Lyft CEO on Silver Riders, Self-Driving Cars, and the $100M Ad Bet

David Risher   (00:00):
I want to serve riders and drivers better than they've ever been served before. And I want to connect people with the places they love, the people they love, the things they love to do. I think as our world gets more tech heavy, which of course it will, I think there needs to be almost a sort of an opposing force that says, yes, of course, use technology, use the phone, but use the phone to get through it and get out in the world and experience the real world. 

Ann Berry (00:19):
Rideshare has entered a new chapter one where growth is driven by new customer segments that mobility platforms have so far overlooked. Lyft is leaning into that shift having built its app to over 218 million users by offering Rideshares bikes and scooters to mainly younger urban customers. The company is now targeting older adults through a dedicated new service, Lyft Silver, and it's going global with the acquisition of Free. Now a European taxi booking app owned by BMW and Mercedes-Benz expected to close in the second half of 2025. In Q1 this year, Lyft reported a 16% increase in active riders and a 14% rise in revenue. CEO David Richer called it Lift's stronger start to the year ever with 16 straight quarters of double digit gross booking growth coupled with strong free cashflow lift share price has soared in response, boosted two by an increase in its share buyback program to $750 million. 

(01:11)
We sit down with David to discuss the plan for expansion, how AI designs rides for maximum efficiency lifts position in the self-driving car world and so much wool. Let's get into it. David. Let's get right to some of your exciting new product developments. I am really excited about Lifts Silver, and here's why I think about my grandmother. She's brilliant. She's completely adept at using iPhone. Rideshare is made for her needs. She lives outside London and she just won't use Rideshare because she's worried about safety. Talk to us about what you've learned to develop a lift silver that's actually going to get adoption with that kind of demographic. 

David Risher   (01:49):
So I am super excited about Lift Silver too, and I have a similar experience. My mother, she passed away a number of years ago, but I remember the conversation I had with her. One of the least fun conversations, my mom was a fun woman, but least fun conversation was about sort of mom. I really think it's time to sort of turn over the car keys and she was having none of it because of course it's her freedom, it's her freedom. This is how she, and we also know that as older people stay in, their world gets smaller and so does our world. Okay, so then the question, what can you do to help the 60,000,060 5-year-old plus folks in the United States get out more? A couple of things. The first thing that we heard from them is it really does have to be kind of easy and easy doesn't mean dumbed down, but it means big buttons. 

(02:38)
Sometimes the dexterity is a little bit low, just kind of strip it down for me so I can make it super easy. The second thing is if I get nervous for any reason, and this speaks a little bit to your grandmother's issue, I really want help on the spot. Now when it comes to safety, we have a super elaborate background check. A thing that we do, it actually happens every single year. We use safety flags frankly to offboard drivers who exhibit unsafe behavior. That turns out to be more of an education issue than really a feature issue. It's something we do across the whole lift platform is making sure that lift is safe. But we certainly, if things start to go any direction, I'm not talking about safety necessarily. I'm talking about I'm not sure where my driver is or can you remind me which button I should push because I'm a little worried if I push the wrong button, I'm going to end up in the wrong place. So we have instant help this's available literally at the push of the button. That was the second big thing. And then the third big thing was bigger cars easier to get into, particularly sort with low height and I have in-laws as well. Every time they get in their car, it's sort of a little bit of a limbo dance type thing. 

(03:42)
Not quite it, but anyway, you know what I mean. So those were the biggies. And then sharing information, and maybe this gets back to your issue, sharing information with trusted context so that other people can sort of know where a grandma or mom or dad is. 

