Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft

**Guy Raz** (0:06)
Hello, and welcome to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. Alright, let's get to it. Joining me today is John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft John. It's great to have you back on the show. Welcome back.

**John Zimmer** (0:42)
Thank you. It's good to be here.

**Guy Raz** (0:43)
We first had you on the show back in 2017 You also came to some of the How I Built This summits. So awesome having you. When you were on the show, and we'll put a link to this episode, that episode in the podcast notes, you told us about how you and your friend Logan Greene built what started as a carpooling platform, and then you built it into one of the biggest ride share apps in the world, of course, Lyft. It's an incredible story. You guys went up against so much along the way. There were governments telling you to cease and desist. You had an epic battle with your main competitor Uber, which was quite ugly. And there's actually a sort of a dramatization of this that came out a couple of years ago. I thought you came out really nicely in that, actually. Anyway, since then, there's been some pretty big changes since we last spoke. You were president of Lyft. Logan was CEO. Then in 2023, both of you guys transitioned to non-executive roles on the board. And then just last month, I think you you both left Lyft entirely. So tell us a little bit about that.
Why did you leave? Why was now the right time to do it?

**John Zimmer** (1:50)
Yeah, it was very difficult. We love Lyft, love the team, love the CEO, David, who's doing a phenomenal job. But we wanted to both have another chapter in our lives and make sure that Lyft had the right leadership in place for its own next chapter. And we felt that it did. And so we had a two-year process where we went from operating roles to the board, and then off the board just a few weeks ago.

**Guy Raz** (2:16)
How does that feel for you? I mean, this is your thing, that you started.

**John Zimmer** (2:21)
Yeah, I think the harder step for me was leaving the operating role. It was what I did every day. It gave me a lot of purpose and meaning outside of my family life. And then going from being, I would argue, obsessed with making Lyft the best possible company it could be, to not doing that every day, to having all my time in the day free. It was a hard transition. But the second part of the transition, kind of moving off the board, was a little less difficult. And I'm also excited about building again.

**Guy Raz** (2:55)
Yeah, I'd just like to dive into that for a moment, because I think a lot of people assume, oh, wow, you build this huge thing and it's a huge brand. And then you get to do a victory lap. And then you can go and drink margaritas in Mexico.
But when you go from like working at, you know, operating at 100 miles an hour, and then all of a sudden, like you are at home, you wake up, and there is no, all those things that you had to do are gone. You don't have to do them. It's actually really hard.

**John Zimmer** (3:26)
Yeah, it was. It's a privileged problem to have. But, you know, for three months, I think I felt relief. My shoulders dropped. I was on constant, you know, cortisol adrenaline rushes, you know, when I was at Lyft and kind of in this fight or flight mode for many years because of all the early battles you mentioned. And then after those three months of just feeling almost like a physical, ah, like I feel a bit relieved, then I felt a little bit lost. And, you know, I'm in the kitchen with my wife talking about how we could, you know, reorganize different canisters and she's like, you need to, you need to do something else.

**Guy Raz** (4:09)
Get out of the house, yeah.

**John Zimmer** (4:10)