John Zimmer: Pink Mustaches, Rideshare Wars, and the Legacy of Lyft

**John Zimmer** (0:00)
We built a prototype in two weeks and had a board meeting, explained what we were going to do. People in the board meeting said, do you think anyone is going to do this? I remember Logan's face, like, just was like, I don't have any question about whether people will use this. The pink mustache gave people an excuse to talk about it. It was weird, it was shocking, it didn't make sense. There was a cultural moment.

**Mike Maples** (0:25)
That's John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft, and someone who sparked a movement to revolutionize transportation. The road to Lyft was paved with existential hurdles. Zimmer and his co-founder, Logan Green, had to outmaneuver entrenched taxi monopolies and rewrite the rules of urban mobility on the fly, all while scaling a business model that many experts insisted was a logistical impossibility. And he had to deal with some of the most extraordinary competitive pressure in the history of startups. This is Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate, and it's Go Time with John Zimmer. This is Mike Maples Jr. and welcome to the Pattern Breakers podcast, where we explore why some founders radically change the future and how they stand apart. Together we'll learn about the counterintuitive mindsets and actions behind their remarkable success. Brace yourself for a world where chaos is welcome, naysayers are often a positive signal, and movements galvanize misfits who transform the impossible to the ineffable.
There's so much to learn from Lyft's journey, the boldness to pivot after five years from Zimride, the ability to leverage a technology inflection, and the pink mustache as a reason for early riders to accept the call to a new, strange adventure. But one of my favorite reasons for the initial breakthrough came from John and Logan's ability to spot anomalies. They noticed something that simply didn't make sense. Cars sat idle 96% of the time, taking up space in cities. And then when you actually need a ride in San Francisco, good luck finding a taxi. The mismatch was glaring to them. By starting from this contradiction, it helped them see what others missed. This wasn't just about convenient rides. It was about reframing what the future of transportation could look like in America. Let's talk to them. John Zimmer, welcome to the podcast.

**John Zimmer** (2:44)
Thank you for having me.

**Mike Maples** (2:46)
Been through some things together for a while, so been looking forward to putting this episode together. So, you know, obviously ride sharing is not a new thing to you. The whole field of hospitality is not that new to you. So how did you get started on the topic of ride sharing in the first place? You know, what led you to that as an interesting area, and then what led you to partnering with Logan to get Zimride started initially?

**John Zimmer** (3:16)
Yeah. So in 2006, I was a senior at Cornell. I was in the hotel school there. So I studied hospitality, Geneva technical background, and I took a city planning class. I had an amazing professor. His first lecture was the history of the world. And then he had a lecture on transportation. And it was this zoomed out look at US transportation infrastructure from canals to railroads to highways. And I started thinking, what would be that next big infrastructure change? That's what led me to think about if we have all these cars, we have all these empty seats, all these cars that are sitting idle 96% of the time. And so what if that next infrastructure is more digital and less physical? And that's what sparked the interest. I started running a business plan in my senior year.
I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and I couldn't shake this kind of finance mindset that I was into. And so I worked at Lehman Brothers.

**Mike Maples** (4:13)
One of those low-risk jobs.

**John Zimmer** (4:14)
Yeah, exactly. He, Logan, who I did not know, posts on a mutual friend's Facebook page, check out this website I'm building, zimride.com. My last name is Zimmer. Very strange. He had been to Zimbabwe, and it was inspired by seeing people sharing rides in Zimbabwe.
And both him and I thought of this idea of long-distance carpooling from college campuses. And so because I saw that on a mutual friend's Facebook page, I reached out to the mutual friend. He connected Logan and I. I decided to leave Lehman Brothers. I was told by a friend's mom who worked in the building, how could you leave a short thing like Lehman to do a silly carpool startup? Three months later, Lehman is bankrupt, and I had moved to California to do this full-time.
And that's kind of when, close to when we met.