Lyft CEO David Risher Talks Company Expansion

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I explain the causal or casual relationship in that data point. Yeah. So our industry is going through a big transformation, and it is the sort of bringing on of these self-driving vehicles, Wamo, of course, is the market leader in that. Anytime you see a transformation like this, one or two things can happen. You can either see sort of a substitution or you can see a market expansion. In this case, we're seeing the market expansion. It's not that surprising. When people take self-driving cars, they tend to like them a lot. They're very reliable product. They're a nice private product. You can feel like you can have a private conversation. But at the same time, it doesn't seem to take away from people's interest in being driven by humans. Who can help with luggage or have a good conversation. So it really is a creative. This is a micro case study. It's one market San Francisco. The questions are, is Lyft gaining market share from Wamo in this city? Or is it that this is an issue of supply? So because somebody cannot get into a Wamo within a reasonable timeframe, they go to the Lyft app. Yeah. Which is happening. I probably both. Honestly. Probably so interesting. Yeah. And I think this is such an interesting thing that's going to play out. My expectation over time is what will dominate will be the market expansion. And again, the reason is sort of simply you have a cool new product coming onto an existing platform. And where we believe the hybrid network, which is human driven cars plus AVs really kind of creates the best possible outcome for everyone. But we'll have to see how that works. I think that you and I have discussed on several occasions the idea that the introduction of the robot taxi and maturity of the market expands the overall temp for ride-hailing. Yeah. Just recap that argument. I think that's exactly it. So I mean, look, people take just the United States about 160 billion rides a year in their private cars. Okay. Today we deliver a billion. Maybe the other guys deliver two billion. So it's called that three billion and of 160 billion. And it's a good experience. You're sitting in the back seat. You're able to text, you're able to have your own space. What holds it back? Well, for whatever reason, some people might want not want to be driven by another driver or someone else in the car. This takes that away. I'll tell you a very specific story. So I was just with an old friend of mine. I just ran into the airport. Her son had a tragic, tragic accident a couple of years ago. Absolutely devastating physical accident. He's in rehabilitation. For him, the idea of getting in a self-driving car where the doors open wide. Maybe there's not even a driver there. Not there's anything wrong with that, but it just gives him more space to sort of be in his own zone. Is actually going to be a technology in an engineering story. His design story. It's a design story. Exactly. So anyway, I'm very optimistic about this. Then you know, when I look at our capabilities around fleet management and imagine supply and demand, I get really excited about the future. Let's go back to the core business and learnings. But lift is pushing outside the United States. Every time you've been on the show over the last year, there's been a development on that front. But what did we actually learn for your earnings about how you're growing X USA? So here's what's really cool. So lift was primarily a domestic company up until about a year ago. Maybe called it 18 months ago. Then we started to expand in Canada. That's going very well. Now we acquired a company called Free Now and a couple of other smaller companies overseas. Okay, what's happened since then? We're in the process of transforming ourselves to a truly global company. Some of that is internal stuff. Back at the house. Multi-currency, GDPR, all these sorts of things. But we're also beginning to introduce new functionality to customers. So I was just in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago. I was very lucky to be there. I got a chance to check out on our beta app. The ability to use the lift app, not a new app, but the lift app, to hail local supply, local taxicab and Barcelona. I did it four times or flawlessly. So good, because I don't have to do a different app. I already know the user interface and so forth and so on. Free Now, the company we acquired, they're also growing now too because of some of the innovation and the technology we've been able to add to their stack. So our service levels are really good. And I love that about our product. And now we can take that to a more global audience and hopefully continue to grow as a result. How it could be Europe spain specifically, but how are those markets different, you know, I'd say? How does the consumer behave differently? You know, there are subtle differences. I mean, a very significant, I guess, difference, not subtle, is the role of the taxi cab in a lot of Europe. It's very significant. You know, this is culturally entrenched in many economies in Europe as an example. Very much so. And unlike maybe in a New York where people almost begrudgingly take a cab, for example, in a place like Spain, in certain areas. You're going to have New York as phony into this program now. And I get that. And I understand, well, and New Yorkers have opinions about their taxi cabs, right? But in Spain, it tends to be almost a career. You know, you get in the car and it's probably someone who's been doing it for many years. Maybe his father did it as well. Certainly in London, everyone knows the knowledge. I mean, it's an all sort of incredible thing. So that's a really significant difference. And for us, it favors us because free now is strong in taxes. And the sort of double click there is because taxes seem to be quite regulated, the relationship that that company and our company has with governments tends to be quite strong, which back to the AV question really matters a lot. AV is new technology and for a lot of governments, it feels maybe a little bit intimidating and we can help there. So it's a really nice sort of set of circumstances that tends to sort of favor our business. In markets outside the United States, Uber is already there in some cases, Bolt, etc. How are you going to make Lyft different from a technology perspective or just a product perspective? Yeah. So stay tuned on this. This is actually a very, very live conversation we're having internally. I can use some of the examples of the US maybe and give you a little sense. So in the US, we've really redoubled our innovation. And you know some of these products, women plus connect, and I just heard that we've given over 175 million rides between women and women in the US over the last couple years. Lyft teens, Lyft silver, this is real innovation. We're hoping to bring some of that innovation to the European space for sure. And then there's also a lot of conversation around, you know, the let's say the reputation of those guys in Europe isn't necessarily super, people don't necessarily love the company. I'll just say it that way. And we hope we bring some joy to the conversation as well. Internally, where is your biggest focus on the technology side? What are the types of people you're trying to bring in and things you're building, rebuilding, code migration, literally anything on that side? For sure. So how many interesting things? So I'll give you a couple of examples. Some of it's basic, some of it's more far-reaching. Here's the basic thing. We now pick people up on average. So 75% of the time, we will pick you up either the same or faster than our big competitor. Okay. Why is that kind of a big deal? Because our market share is smaller. So doing that reliably 24 hours a day, 70s a week is people are busy. They want to get to where they are. That's an awesome accomplishment. I'm hugely proud of our marketplace team for accomplishing that. And then bigger picture, I'm really excited about LiftTeen, one of our newest products that allows teens to get in and get constant messaging back to their parents to make sure the parents know that they're safe and sound. It's just a good, I look at this as almost a generational thing. A new car now costs like 800 bucks. It looks like the 800 bucks a month, 50,000 bucks. Yeah, at least basically. Plus maintenance, plus gas, all these sorts of things. Lift is just a better answer for a lot of people. And so I'm sort of excited when I look two, three, four, five years out at some of the kind of, you know, teen innovation now. Because I think that'll help change a whole generation. Lift CEO David Rishan, thank you very much for coming in. Thank you for being back on the show. Get essential news on the people and companies pushing the tech sector to new frontiers. Hi, I'm Ed Ludlow. Join me for Bloomberg Tech, a daily podcast-focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business. Every weekday we bring you the latest insights on Silicon Valley's top companies and conversations with tech's biggest decision-makers. Listen to Bloomberg Tech on your commute home and stay ahead of the news cycle. Subscribe today on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen.