Lyft: Lifting Ridesharing to Higher Levels

Lyft is a private American transportation network company based in San Francisco, California. Its mobile app facilitates a peer-to-peer ridesharing by requesting a ride from available “community drivers”. Guided by the tagline “Your friend with a car,” Lyft’s services are 30% less than the regular price of a similar ride via a cab. Today, Lyft is operating in 60 cities in the US.

Lyft was founded in 2007 by Logan Green and John Zimmer. It was launched in 2012 as a service of Zimride. All the drivers and passengers of Lyft are required to sign up to the Lyft service via their Facebook accounts. After each ride, the drivers and the passengers rate each other using a scale of five. The ratings can either positively or adversely affect the reputation of the drivers and passengers within the network.

In June 2013, Lyft completed a Series C funding activity where the company received $60 million in venture investments. In March 2014, Lyft announced another round of funding activities where the company received another $250 million. This was after Lyft launched the “Happy Hour,” a discount feature.