it out. I mean, there's a lot of math behind it and a lot of focus. And again, it's several stories I could tell you, but bottom line is we now pick people up. People up, I don't know, maybe a minute to two minutes to three minutes faster than we did, you know, a couple of years ago. And that's really, really significant. Really significant. As an example, bunch of other basics I could tell you about. And then there are, I'd say, I wouldn't think of them as add ons, but maybe sort of extensions to the basics. So a very specific example would be we have a product which we launched about six months ago called Lift Silver. So this. Okay. So you can do something that kind of helps everyone, like pick people up faster. And we're going to be relentless about that, by the way. I mean, we're working on things that I hope literally we will pick you up in seconds over time. Literally. It's one of those types of things I remember back in my Amazon days. Yeah, exactly. It's just mind reading anticipation, the equivalent.

[Jack]

Of same day shipping.

[David Risher]

Well, it's interesting you say that. One of the last meetings I had at Amazon way back in the day is I said, you guys, here's something that I think you can probably take to the bank. The faster you ship stuff to people, the better they're gonna like it. I think that's kind of true. And that's their playbook. And now it's mind bending. You can buy something at 8 o' clock at night and it shows up by 5 o' clock in the morning. So we can't quite do that, but we can do something along the same lines. So anyway, that's one thing that helps everybody. Then there are things that help specific populations, but particularly if you can help specific populations that have been underserved or that have a really clear need, that can also significantly change the dynamic. So liftsilver is all about older folks. I don't know if you guys have parents that you've had the kind of rough conversation with that are kind of like mom and dad, maybe it's time to give up the car keys. If you haven't, or I have, not yet. Okay. Well, I can sort of guarantee it's probably not going to be a great conversation. You know, it's not something that parents welcome. It feels like a loss of freedom, feels like the world is getting smaller. All sorts of different things. Well, if instead you can have a conversation that says, you know what, mom and dad, I've given you a year worth of lifts over and it's going to, you know, Carl will come pick you up, you know, it'll drop you at the doctor or the manicurist or you know, your grocery store, whatever it is, and then it's simple to use. And by the way, I've even put it on my account so that you don't even have to worry about paying for it if you don't want to. Right. It's a whole different conversation. So we launched it about six months ago. We've now given well over a million lifts over rides. And it's so funny, we have customer service that's just focused on liftsilver. Oh my gosh, the stories they tell about. And it sounds like a joke, it sounds like, oh my sciatica is so hard. But literally that's what they Say they're like, I have sciatica, so therefore I really have a hard time getting in a car. I really appreciate that the car is bigger for lifts, over and so forth.

[Jack]

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[Nick]

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[Jack]

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[Nick]

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[Nick]

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[Jack]

But are you really?

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[Jack]

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[Jack]

Guide is free to you at netsuite.com tboy that's netsuite.com tboi well, well, David.

[Nick]

You know we just described your stock doubling. We do also need to talk about the Uber in the room. Their stock has tripled in the same period of time. Big reason Jack and I have thought from covering their earnings. What is it, Jack?

[Jack]

Uber has become a bonafide two product company with food delivery and ride hail. Yeah, why didn't Lyft launch a second core product like food delivery.

[David Risher]

So at a certain point, let's go back again to sort of corporate history and kind of how companies evolve. At a certain point, Lyft said, this is sort of back in kind of 2017, 2018, 2019. Okay, the early innovation, the mustache, the driver's your friend, the get in the car, that's a Prius, not sort of a high end thing and whatever, that's kind of playing itself out. And the other guys have it too. They don't have the mustache, but they have everyone can pick you up type things. So, okay, what are we gonna do? And honestly, I think they looked at what the other guys did and said, we don't want to do that. They're doing their thing, so we need to do our own thing. And I get the concept, of course. I think it's very smart not to just follow your competitor. I think it's a very, very smart move. But what they sort of decided to do instead was a whole bunch of other things. A whole bunch of other things. They kind of played around with rental cars, they played around with food delivery a little bit. They bought as, you know, a bike system, which actually has turned out to be quite successful. You know, we run Citi Bike and we run Bay wheels and so forth. That's been. Was a big, big deal, but much, much more complicated and capital intensive than they, I think, understood. So that took a lot of their focus. So I just think the company, rather than make, let's say, one big bet, they made a lot of small bets and none of them really panned out. And then the pandemic came and food delivery became absolutely critical and foundational.