Ann Berry (03:54):
I know it's very early days, but how are you seeing adoption happen? Is it coming through existing Lyft users literally doing referrals that you can track or are you just seeing that 5% of the population who are using Lift today over 65 growing because those demographics are independently finding Lyft? Are you able to see 

David Risher   (04:14):
Any difference? We are, and it's actually surprising. Honestly, my prediction was that the big driver of introduction and sort of maybe signing up for it would come from referrals. And we make it very easy for you, for example, to send a loved one a link saying Just click this link. You can even put 25 or 50 bucks on the account so that they don't even have to worry about paying for it. I thought that was going to be the big thing. It turns out that a lot of people are finding it for themselves. We put a cap on internally of 25,000 because we wanted to make sure it was a great experience for folks and we're already past that. So we've removed the cap, we've added additional customer support and so forth so that we can kind of keep up with this demand. But it's a lot of people finding it for themselves. I think it's friends telling people and saying, you should take a look, and then they do. 

Ann Berry (05:03):
How big do you think this could get if we put numbers behind it a year from now, what dollar amount would you look at and say that's a good outcome for us for this product line? 

David Risher   (05:12):
Well, that's a good question. I mean, if you look at some of the stats right now, as you say, only about 5% of Lyft users are sort of older, 65 plus, and yet there are 65 million people, as I say in the US alone who are 65 or older that's growing to 70 million. So this is one of those areas where it's very hard to predict whenever you start a new product, you want to make sure that there's product that you're satisfying a real need, you're obsessing over something really important and hopefully that a lot of people can use it. And I'm not sure exactly how to quantify, but what I can say is that if an average booking is maybe $20 on the platform, and if you've got, I don't know, maybe it's a hundred thousand people, maybe it's 500,000 people, you're talking about real money over a fairly short period of time if the adoption continues as it started. 

Ann Berry (06:01):
Let's also talk about another area that you've seen growth and it's been around for longer, but the growth's really ticked up and that's commute rides now taking up more than a third of all your trips up 19% year over year. What's been driving that adoption? Is that something you've been doing at Lyft or is that something where corporations are saying, we need support for this and benefits packages and that kind of thing? 

David Risher   (06:23):
It's both. It's both. So clearly in the macro environment as return to Office continues and as people recognize that frankly it's just better to be driven by somebody else to work. I mean, look, nobody likes commuting. Commuting is not fun, but it is better if you can text while you're doing it, or we literally see people, they'll send us pictures putting on makeup in the car and these sorts of things. So they use the time kind of in a productive way or they call their kids whatever it is, but they sort of get the day off. So it's a great product and a great service, and therefore people are adopting it. And we're focused a lot on commute because it's part of people's daily lives. And if you step back and think what makes for a successful business, of course you want a big addressable market. 

(07:08)
Of course you want customers that what you're doing and you want to do as much possible to obviously reinforce that. And it really helps when you're sort of a regular part of people's lives because that builds a sort of habit that then can withstand even economic pressure or whatever. So anyway, for that reason, we've been focused on it. We have a particular product we launched towards the end of last year called Price Lock, and it's sort of like a handing glove for commute. How do I ensure that the price isn't going to bounce around? And if you're interested, I can tell you a story of the inspiration of that actually came through my own driving. But when people have that consistency, it really allows them to think differently about using Rideshare rather than wonder whether they're going to do it every day. They just sort of know. So that's been a big contributor to the growth. 

Ann Berry (07:57):
Yeah. Tell us the story about price Look, how did that come about? 

David Risher   (08:01):
Yeah, so search pricing is one of those ideas that sounds so clever in theory. And if you're an economist, you just love the idea of matching supply and demand and having prices bounce around and so forth. And that's great if you're an economist, but if you're a real person, you hate it with a fiery passion because it's like, I don't know, how much is this thing going to cost me and why is this thing, which usually costs me $20 all of a sudden 40 bucks, and you feel it with airlines, you feel it with hotels maybe on Saturday nights or something like this. And so it's smart economic theory, but it kind of bugs people. So for the last year or so, so I've been in this job just over two years and one of the things that I really thought of early on is what are some of the things that really just hold the rideshare industry back? 

