State of Play in the Rideshare Wars — ft. David Risher, CEO of Lyft

23:06And I'm going to try to sell to as many people as possible. Maybe I'll experiment with a little first party self myself. Maybe that's so that I can understand, or 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. 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 much of my tech as possible. and that's best done to marketplaces like us who are willing buyers. And we've got tens of millions of riders who, to your point, are already used to a certain thing and trust a certain thing.

23:40We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, be sure to give Profit.io Markets a follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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25:09We're back with Profit G Markets. 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.

25:47What growth channel are you most excited about and think, okay, if I was going to double down on something and try and, I mean, 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?

26:24I 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 us for a scheduled drive to the airport and we're more than 10 minutes slate, we pay you a hundred bucks, up to a hundred bucks, even to take the competition. I don't care. And no questions asked. And guess what? Guess what? Our payout rate is 0.001%.

26:49You 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 it. So if I have to say number one, let me 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? I'm talking about our writers now. I'm not doing just the default. I'm making my own decision.

27:18I'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 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.

27:45It 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 and love and fall in love with. And of course, rationally, I've had a great service, they picked me up super fast, but they also got to fall in love with us. And so that's my big thing over the next couple of years is how do you get, you know, love going? 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.

28:20In other words, you worked very closely with two of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, and that is Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. 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? 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 is somebody, but I saw him in action, is just the focus of being a fierce competitor. A fierce competitor.

28:59Oh my God, was he fierce. And it's so interesting because 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 him this question, you know, how much time do you spend thinking about Excel? And he's like, ah, not so much because they've kind of already won the thing.

29:25So like, so the sort of frankly, winner take call mentality, he was super aggressive. And I learned a bunch from that. I had a million pictures up in my office, 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, it's terrified that your customer is going to abandon you, you know, you're losing.

29:54And I've really, you know, I brought that to lift. We talk about our values a lot. Customer session is number one by far. And 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. One of those principles that I really respect that you mentioned that you do is that you drive.

30:26You are a Lyft driver and you do it regularly. 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. 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 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. 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.

31:08They 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, right? You learn the stress you're under. You learn the stress you're under. You're 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 kind of interesting tools which tell you where the demand is. And you can sort of draw a circle and say, I only want to drive within this area because I got to get home by five o 'clock to see my wife or whatever it is.

31:38So it's sort of 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's side, it's great. Excuse me, from the rider's 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.

32:07Sometimes 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. I think you might have drove Scott. Yeah, that was Scott. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Shoot, shoot, shoot. 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 want to 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 about their recent divorce.

32:33There'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. 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 learned something about what the rider wants.

32:57So there's a woman named Anne, and I picked her up in Sausalito a couple of months ago. Actually, it was last year at this point. Time flies. And she was so stressed out because she He 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 Lyft. 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.

33:25So she goes bananas and all, however, it's in the car, which is super fun. And then we start to develop this product called Price Lock. And it really was for her. It really was for her. I wanted to lock the price in. And so now for$2.99, I'm going to always be closing. $2.99, 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, you know, we were talking about some other stuff because now she's, you know, I use her to kind of ping her from time to time.

33:48And so that's kind of what happened. 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 it's that's helpful. But it also just reminds me every single day what an important part of people's lives we are. 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 or you're going the wrong way or just do what the fucking app says, boss.

34:24It's not that hard. Then 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. You're probably banned from the app. That's why you use Lyft. Yeah, I don't think you actually are allowed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that's it. Anyways, making friends wherever I go. I can 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, 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.

35:07But more broadly, even beyond kind of ride hailing, do you see any big trends in transportation? The rite of passage of the 16-year-old of getting their own driver's license is kind of done. So strange, isn't it? Where did you grow up? It was everything 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. Me too. Oh, Ed, what a mistake for Ed to let me know that. Oh, my God. Oh, you're going to regret that. Me and the CEO of Lyft. I'm in good company. Oh, my God. I'm literally the GRU that has leverageable information against that ELSA now.

35:43I'm sorry. Go ahead, David. I got to tell the story because I felt so misled. And it's a total trick. It was a total trick. 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. And I say, parallel park. Then you pull up. And the instructor's like, that's great. Now, just go over there by the wall. And we're all done. and what you don't see is the stop sign that's right there. And you don't do a full stop because you're just so excited. Anyway, I blew through it. Bummer. But anyway, past the second time.

