BONUS: Lyft CEO David Risher Talks Company Expansion

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Ed Ludlow** (0:07)
Back to tech earnings, shares of Lyft higher. The company reported growing demand for premium rides. Also, strengthening European markets. Super interesting, kind of the global expansion story. Lyft CEO David Risher is with us. There is a very specific data point, actually, that I'd like to start on. And that is that in markets, specifically San Francisco, where you have Lyft rides and Waymo rides, you said San Francisco grew 20% year on year.

**David Risher** (0:35)
That's right.

**Ed Ludlow** (0:36)
Explain the causal or casual relationship within that data point.

**David Risher** (0:41)
Yeah. So, you know, our industry has gone through a big transformation, and it is the sort of bringing on of these self-driving vehicles. Waymo, 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. And in this case, we're seeing a market expansion. And it's not that surprising. When people take self-driving cars, they tend to like them a lot. They're a very reliable product.
They're a nice private product, so you can feel like you could 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 accretive.

**Ed Ludlow** (1:16)
This is a micro case study. It's one market, San Francisco. But the questions are, is Lyft gaining market share from Waymo in this city?
Or is it that this is an issue of supply? So because somebody cannot get into a Waymo within a reasonable time frame, they go to the Lyft app.

**David Risher** (1:34)
Yeah, yeah.

**Ed Ludlow** (1:35)
Which is happening?

**David Risher** (1:36)
Probably both, honestly.

**Ed Ludlow** (1:37)
Probably both. So interesting.

**David Risher** (1:38)
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 simple. You have a cool new product coming on to an existing platform. And what 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 all have to see how that works.

**Ed Ludlow** (1:59)
I think that you and I have discussed on several occasions the idea that the introduction of the robotaxi and maturity of the market expands the overall TAM for ride hailing. Just recap that argument.

**David Risher** (2:11)
I think that's exactly it. So, I mean, look, people take just in the United States about 160 billion rides a year in their private cars.
Today, we deliver a billion. Maybe the other guys deliver two billion. So let's call that three billion out 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 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 him at 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 that there's anything wrong with that, but it just gives him more space to be in his own zone, is actually going to be something.

**Ed Ludlow** (2:56)
It's a technology and an engineering story, a design story.

**David Risher** (2:59)
It's a design story, exactly. Anyway, I'm very optimistic about this. And then when I look at our capabilities around fleet management and matching supply and demand, I get really excited about the future.

**Ed Ludlow** (3:10)
Lyft is, let's go back to the core business and earnings, but Lyft is pushing outside of the United States. Every time you've been on the show over the last year, there's been a development on that front. What did we actually learn through your earnings about how you're growing ex-USSX?

**David Risher** (3:25)
So here's what's really cool. So Lyft was primarily a domestic company up until about a year ago, maybe call it 18 months ago. Then we started to expand in Canada. That's gone very well. Now we acquired a company called FreeNow 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 of 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 Lyft app, not a new app, but the Lyft app, to hail local supply, local taxi cab in Barcelona. I did it four times, it worked 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. FreeNow, the company we acquired, they're also growing now, too, because of some of the innovation, the technology we've been able to add to their stack. So, it's, look, 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.