[Nick]

I think it was bigger than rides for Uber for a period for a few years.

[David Risher]

I mean, by 10 to 1, right? 10 to 1. Everyone's staying at home. No one wants rideshare, but everyone wants food. So I would say also those guys frankly got lucky. You know, that that was luck. But you put together, make one big decision and then get lucky. Compared to make a lot of small decisions and don't. And that I think explains. And then I'd say the last thing is the other guys, again, they decided to go international. Global pretty early. And Lyft didn't. And that also. So you can kind of explain it that way, right? You can kind of say, okay, the other guys have food and the other guys had international exclusively. Now we do too, but whatever. That probably explains a lot of the difference right there.

[Nick]

Yeah, I mean, it's A hard decision as a leader. I guess. Jack and I talked to this about a bunch about doing things differently and not just doing something someone else is doing. And there are times where that totally makes sense. And then it's hard to figure out the moments when actually something should be the status quo, when you should do it.

[Jack]

Hindsight's 20 20.

[David Risher]

Yeah, yeah, and there's that too. Yeah. Look, one of the things that I think is such. It's so interesting. I mean, we all make thousands of decisions every day. And as business leaders, that's part of the job, right? Like who you can hire, who are you going to fire, what idea are you going to say yes to? What are you going to say no? It turns out, of course, that only a small number of those decisions are really super consequential. And you're putting your finger on one. It's kind of like, am I going to fast follow? Am I going to go my own way? If I go my own way, and this is key, just that is not a strategy. You better have a pretty big vision for what that own way looks like. And I think this was an area where you get bit a little confused. They're like, well, if I do something different, that sounds like that's probably going to be good, but only if you've got a big vision for it. And I think they kind of lost a little bit on that one.

[Nick]

Before we talk about earnings.

[Jack]

Oh, yeah, I do want to talk about one thing Lyft does different. Tell me somehow the community is friendlier. We took a Lyft to get to this building this morning and we asked the driver, hey, we're interviewing the CEO later today. Do you have any questions for him? He didn't give us any concrete questions, to be honest, but he did tell us that the community was friendlier. We said, can you give us a specific example? And he said, the people in the backseat are more likely to talk to me as the driver, which is kind of a nice crowd to be a part of. And they tip more.

[Nick]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Jack]

When pressed for details, I said, does that result in higher pay? And he said, maybe 10%.

[David Risher]

Amazing.

[Jack]

That's something you must be proud of.

[David Risher]

Yeah, I'm hugely proud of that.

[Jack]

Speaking of proud of, let's Talk about your Q3 earnings that you announced yesterday. It looks like all the important metrics at Lyft are at all time highs.

[Nick]

What kind of numbers are we talking, Jack?

[Jack]

The Stock is up 8% because Lyft started its tenure as a publicly traded company. With 21 consecutive quarters of losses.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Jack]

But you just notched your fourth straight profit.

[Nick]

Halloween, your best day of the year. And you just had the best Halloween in the history of Lyft.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Record number of rides, 10th consecutive quarter of double digit ride growth. The big question, how are people just taking more rides right now and all boats are going up, or are you taking market share from the other guys?

[David Risher]

Yeah, so it's a little bit of both. Here's the thing. We do, as I say, maybe 800 to 900. By the way, thank you for that acknowledgement. It's really, actually, I have to say it is very satisfying to come into a company and have such good stuff to work with. Right. Great culture, great people, great industry. Something that really matters to, to millions of people every single day. And to be able to sort of shape it a little bit and move a little bit. And another stat, and then I'll answer your question is we just generated a billion dollars of free cash over these last 12 months, which is a big deal. When I joined, Aaron, who's our CFO and I joined around the same time. She was one of my first hires. We were consuming about 300 million. So from negative 300 million to positive 1 billion over two and a half years, that's a big deal. Okay.