36:10Long 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. Mostly, frankly, us and the other guys. You jump in the car and whatever. So that's a big, big shift. Then the car ownership. What's your first car, right? I still remember my first car. I was a Honda Accord. My mom actually gave it to me. it was used, it was her boyfriends, 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.

36:39Anyway, 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, you know, very foundational sorts of things. Let me flip to the other side for a second. As you get closer in your life, we're all getting older, right? It's happening. And demographically, you know, just also just laws of physics. We just thought, I'm going to promote a second, we just launched a product called Lyft Silver a couple of 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.

37:12Anyway, it's been a massive hit, massive, massive hit, taken off much faster than I hoped. And I was hoping, I had big hopes. Little people hugged me because of this product. So I think if you look at the 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 car and then autonomous, of course. So as autonomous happens, it's not just about somebody else driving the car or the car driving itself.

37:38It's about, you know, lounge mode. You're going to be reclining, you're going to be going to sleep, you're going to be in your camper, you know, at night. And then it's going to wake up the next morning and there you are at 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. That is going to happen. I'm in New York City right now. Already, I've had a conversation about some guy who actually works for us. He's an amazing guy, but he was frustrated about how long it took him to get to a vacation house in the Hamptons, just like everybody does.

38:05They're frustrated by that. And inevitably, he talks to helicopters, drones, and all this sort of thing. 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. Oh, 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 true.

38:31And 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 in 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 in the world. That's how we live our best lives. Just from an organizational perspective, like how are you supposed to maintain strong service when you're managing a company of thousands of employees?

39:04Like, I mean, just for context, I'm reading this book, Unreasonable Hospitality right now, which talks about all this stuff in terms of the restaurant industry. um and you know it's it's hard to do that at a restaurant where you're managing like 20 30 40 people um and i can just assume that as you scale it becomes increasingly difficult not only to to manage but also just to have any any contact with the customer experience like it just 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?

39:51I love every single thing about this question. First of all, I read Unreasonable Hospitality about a year ago, 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 acknowledgement 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.

40:26One was Thomas Keller, who runs the French Laundry, as you know. One was Eric Ruppart, who runs Le Bernardin in New York City. And both of those, and I asked the same question about it. 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'd get thousands of questions and mostly like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. Both of them, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school here to say, like they stopped in their tracks.

40:50They're like, that is a mind blowing question. That's a mind blowing question. Like, 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, 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 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.

41:16From 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.

41:44You 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 a job, Scott, for any service-oriented job you're looking for. So that could be a baggage handler. It could be a receptionist at a hotel. We have amazing stories. There's a guy who did this, and literally he couldn't get a job.

42:14Then 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.

42:40We have a driver loyalty program that is now starting to reward drivers 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. 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. So we can't get a nugget? We can't get just a little bit? Did you see what I just did there? I just completely jumped over that.

43:16We can't hear anything. Totally, totally. 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. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, maybe you can send us the selfie because that in and of itself is fascinating. Happy to do. 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. We'll see. We'll be right back.

44:27We're back with Profitly 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 you know 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, you know, capitulating, whatever it is, sucking up to the president.

45:16I 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? 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. 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 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.

46:03And 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. That sounds like a backhanded compliment. Very, very passionate people who are actually really trying to do, quote, the right thing, unquote, trying to make business easier to get done, trying to reduce stuff that probably made sense at 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 in 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.

46:38And 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 anyway, that's a little bit of a side point, but I just want to make sure that folks heard that. I wrote, I did a little video a couple of 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 sort of preferentially choose each other as rider driver. And it makes them feel safe.

47:04It makes them feel secure. It drives our business. It's 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.

47:41And if you don't like it, challenge me because I'm okay with that. I think I am on the right side of this one. You have a very impressive background. I don't know the 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 10 years? If you think these are the box or boxes left for me to check, what are those things? Look, I first want to acknowledge, I have been super, super lucky, and I've made some good choices along the way.

48:16Of course, both those things are true. I was the 37th employee at Amazon. Not that many people get to say that, actually. I think just one. Okay, 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. My wife is like, David, I'm like, I wish it were Monday. I was 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. 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.

