Lyft started out as “Zimride” after Logan Green made a trip to Zimbabwe and people were having to share rides there. Zimride was a carpooling network. John Zimmer noticed this page on Facebook and thought it was interesting because it was close to his name, and he had also previously thought of starting a carpooling service. Zimmer connected with Green through social media, and eventually the two of them met up in New York City. A few years later, they moved out to Silicon Valley to focus on Zimride.
They first decided to focus on college campuses as it’s common for a student to not have a car, but need a ride somewhere. They had raised a lot of money for Zimride but didn’t see nearly as much usage as they had hoped. They stopped for a minute and thought, “If we were starting Zimride today, what would we do?”
They decided to make it an app for ease of use. Instead of calling it Zimride, they started “Lyft”. In place of a carpool service, they made it an easier way to get a taxi. Zimmer and Green saw their business pick up much faster.
It is so cool to see how someone call act upon a gap they see in a massive market. Spotify has completely revolutionized how we listen to music for the better! The design is amazing and they have added some really cool features that make it easy.
The need for convenient transportation is a very real and prominent issue among people throughout the world today. Many people for one reason or another are unable to transport themselves on a daily basis. Lyft recognized that this was an area where there is always need and never enough fulfillment of the need and set out to try and change that. They have done a great job of making their service more and more available to people and making the adequate transportation issue a little less far reaching.
It is cool to learn a bit about the background behind Lyft. Transportation is a competitive industry. Services like Lyft have really revolutionized the field. It is a huge convenience to have the service in areas like college towns and cities where many people do not have cars but need to get from point A to point B from time to time.