[Jack]

Okay.

[Nick]

Why?

[David Risher]

Again, customer obsession. Customer obsession. Customer obsession. That's the thing. Now where's that growth coming from? So we do, As I say, 800, 900 million rides a year. The other guys, maybe they do one and a half billion. So let's call it two and a half billion between the two of us. Okay. That's a big number. But here's the thing. People take 160 billion rides in their own cars every year, just in the United States. 160 billion, 2.5 billion. So this is a huge, huge market. So one of the big mistakes that sometimes people make is they think binary or zero sum. If they're winning, we're losing. If we're winning, they're losing. Irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. I don't care how the other guys do. All I know is if we're doing good well for our customers, we're going to do well. Now it also does happen that we have taken some share. That's nice. What does that tell you? That tells you people like us and when they take a lift, they tend to take another lift. By the way, our drivers, to your point about drivers before, have now a 20 something. I think it's now 27% preference for Lyft over driving for the other guys, 27%. That's not small.

[Nick]

It gets to your tip point, Jack.

[David Risher]

Which gets to your tip point. It gets to your, like, how happy do I feel when I'm driving for Lyft? We have an earnings guarantee. Again, I can see all about this, but a long, long way of saying that we're just providing better service. And by doing that, yeah, we're taking some share. But more importantly, we're getting more people in Lyfts every single day.

[Jack]

Bigger. Slice of a bigger pie.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Are you past 31%?

[David Risher]

We're right about 31.

[Nick]

The other, other guy in this scenario that we should mention isn't really a guy, it's a robot.

[David Risher]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Nick]

We thought this was your first earnings were. We've heard you mention the word Waymo in the report and Jack and I were curious because your Waymo relationship, kind of a situation shift.

[David Risher]

Right?

[Jack]

So in Nashville, people can hail a Waymo self driving car on the Lyft app or on the Waymo app. You mentioned you're building a $15 million depot in Nashville. Can you explain what that is?

[David Risher]

Yeah, sure, sure. So first of all, let us say it is a situation show. And that is a funny term that I also used with my daughter a couple weeks ago. But she clarified. I asked, I said, are you in a situationship? And she said, no, no, no, no. It's a relationship. And I'm like, okay, cool. I just wanted to sort of.

[Nick]

Also we say situation because Waymo has gotten by some studies bigger than Lyft in San Francisco, but you've also partnered with them in these other cities.

[David Risher]

So. It's complicated. It's complicated. It's complicated. I mean, come on. Life is complicated. Yeah, no, for sure. Look, we're going to compete, compete with them in some cities. No question at all. Absolutely no question at all. But we're also going to cooperate with them and partner with them. It's like we're frenemies. We're frenemies, right? We are. Okay, so what's going to happen in Nashville? In Nashville, when we launch, as you say, you'll be able to order Waymo through the Waymo app. You'll be able to order a Waymo through the Lyft app. No matter who you order it from, we're going to be managing the fleet. Okay. So fleet management is this whole sort of technical thing. If you're into it, you can actually go to our website. You can see videos about it. It's basically like who cleans the car, who charges the car, who makes sure the car is well maintained, and so on and so forth. And we do that, we do that already for some lift cars today. And we'll do it in Nashville specifically for Waymo. That's what you need a depot for. You need to spend some money. It's basically think of it as a big parking lot. But in that big parking lot you gotta have chargers, you gotta have repair bays, you gotta have all these sorts of things. And we do that stuff. And we do it well, we do it very efficiently. So we'll do that in Nashville. That'll be great. That'll be a service that we can provide Waymo behind the scenes. That means they don't have to do it. They like that. Then we do something called supply sharing, which basically means you've got a fleet of cars that are waymos. You also, by the way, have a lot of driver driven cars. And we're going to sort of manage the kind of balance between the two of those things. The hope is that this situationship in Nashville blossoms to something beautiful. Right. And both companies aspire to see it replicated elsewhere. But, but just like any relationship, you gotta date first and maybe the second date and the third date before you decide to kinda get married and so forth.

