Mobile forced us to rethink the user experience and do something people would be able to carry out on in a couple of seconds on the mobile phone. By stripping out all the work the user used to do and putting that on the company, we were able to create a much better user experience.
A lot of the other companies in the space have really left a bad taste in regulators' mouths. It's actually been a huge advantage when we come in and we take the time to sit down and get to know them, explain the business, explain what we do.
Every mom in a minivan, every person commuting - anytime they are on the road, they should be able to go into driver mode and give a ride to a neighbor. That's how we achieve scale.
Every transportation department at schools thought that there should be a bike buddy program. They thought that bicycle commuters wanted to find another buddy to bike with to campus, which is a nice idea. But the consumer demand for that was about zero.
From the way that we build cars or going after space travel, I get excited about the transportation space because it's the second-highest household expense after housing.
I grew up in L.A., and it's one of those cities designed around cars instead of the people that live there. I spent hours every day stuck in traffic, having the experience of looking around and seeing one person in every car.
I think Uber is a good car service, but Lyft is going after a much bigger problem in trying to make life without a car possible and reinvent the way people get around cities.
In March 2005, I was appointed to the board of the Santa Barbara metro transit district. I was incredibly optimistic about how public transportation can be the solution to help people live in the city and not need a car.
On-demand ridesharing can make cities less congested and polluted and free up resources. Shared rides can become so affordable that they cost the same as a bus ride today.
The company culture is about being human, being good to other people. We recently did a survey with our drivers. 48 out of 50 said that they preferred driving with Lyft because they said that passengers were friendlier.
We created Lyft because we want to establish a radically different concept of personal transportation. We want people to think of transportation as a service enabled by technology instead of as an expensive and large piece of hardware to own.
We want Lyft to meet your needs, whether going out to a nice date or event and want a nicer car, or if you're just trying to get to work every day and need something affordable.
We're building the ultimate experience for fun, flexibility, and empowerment where you can rent a car, fill it with discounted gas, meet new people, stop for a Starbucks coffee, and have your earnings deposited into your bank account all in the same day.
We're learning a lot from large international competitors... As we go international, we're looking to add something unique to the market. And so when we do go international, it won't just be as a taxi service.
When I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2002, I decided I wanted to leave my car at home and create an experiment with my own life. I'd only be able to find creative solutions to transportation if I felt the pain of trying to get to downtown at 10 o'clock at night.
When you're starting a company, almost anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and it will probably look like and feel like you made the absolute wrong decision to start the company. If you're not absolutely determined to solve a problem or see something through, it might not make sense to keep going.
