Logan Green

Logan Green’s enthusiasm for improving transportation began at an early age.

Growing up in Los Angeles, he spent most of his time stuck in traffic🚦

With a zest for solving transportation flaws, Logan created the first ever car-sharing program in his university.

During Logan's time in college, he would often use public transportation to travel between cities. 🚌

Whenever a bus broke down halfway, Logan was stuck there for hours.

In these moments he began to wonder: 'How can we do this better?’

On his trip to Zimbabwe, he observed the carpooling network used by the locals. 🚎

Inspired, he developed his own app ‘Zimride’ to replicate that system.

Using the Facebook API, Logan created a platform that allowed users to find people and plan carpools.

Logan met his eventual Lyft cofounder John Zimmer through a mutual friend on facebook.

They bonded on their shared passion for carpools, technology, and transportation.

Within a week, Logan flew to New York City to meet John.✈️

The first version of Zimride was launched in Cornell University and had signed up 20% of the student body in the first 6 months. 🏫

By the end of the year, the startup had scored a $250,000 investment from Facebook

A year later, Logan and John decided to move to the Silicon Valley in San Francisco to work on their growing company. 🌉

They shared an apartment which also became their office. For three years, the 2 did not take a salary.

By 2012, Zimride had thousands of users and around 150 corporate clients participating in their network.

But that wasn't enough.

Due to the nature of Zimride's service, it's carpooling was great for long distances; not so much for short ones.

Logan and John’s mission was to create a convenient transportation network.

However with the long haul limitation, people weren’t using it enough.

As a result, Zimride was no longer efficient.

To fix this, Zimride released an app to increase the frequency of rides that had shorter commutes.

In the summer of 2012, Logan and John released a new on-demand ride-sharing service called ‘Lyft’.

It connected users in major metropolitan areas for short rides in the city.🚗

As a subsidiary of parent company Zimride, Lyft was created to solve the problems Zimride couldn’t.

After operating for just a year, Lyft grew to provide 30,000 rides a week.

But running 2 businesses was hard.

Although Zimride had steady revenues, its growth projection was nowhere close to Lyft’s promising trajectory. 📈

As a result, the company decided to shift focus on its more profitable venture.

Zimride was incorporated as Lyft, Inc 🏢 and Zimride’s assets were sold to a rental car company Enterprise Holdings.

By the first half of 2013, Lyft had raised $75 million USD through 2 rounds of funding.

With over 80 employees, Lyft was thriving in 6 cities, with plans to expand in more.

Lyft continued to grow and had 23 million users across the US and Canada.

It also gained ground on its biggest competitor, Uber, with a 35% market share in the US.

In the next few years, Lyft also extended its hands into different ventures such as bike-sharing, self-driving cars, etc. through its acquisitions and partnerships.🚀

The next step in Lyft’s ambitions was to go public.

In March 2019, Lyft raised $2.3 billion at a $24.3 billion valuation in the NASDAQ exchange.

The successful IPO was oversubscribed in 2 just days! The company even set aside some shares for its long-time drivers.

Operating in over 650 cities across North America, Lyft has been going strong in 2022.

However, Logan and John are focusing on their long-term vision for Lyft:

transforming the company into a ‘transportation network’; which they believe presents a $1 trillion market opportunity.

With Lyft's steady incline, the future looks bright! ⭐