[Jack]

Yeah. Like most relationships, you hope they commit to you. Oh yeah, for sure.

[Nick]

It's less of a drama and more of a rom com worth, a happy ending kind of thing.

[David Risher]

I mean, I really appreciate where we're going with this 100%. Look, I will tell you, I've been married now for 30 years and so I'm kind of a long term relationship guy. So I didn't necessarily announce to Waymo that that's what I was looking for on the first date. But if you're listening, you guys, I just, I just want you to know that's kind of my mindset when it comes to relationships.

[Nick]

Breaking news. This CEO wants full life commitment.

[David Risher]

Full life commitment. Yeah.

[Jack]

So let's say Waymo announces it's expanding next to Seattle. Okay, how are you going to be Uber besides your. What are you going to tell Waymo?

[David Risher]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, you're making it a little complicated for me, guys. What are you doing for me? Well, look, let's again, back up for a second. So self driving cars. This is of course what we're talking about. First of all, a great product. I mean, let's just stipulate it's a great product and it's a safe product. It's a chill product, you know, it's A fun product, all these different things. So when you get new products in an industry, you have a choice. Your choice is either embrace them or ignore them. I recommend embracing if it's a good product because if you ignore, you wake up one morning and you find your Kodak and what happened to my film business? You know what I mean? Like shoot, darn. Thought that digital photography was kind of a fading. Turns out kind of is here to stay. So anyway, so we're embracing them. We're embracing self driving cars from many different vendors and manufacturers and so on and so forth. Waymo is one, May Mobility is another. We work within Atlanta Baidu which is effectively the Google of China. We use their technology or will use their technology next year in Europe and on and on and on. So one basic thing is we're going to have multiple partners. So we are going to be, let's call it polyamorous a little bit too. You know what I mean? Or can we just kind of stay with that vibe a little bit for a second? We're going to be polyamorous because we're not in the business of building cars. We're not the builders of building a baby tech. And it really is in our interest and frankly in the industry's interest for there to be multiple good suppliers of this. And then city by city it's going to be different. But the one thing that will be the same is in all cities there's going to be what we call a hybrid network. A combination of some percentage of self driving cars which will be fairly small for, for the foreseeable future. And a lot of driver driven cars. A lot of driver driven cars.

[Nick]

Can I throw a fourth person into the situation Chip and make it a menage a quattra, you know, with the self driving cars, David, as you would like enter Seattle if you enter Seattle with them. The other angle here is just AI. Like an interesting thing I've noticed in San Francisco is I actually got in a lift the other day and I think it was a lift owned car. The driver told me on plastered on the side was a description of Lyft with a human drive.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Nick]

And it seemed like Lyft was making a brand statement there that you're about people.

[David Risher]

Yes.

[Nick]

Not about the AI and self driving. Are you trying to span both those worlds and do both or are you trying to commit to one and say hey, we're the human side of things while the other guy focuses on the automated side of things?

[David Risher]