(08:53)
And one of 'em is this. So we took about $40 million in what we call prime time. So surge pricing out of the system last year through a whole bunch of behind the scenes stuff, basically better supply and demand matching. That's the big context. But then when you come to a product like Price Lock, which is specifically developed, that was really catalyzed for me when I did a ride myself. I ride, I drive for Lyft about every six weeks, and I picked up a woman named Anne in Sausalito, California, which is just across the bridge from the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. And she told me the story, it was a Friday morning and she told me the story of her waking up every morning to see what the price was going to be, and she would literally wake up early and she would look at us, she'd look at the other guys and she'd say basically, if it's sort of 20 to 25, I'll take rideshare. 

(09:38)
It's above that. Maybe I'll take it. I'll get a little frustrated. If it's maybe 40 bucks, I'll just work from home. It's just too much. Or I'll drive, but I really don't like to because parking is irritating and there's a toll on the bridge and so forth this Friday morning that I'm thinking of, she actually literally had donuts because it was a coworker's birthday, and she was like, I had no choice. I had to get in for the birthday party. So I'm really glad you guys were inexpensive. And it was really hearing her say that and reflecting on some of the other stories that we'd heard over the years about how frustrating surge pricing is, that catalyzed us to say, let's see if we can come up with a product that's just for people I can 

Ann Berry (10:12):
Incredible. Just goes to show actually, and we'll come back to that, your CEO style and what can be learned from being on the front lines. To those of you listening, stick with us. We're going to talk about some more later in the interview including the use of AI at Lyft. But before we get there, David, let's talk about other ways you've been growing. You've touched on new products, organic growth. Let's talk now about acquisitions and the Free Now deal that is set to close later this year. Talk to us about what's driving that decision. 

David Risher   (10:40):
Yeah, so Free Now is a sort of a taxi first marketplace in Europe. It's the biggest in Europe number one. And the short version is it expands our adjustable market. It roughly doubles it and allows us to take all of the operational excellence and customer obsession that we've learned in the US and bring it overseas and vice versa, bring a lot of what they've learned back to us. So big Picture, Lyft has been around for over a decade now, but it's really been focused on the United States. And the United States is a very big market for ride share. It's 160 billion rides. People take a year in their private cars and between us and the other guys, we're only 3 billion. So it's not like there's not a lot of headroom in the us, but when you look at what we've been able to accomplish, when you look at the growth we've seen for example in Canada over the last year where we just started to focus and now kind of doubled our rod volume there, we realized that what we do, our basic value proposition and customer obsession really can be a bigger thing than just the us. 

(11:43)
So we started to look around last year for potential targets to get into. Europe in particular, very difficult to grow organically in ride share. You have to get supply and demand, right? At the same time, there are already some pretty strong incumbents and we found Reno, it was a great organization. They've been around for a number of years. They've acquired a bunch of smaller, as I say, kind of a taxi platform. And the last thing I'll say there is in Europe, because if you're listening or watching in the US you probably have a certain view of taxis and maybe it's influenced by a trip to New York or Chicago, what have you. And it's kind of a little bit like that, but in Europe it's different. It really is. Taxis tend to be a higher end offering. They tend to be driven in many markets by people who've been driving for many, many years and take it quite seriously. The London Black Cab experience, maybe I suspect from your accent, you've been there once or twice. You probably know the Berlin experience maybe of a Mercedes. So it's a sort of higher end experience and therefore for us fits really nicely into a portfolio of a higher service offering, which is really part of what we're trying to do worldwide. 

Ann Berry (12:49):
Absolutely. Very fond memories. Growing up with the London Blat taxis and the drivers, as you say, go through years of learning something called the Knowledge. It is a slightly different value proposition though, David, because to your point, if the luxury product is a taxi in Europe, how are you feeling about expanding through that platform Rideshare, which is much more of a value oriented product. So is this sort of the Trojan horse free now for doing more Rideshare if you can? 

David Risher   (13:19):
No, I wouldn't call it the Trojan horse, although I do like the reference to truth mythology, big fan. And the reason I say that is because we don't have an intention of doing a big change in that way. We actually think the taxi market, the bigger move for us and us collectively with free now is to bring more offline taxi users online. 

