Logan Green, Founder and CEO of Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) - part 2

Nov 15, 2020

ON COMPETITION:

On Uber: I think their original motto was 'everybody's private driver. Our vision for the world is making car ownership unnecessary. We never set out to make a better taxicab. (Mar-15) [36]

On competition with Uber: I think it pushes us to both be better. Ultimately you know 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. If Uber wants to step into that and help push progress in that direction, we welcome it. (Mar-15) [35]

“I don’t know if I’ve been part of a company that has had such a tough competitor,” said Scott Weiss, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, which invested in Lyft. “From the outset, Uber just went after them. Logan as a leader and person grew up in wartime. It was just one emergency after another, and after a while he became like a field general.” (Aug-16) [55]

On Uber’s failures in a letter to employees: This isn't a time to gloat… The faults of our competition don't do anything to deliver a better experience for our customers. [57]

For years I lived in this world where the cliff was always three months away. I mentally got very comfortable with living in the world of immense risk and immense threats. So competing against Uber, at their peak they had 30 times the cash we did, was just another fact of life. We were doing a hell of a lot better as a company and in 1,000 times better position than just a few years before. (Mar-18) [69]

ON CULTURE:

The more employees a company has, the less likely any one gets noticed. And when employees don't feel individually responsible for the company's success, things slow down. If you want employees to feel appreciated, you need to celebrate their achievements regularly and publicly. At Lyft, we have an all-hands meeting every other week, and we always call out the most bad-ass, heroic accomplishments of team members since the last gathering… Recognition won't work if employees don't understand the company's goals and how they contribute to them. So, first, communicate. Then celebrate. (Jun-15) [42]

Zimmer and Green have patched together a strategy that fits their personality and ideals, and also sets Lyft up as a clear alternative. But the future will be as challenging as the past three years, “which have felt like 10,” says Zimmer. Green adds, “It’s good that we have such a foundation of working together. We’ve got that shorthand of communication, and the trust.” That word—trust—came up repeatedly in exploring Lyft’s partnerships, and it’s the answer to the scepticism I heard about Lyft. As one VC asked me, “Are these real deals, or just press releases?” Zimmer and Green have explicitly sought out like-minded souls, the same way they found each other. “Logan’s been the best thing: having a business partner that you trust completely with everything,” Zimmer says in response to Green’s compliment. That’s what they believe they now have with Didi Kuaidi, GM, Grab, Ola, and Starbucks. That’s what they’ll need to survive. (Mar-16) [42]

It can be tough not being a jerk but it goes really far in building a culture. (Aug-16) [54]

In response to rumours that Lyft struggled to raise money because the team was “too nice,” Green explains that he eventually convinced investors by presenting Lyft’s culture as the “asset that it is”. This is a culture that challenges the status quo. Green believes that “the default interaction when taking a cab is not to be friendly or nice”, adding that after “seeing how rough the default was, we put energy into building a culture and brand around Lyft”. As a consequence, “when 2 people get in a car, there’s [now] an expectation of being nice” and “every driver prefers driving for Lyft because passengers treat them better”. (Aug-16) [54]

Outliers

Logan Green, Founder and CEO of Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) - part 2

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