I mean it's really the latter. So by the way, the other guy's full name, I think is, I don't say the name, but I think the word technologies is actually in their name. And that's not who we are. Like we are about serving and connecting. Now, of course, technology plays a huge role. Like, I mean, literally every single time you pick up your phone, you're using the technology, but guess what you're using it for? You're using it to get out into the real world. Let me give you an example on the driver side of some technology that we're using. AI technology that helps drivers. I'll give you two examples. The first is what we call the driver Earnings Assistant. So if you're a driver, you're thinking to yourself at the beginning of the week, okay, you know, I got some time maybe Tuesday afternoon, maybe Thursday, maybe I got a doctor's appointment on Wednesday, I can't drive, maybe Friday afternoon. I gotta pick my kid up after, after school. So what the AI earnings assistant allows you to do is type in your plan for the week, like, here's some things I want to do, here's my goal for the week. And the earnings assistant will say, great, drive this time, drive this date. By the way, there's a big, a lot of stuff going on at the airport on Thursday afternoon. If you can figure out a way to drive then. So that's an example of where we're helping drivers with AI not be replaced, but rather earn more. Second example, you can go as a driver and you can download what we call an accomplishment list. An accomplishment letter says, okay, Nick started driving for us in January of 2024 or 2023. Let's say, you know, he's in the top 2% of drivers in terms of reliability. Here are a couple of comments that riders have made and here's sort of an AI synthesis of those comments. I would recommend Nick for any service oriented job you can hire him for dependable guy and so forth. So what we're trying to do is, we're trying to say, look, drivers matter. Ask anyone. You just did. Ask anyone for some of their best, most interesting. And a lot of it is I had this great conversation with a driver and oh, by the way, he helped me out of the car when I needed it or something was going wrong in my life. And then there's sometimes where you just want a robot driver too. And that's cool. We're gonna do both. Great.

[Jack]

That's pretty cool. The driver we went with this morning, yeah, he had completed 1.2 thousand rides.

[David Risher]

Dang.

[Jack]

And his driver rating was 5.0.

[David Risher]

Dang.

[Jack]

Has he ever gotten a four star rating? I don't know. Anyway, he has 9.8 years experience.

[David Risher]

Amazing.

[Jack]

And one of the things he told me is a pet peeve of his is when people in the backseat make out, it's too close for comfort.

[David Risher]

Okay.

[Jack]

I was thinking for his 10th year anniversary gift, maybe you could send him a curtain, which he specifically requested.

[David Risher]

Privacy.

[Nick]

Yeah, a pink curtain.

[David Risher]

Pink curtain.

[Nick]

Slammin salmon curtain.

[David Risher]

I would 100% love that. I'm not sure he's really thought that through, though, because as a father of a daughter, when you close the curtain, you know, you may not necessarily be super thrilled about what's going on behind the real situation. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So sometimes you gotta think a couple steps ahead on that one. But let me get his name and I'll send it to him.

[Jack]

We'll see. You know, he would say that he would feel very seen and appreciated if the drivers got like a birthday present or an anniversary gift or something like that.

[David Risher]

Yeah, yeah, we're leaning into that. We've now got a driver loyalty program. It's not yet, you know, at the birthday gift level, but at the very least, at least every single dollar you make, you get points for. And people, you know, you get Amazon gift certificates and Walmart gift certificates, all these sorts of things. And it's. I forget the number, maybe. Stephanie, you remember. I mean, I don't know. Hundreds of millions of points have been accumulated over, like, so not quite birthday level, but at least we're giving drivers a way to go.

[Nick]

You're kind of getting at the platform problem, Jack. Like you, you make, you know, you get the airplane points if you're the customer getting in the lift. But, like, then you got to throw a gift to the drivers, too. You kind of get both sides of the platform happy.

[David Risher]

Always. Always.

[Nick]

I mean, Jack, should we pitch David on some ideas and do some rapid fire?

[David Risher]

What do we got, you guys?

[Jack]

So we had an idea for Lyft Haul, hauling stuff for people.

[Nick]

Actually, just to step back for a sec. You know, we're here in the room with the CEO of Lyft. We don't work for Lyft, so, you know, there's no reputational risk. We need some ideas.

[Jack]

So I don't have a pickup truck. I wish I did, but I need stuff moved. Have you ever considered lift hall?

[Nick]

Lyft Schlep is the other name. We're work boxing pass. Okay.

[David Risher]

All right.

[Nick]

We mentioned this earlier, but Lyft pool, essentially, Lyft is in the sharing economy. You are connecting supply and demand. What can we provide lift riders at the end of a lift? That's an experience because you're helping them get to experiences.