(13:40)
The ride hailing market in Europe, something like 40 billion euros. So a very, very big market of which roughly half is offline. It's people making the same phone call that they've made for the last 10 years. When they need to get the airport, they call the same phone number, they know the dispatcher. But we also know that when people go online, they tend to use it more. It tends to be, it's an easier sort of experience. You can see different levels of pricing and maybe even have a flat rate, which is quite handy. So anyway, so I think that's the bigger opportunity. Now, private ride hailing will obviously be a factor, but it's relatively small in many of the markets that they operate in. I should say free now is a relatively small operator there, and we feel better about really doubling down on the strength rather than try to do something completely different. 

Ann Berry (14:22):
There's a lot of newness it feels like at Lyft at the moment. And another area that has been launched under your leadership, David, is Lyft Media, which is partnering with folks like Foursquare, partnering with retailers and consumer brands to have in-app ads to ride riders. I just want to go back, I think it was your investor day. You said a hundred million dollars Target was sort of out of the gate goal. How's that going and what kind of take up are you seeing? 

David Risher   (14:48):
Yeah, so it's going great. So the a hundred million target refers to what we hope our exit rate will be this year 

(14:53)
And we're on track for it. And so then the question is why, and I think the answer, and maybe you can sort of feel my pattern here, I tend to start with the big picture. What are the things that we know will be true forever? Forever, okay. One thing is people, if you are a brand chief marketing officer, you are always interested in finding new ways to talk to your customers. You just always are, and you can look at this over many, many years. You can look at let's say billboards in the 1920s, thirties, forties, this cars came on the road and interstate highways came in fifties and sixties. You can look at radio, of course, you can look at television advertising of course, and then YouTube advertising and now TikTok, there are these different things. And so each sort of door that opens presents new opportunities to kind of connect with customers. 

(15:45)
In Lyft's case, a rider might take 17, 18, 19 minutes for a ride and sort of be ready for something with something they're going to be maybe scrolling on their phone and what have you. And so we realized really a couple of years ago, but it started to lean into it more recently, that connection, particularly if it's relevant, right? If it's maybe keyed to a place you're, maybe you're going to a target and maybe we can talk to you about toothpaste. Okay, maybe that's not the most fun thing, but let's do another example. Maybe a new movie's come out and we can show you a movie trailer. Those sorts of opportunities are really interesting to marketers. And then particularly if you have a new product launch, if you have a new product, it's so hard to break through the clutter. And if you really connect with people with a sort of engaging video or what have you, and do it in the app that they're already checking several times during the ride, it turns out to be a pretty great experience. 

Ann Berry (16:33):
How big could that be? So if you exit this year with a hundred million, you're on track to do that, what could the end of 2026 look like for that product line? 

David Risher   (16:42):
Well, I would hope it doubles and doubles and doubles. Got it. I really would hope that, and I think it's possible because again, I think the need is deep, but the key is we have to do it 

Ann Berry (16:51):
Well 

David Risher   (16:51):
And by well in both directions. The rider has to find it interesting and the advertiser, the marketer has to see that it's moving the needle in either brand preference or something like that. 

Ann Berry (17:01):
I've got to imagine too, with AI tools that personalization of the ad experience gets more pronounced over time as well, David. 

David Risher   (17:10):
I think that's right. I think that's right. And looking at it from a business perspective, we have, it is kind of the holy grail of advertising first party data. So we know where you're coming from, we know where you're going to, you're sharing that information with us actively. So I 

Ann Berry (17:26):
There are other ways that you're using ai. You've got an earnings assistant pilot, which is a first in the industry. Talk to us about that. 

David Risher   (17:34):
Yeah, I mean I really appreciate asking about this. I think it's not just interesting from an AI perspective. It's interesting from the way we think about people who drive on the 

Ann Berry (17:42):
Platform. 