48:52And it's always structured exactly the same way, the good, the bad. Then there's some data that's consistent from week to week and maybe a few pictures to 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 meeting is going to be much more productive as a result. That's a total side comment, but it's just part of how I said 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.

49:18I write, 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 forth. How's my relationship with my friends? Am I reaching out to them? Have I talked to somebody this last week? Do I have plans to talk to somebody this next week? Whatever it is. And then how's my health? And by health, I mean not just sort of the basics, like do I have a cold or not or whatever it is, but if I got to the gym, have I kind of stayed active? So I don't know. And on all those, I don't give myself a five-star rating or whatever, but I kind of just reflect on each of those things for a little bit.

49:49And I suspect that at age, I'm better than 60 years old in a couple of 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. Done with questions, Scott? I'll wrap this up. Yeah, I am. Okay. Scott was taking a moment to reflect on that. Scott was reflecting on his health. He was thinking, I can see.

50:17I was just thinking, how can you go to Princeton and fill your first driver's desk? That's what I was thinking. Well, you know what? I'm just reading David's bio. David is also a Tiger, so that's two for two. Princeton, Harvard, Amazon, Microsoft. Yeah. Jesus. Before we close here, David, any advice that you would give to young people starting their careers? is, I mean, a lot of people look up to you. You kind of reach 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? I mean, the first thing I would say is don't stress about the future so much.

50:58Gosh, there are all sorts of reasons to worry about the world right now. I think we're going to 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 or 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 this.

51:25But 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. Phone call, I just took the phone call. I did a thing. So like, anyway, number one, like don't, 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 I try it and people have all sorts of things about that, which I get. I've heard you talk about this, Scott. But I don't talk about it quite that way. What I do say, though, is don't follow the money. Don't follow the money.

51:50And it's such a mistake I see people make is they think, oh my God, I'm going to take this job because I'm going to make more 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. You know, other people are big in the, but the point is that one of the things she talks about is there is never enough.

52:14So don't be done with 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, but 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.

52:38I'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 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. David Risher has served as CEO of Lyft since 2023 and as a member of the board since 2021. Prior to Lyft, David co-founded WorldReader, 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.

53:16David, thank you very much for joining us. This was great. And go Tigers. Go Tigers. There you go. That was a lot of fun, you guys. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Scott. Yeah, that was fun. Thank you for doing that, David.

53:36Scott, what did you think of that? 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, yes, a problem with the comms department, I thought Lyft was dying a slow death. And I did not think they were grabbing market share. And given that the market is growing, I just didn't know that. In the U.S., we should clarify, U.S. market share is still a big deal. but you know uber is still taking over the rest of the world i would not have thought that lyft was gaining share against uber in any large market 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 And my other observation is the reason I've gotten to know David accidentally because he shares a concern about young men.

54:36And 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 like them. This guy is really likable. They're just starting. We can't have CEOs on the podcast anymore. We're going to just start. We're going to become sycophants. Well, I've gotten to know this guy. He took 12 years off, I think, to work on a nonprofit trying to encourage kids to read. 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 yeah i think it's really interesting what you say about the price sales multiple there and that is i mean i agree i i really enjoyed that conversation i really like him but the question as a ceo is how can you increase those multiples.

55:29I 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 comms, 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, fair enough. And I really appreciate his obsession with that. I do think that is important.

56:13But 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 say, okay, Lyft is getting into this. But you also need to make the pitch to Wall Street and say, this is the future. You know, we're getting into robotaxis and it's going to be massive. Yeah, he's the anti-Musk. Musk, like, 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 kind of reeks of integrity and doesn't want to get out of his skis, whereas Musk is like, oh yeah, I'm putting people on Uranus.

56:59While I'm high on ketamine, I'm going to enjoy it. That 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. 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 kind of reeks of integrity. I don't know.

57:36I'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. 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. Good. We need to stop having CEOs on the pod. There you go. No more. No moss.

58:09This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Mia Silverio is our research lead. Isabella Kinsel and Dan Schlawn are our research associates. Drew Burrows is our technical director. And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Profit G 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 markets on Monday.

58:35Lifetimes

58:40You have me In kind reunion As the world turns And the dark flies In love

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