[David Risher]

Yeah, yeah. So this one, I think is super interesting. And stay tuned on that one. Maybe not. I don't know if pool means. Is that swimming pool? Is that the concept there?

[Nick]

Yeah, we were thinking swimming pool, but again, work boxing at this stage.

[David Risher]

Fair enough, fair enough. Just, Just, you know, spitballing here. Spitballing. Yeah. Look, I think just 10 seconds on this. I think, you know, we want to make every, every ride amazing. But for sure, over time you can imagine a world where there's certain things that you can do or get to in a lift that are, if not exclusive to us, at least we make it easier and better for you. A tiny example. And this would be a tiny example, but we do it already is. If you go to a concert, man, we want to make getting out of that concert easy experience. So we have our own pickup drop off location. And maybe it's got a couch, maybe it's got school vibes, music and whatever. So just so that you sort of feel like, oh, man, this is awesome. And then you're out of there fast. As opposed to having to wait for two hours and walk around, around circles.

[Nick]

This fits with our trend, Jack, of the clubification of America. Essentially, Lyft is a club.

[David Risher]

Interesting.

[Nick]

Do you want to pitch one more? Jack, I know you're so.

[Jack]

I think you're going to like this one, but we hope so. Why not? You launched Lyft Media.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Jack]

What if you did the anti ad instead?

[Nick]

Yes. Lyft has ads, as you may have seen in the app, Yetis and besties. This has become a booming part of the business.

[Jack]

$100 million of annual revenue.

[David Risher]

Yes.

[Jack]

What if instead you showed us a New Yorker cartoon or a clip from a PBS document, documentary or New York Times crossword puzzle?

[Nick]

Essentially giving up the ad revenue for the opportunity to delight a customer. Yeah.

[Jack]

And that might be a reason to open up the Lyft app next time instead of the other.

[Nick]

Sometimes you get an ad, sometimes you get a New Yorker cartoon. You don't totally get anything. That's hilarious.

[David Risher]

Okay, so this one I'm into and I gotta tell you two things. First of all, I love the New York PBS or NPR New York Times reference. What are you guys, like 70 years old? What the hell is going on here? This is a very confusing set of references, but okay, I was about to.

[Nick]

Say a seinfeld exactly right.

[Jack]

That's wonderful.

[David Risher]

Do you guys drive?

[Jack]

We're in our 30s.

[David Risher]

Like I'm just a little bit confused all of a sudden. Okay. But anyway, that was the first thing I have to say. The second thing I got to say is I'm about to go completely off script here. So a weird tiny little side hustle that I started a year and a half ago. So you ever do Wordle or spelling bee in the New York Times? You ever do that? Okay, nice, nice, nice. I got a picture on this. There's check out contrabie contrab. That's right. C o n T R a B e E. It's in the app store and it's actually a little creation of mine. I haven't really revealed this before, but I'm doing it right now. It's just like spelling bee. It uses the same letters as spelling bee but you can't use the center letter. Mind blown. So if you see that coming up in a lift one day, it's 100% self interest. It's like the CEO pushing his own publishing, you know, singing from his own book or whatever the expression is.

[Nick]

Breaking news. CEO of Lyft, David Richard. A side hustle word game that may.

[Jack]

Come to live time 100%.

[Nick]

I mean, I do have to ask one final question before we get to the rapid fire which is for our audience listening like, you are CEO of a publicly traded billion, multi billion dollar company. You are driving for that company. You have a secret game you've created. What is the key to managing time if you want to accomplish great things as a yeti or bestie?

[David Risher]

So I, you know, my wife tells me this all the time. I have an unreasonable set of expectations for what can be done per unit time. And I set the expectations so damn high. And then I just have no choice but to do it.

[Nick]

There are 28 hours in David Risher's day.

