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John Zimmer

Co-Founder & Former Vice Chairman, Lyft

Search every verified John Zimmer interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. John Zimmer, co-founder and vice chairman of Lyft, appeared on the "How I Built This" podcast in 2025 and 2026 to discuss his recent decision to step away from the company he co-founded in 2012 and to answer questions from early-stage founders. During these appearances, Zimmer reflected on the early competition with Uber, recalling a period when Uber raised $3 billion while Lyft had $100 million left in the bank, and described staying focused on Lyft's values and mission. He also spoke about the company's diversification during the pandemic, including contactless car rentals and a subscription service called Lyft Pink that offers a 15% discount on rides and access to bikes and scooters. Zimmer has advocated for congestion pricing and increased investment in public transportation, stating that Lyft would become more vocal about those policies. In response to a question about capitalism and ownership, Zimmer said he agreed that capitalism is the best system, noted that Lyft created a system for drivers to get equity at the time of its IPO, and encouraged founders to offer ownership to early employees. Zimmer has also described the company's founding motivation as addressing the fact that the average American household spends over $9,000 per year on a car that sits parked 96% of the time, and has said Lyft aims to make cities designed around people instead of cars.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“If we had 10% market share in a market and they had 90%. If we subsidized something a dollar or gave a dollar off, they would have to pay $9. And so we would start making it more expensive. So if we had 5% and they had 95% obviously you can do the math and so that we had to think differently but certainly there were things that they ripped from us and vice versa.”

“We had to learn and it was a lot more of different capital. They they had raised $3 billion from the Saudi government and we had five months of cash left and everyone said you are you are royally [__] and like you might as well return the capital to to your investors at this point.”

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →