Lyft: Inspiration turned into reality
Inspiration can come from anywhere. The inspiration to Start Zimride, a ride sharing app, came to Logan Green when he used to travel from the University of California to Los Angeles to visit his girlfriend. He used to travel using Craigslist’s ride board but wanted to eliminate the anxiety of not knowing passenger or driver.
Logan Green and John Zimmer founded Zimride, a long-distance ridesharing company in 2007. Zimride concentrated on ridesharing for longer trips, often between cities, and linked drivers and passengers through the Facebook attach application.
The passenger could use Facebook profile information to know about driver and other passengers.The idea of name Zimride came from the country Zimbabwe.
Logan Green, during his trip in Zimbabwe saw people sharing minivan taxis and when he returned to the US he was inspired to create same form of transportation.
In May 2013, company officially changed its name from Zimride to Lyft.
Zimride used Facebook as connectivity with its users whereas Lyft uses its own mobile app. The driver and passenger rank each other in the app on five-star scale after every ride. The rating builds the reputation of passenger and driver within the platform.
Lyft launched as an on-demand ridesharing network for shorter trips within cities contrary to its previous service which was only used for long ridesharing.
Lyft received $60 million in Series C venture financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz and including Founders Fund, Mayfield Fund, K9 Ventures, and Floodgate Fund. In 2014, Lyft completed a $250 million Series D venture financing round led by Coatue Management, Alibaba Group, and Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total amount raised to $332.5 million.
Lyft now operates in more than 300 cities in US and 3 cities in Canada. It provides over 1 million rides per day. Lyft was valued at US$15.1 billion as of June 2018 and has raised a total of US$5.1 billion in funding.