[David Risher]

Somehow, somehow I found a couple extra four hours. Now I will tell you, I'm an aggressive user of my calendar. What I mean by that is I am very, very clear on like I can tell you sort of down to the minute what I'm going to be scheduled for doing. And it's personal stuff, it's side hustle stuff. It's every Saturday morning, I'll tell you a 10 second story here. Every Saturday morning I get up and I write in a journal. I do two things actually, but first thing is I write in a little journal. I ask myself, how'd my work go this week? How's my Family doing, how my friendship's doing and how is my health. And I set out a little kind of plan for the week, and it's kind of deliberate, but it makes me happy and productive and kind of keeps me moving sort of on a bunch of different dimensions. And then actually I write the board for about an hour about how lift is doing. So anyway, some of it's just sort of scheduling and planning. Wow. Okay.

[Jack]

What's the most interesting thing you're working on right now? Something you're really excited about that you haven't showed?

[Nick]

And for the yetis and besties listening, David's PR team is here in the room, so even something that they don't want you to say is fine on air.

[David Risher]

Love this. I gosh, what can I say that is at the intersection of something I can say publicly without getting killed.

[Nick]

And.

[David Risher]

I'm genuinely interested in in. There is an internal product that we're working on called Instant Match. And I want you to imagine a world where you open up the Lyft app and instead of getting what I think of as an excruciating 45 seconds of sort of like, we're matching you, we're matching you, we're matching you, we're matching you. Instead of getting that, you literally get a car saying, here is the car you're going to get. Here's the car you're going to get, and click this and it'll be there within two minutes and it's already driving in your direction. So that's a very complicated problem to solve, and we won't be able to solve it for everyone all the time. But that's something I'm super, super excited about.

[Jack]

Can I attempt to summarize the Lyft strategy beyond customer obsession? Sure.

[Nick]

Whip it up, Jack.

[Jack]

Lyft is focused on being the number one ride hail for both drivers and riders, while Uber is distracted with other things. Lyft nails the basics. The fundamentals matter, and doing them better than Uber will grow market share.

[Nick]

That's your strategy. Would you agree?

[David Risher]

Super. Well, super bowl, well put. And the only, you know, addition, I would say, is it's not so much that I care about growing fast and other guys, I just. I want to get, you know, every single person out and about and having a great life. Like, that's my. That's my focus.

[Nick]

I mean, this kind of comes full circle to your point about careers, David, which is if you just focus on the making money part, you're not happy or you may not make that money. Yeah, you're focusing on the satisfaction element. And then the money comes. Is the bet. That's the bet.

[David Risher]

Super. Well. Book.

[Nick]

Well on that note, Jack, should we whip up some quick rapid fire questions and then have Dave whip up his own takeaway on himself?

[Jack]

Yes, David, what is the best brand that isn't Lyft?

[David Risher]

Apple. Sure, why not?

[Nick]

David, what's your dream? Lyft. Collab or partnership?

[David Risher]

Starbucks. I want to be able to get you coffee no matter when I'm kind of coffee addicted and Matcha addicted. So I want to get you a.

[Jack]

Coffee anytime you want. They busted out the holiday decorations today. And the red cups.

[Nick]

Yeah, we heard David was a matcha guy, so we had a nice matcha waiting for him.

[David Risher]

Yes, he's absolutely fantastic.

[Jack]

Ready to roll?

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Jack]

What's the best car you've ever driven?

[David Risher]

Best car is my first car. Honda Accord. And is that? That was my first car. Get out.

[Jack]

And I understand your real name is John.

[David Risher]

My first name is John and that's your real name. My God.

[Jack]

I was a 91 Honda Accord. We had those automatic seat belts that kind of like move over like this.

[David Risher]

I had the exact same thing. Exact same thing. Stick shift. Honda Accord. First car, it was a used car. And a lot of. My first love.

[Nick]

Best restaurant in San Francisco.

[David Risher]

Oh, so tough, man. So many. I gotta say, I love going to the Taylor Sun. It's on Fillmore Street. It's got, you know, super interesting, you know, crostini. I know it sounds a little bit goofy, but anyway, it's great. It's a great place.

[Nick]

Good to know.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Good Negroni selection.

[Jack]

And if you, David Rischer, were a stock, what would be your three or four letter ticker symbol?

[David Risher]

Oh, dang. Ah, CMBK Comeback. I wanna write some of the comeback story for the agencies.

[Nick]

Love that. Oh, I got one more for you, David.

[David Risher]

Tell me.

[Nick]

We have read in our research, as we jumped in T boy style, that you once said you loved making decisions. And the interview didn't really double down on that. And Jack and I were thinking, most people hate making decisions. So what is the key to making decisions? Metrics versus magic. Information versus intuition. Your gut versus graphs. What percentage is imagining? What percentage is engineering?

[David Risher]

Engineering. It's not that I love making decisions, but I am thoughtful about it the following way. I will think I will this, I will that, I will that, and then I'll just go for it. And typically those are the biggest decisions. Let me give you a very specific example. My wife, I mentioned I've been married 30 years we, we dated for a while. We stopped dating. We started dating. It was complicated. It wasn't necessarily always, necessarily always the best boyfriend. I'll just put it out there right now. But anyway, eventually I was like, you know what? Dang. I kind of feel like maybe at some point I gotta need to propose. So at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, and I kid you not, two o' clock in the afternoon. She had just dropped me off, we'd just been out for the day. I said, tonight's the night, I'm gonna do it. And so between 2 and 6:30 I went to the store and got a ring. I called her parents, I called her best friend, I called the restaurant, I said, I'd like you to sing to us at the end of the evening here. And at 6:30 she actually came again. She picked me up, drove me to the restaurant. At seven o' clock I proposed. And this was a long time ago, obviously, but I still kind of remember sort of like this idea kind of bopped around the back of my mind. Maybe there's some metrics with some this, but at the end of the day it's just like, it's just go time. So that's kind of the vibe I go.

[Nick]

Spoken like the comeback king over here.

[Jack]

Unreal.

[Nick]

David. Well, Jack and I always end every story by figuring out what is the takeaway.

[Jack]

So what's the takeaway on David Risher and or.

[David Risher]

It's so hard to say these sort of things and not just sound like a big old egomaniac or some crazy person like this, but I can say something that I know is true about myself, which is I am a purpose driven person. I am a purpose driven person. I left Microsoft to go to Amazon. Not just because it was a great Internet bookstore and because Jeff Bezos, amazing guy. Because, because I love reading and I think more people reading is good. I started World Reader for the same reason. I think more people reading is good. I can tell you all the data, but it's just good. I joined Lyft because I want to bring people out of their bubbles, off their couches, off their phones. I mean, look, Doordash is amazing. They're a partner of ours. Netflix is a great product, but honest to God, if you spend your life in that mode, you're just not going to be happy. And so I'm very purpose driven and I get a lot of energy. I think you have to find a source of fuel for yourself. And I get a lot of energy from feeling like there are some big purposes that need to be kind of whatever brought to life. And somehow, for whatever reason, that's what I find super motivational.

[Nick]

David Rischer wants you to get in the car and then get out of the car.

[David Risher]

There you go.

[Jack]

Maximus Decimus Meridia says strength and honor. David says serve and connect.

[Nick]

Now you're really dating us. Jack, wow.

[Jack]

Thank you so much for the interview. Congratulations on the great race.

[Nick]

And David, before you go, I got one quick thing before that iced matcha.

[David Risher]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Disappears. You know, Jack and I like to do this once per show when we've got an exciting company recovering. Can you smash that Cha Ching button?

[Jack]

This is to celebrate an 8% stock jump this morning.

[Nick]

Congrats to you and the Lyft team on your best quarter yet.

[David Risher]

Huge thanks for everyone who's contributed to this. I'm going to smash the button.

[Jack]

There we go. If you like the best one yet, you can listen ad free right now by joining Wondery and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast Prime.

[Nick]

Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.

[Jack]

And before you go, tell us a little bit about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[Nick]

We want to get to know you.