David Risher   (17:44):
So let me flip it that direction for just a second. If you're a driver on the platform, you have certain things you're very interested in, typically, not always, but typically you want to make the most of your time in terms of earnings, right? I say typically because there are people who drive just for fun to get out in the neighborhood, whatever, but for a lot of people, they care quite a lot how much money they're going to make. So in order to make that easier for drivers, we've launched an AI assistant. And really it's meant to be a very interactive sort of a chatbot thing where it says, tell me what you want to do this week. What are your goals for the week? And I say, well, maybe I want to earn $600. And then it says, well, okay, tell me a little bit more. 

(18:22)
For example, what days are you available? Do you have anything else going on in your life? You need to work around any geographical restrictions. Maybe in New York City. Maybe you don't want to go into Brooklyn if you're that kind of person, or maybe you do, maybe you love Brooklyn. So this kind of back and forth done in a very kind of conversational AI way allows us then to create a plan for the driver and say, okay, here's something that you might want to use. It doesn't mean you have to, but it means that if you drive on this day or on this day, on this day, we will make sure that you avoid the places you don't want to avoid. We'll make sure you're home in time for dinner. You told us that that was important on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. These is the best chance for you to get to your goal. 

Ann Berry (19:05):
At the same time as Lyft is investing in making the driver experience more pleasurable. David, with that kind of technology, Lyft's also expanding into driverless technology. Right. Let's talk a little bit on the flip side of this, which is tech to try and launch autonomous rides. You've got the main mobility partnership ticking up in Atlanta this year. You've just announced you'll be launching in Dallas in 2026 with MobileEye. You seem pretty attuned to the way in which riders feel when they're in the car. I really noticed that in this conversation, whether it's for lift silver or others, people do have mixed feelings about Waymo. There are mixed feelings about autonomous cars. What's your gut? What's your intuition on adoption of this? 

David Risher   (19:50):
I think net net it will be a dramatic market expander, 

(19:56)
But I think you are absolutely right to say it won't be universally felt. And I think if you look at, for example, the experience, the autonomous vehicle experience right now, and I've used them myself. I talk to a lot of people, there are things that they like and then there are things that make them a little nervous. And then there's something that they don't talk about that I want to get to in a second. What they typically say they like is, it does feel safe. It really does because remember, abs not only know the rules, they follow the rules, and human beings are a little bit more whatever, open-minded sometimes about which rules they follow, what they don't. So it feels sort of predictable and reliable in that way. And then people will tell you, and I understand why, that they like this experience of being kind of in their own bubble. 

(20:45)
They don't have to worry about anyone else overhearing a conversation. They can adjust the music in the way they like and so forth. So from that experience, it feels good. I think of course it's novel and kind of mind blowing the first time you do it. So all of these reasons are reasons why we're super interested in having avs on our platform so that you can open up lift and if you want to choose an av, and I think it'd be really cool, as you say, starting in Atlanta, then moving to Texas and ultimately of course nationwide over the next decade or so. But there is something that you lose, and this is actually quite important to understand, which is that you lose that little bit of human connection. Now you might say to yourself, well, I don't want that connection. I don't really need to have a conversation with the driver. 

(21:25)
But I will tell you a funny thing, which is that when I ask people, riders about the best Lyft driver they've ever taken, it always includes the driver. It always includes the driver. It's somewhat interesting conversation I learned about him or her. They got me where I wanted to go a little extra foot on the gas. They knew I was in a big hurry and I made my plane as a result. We stayed friends, we got married. I mean, crazy things happened. They helped me deliver my child. Literally that happened to. So I think there's a whole set of things. I think what we're really excited about is kind of this hybrid world where if you want Navy, get an Navy and be the best experience, we can make it. If you want a driver, get a driver. If you want someone to help you with the luggage, do that. Maybe again, your grandmother prefers someone in the car to help her in and out. I'm super excited about that 

Ann Berry (22:09):
Future. I do want to just try and bring this all together. David, you've said publicly that the goal for Lyft isn't just to beat Uber and you're doing so much to drive growth. You're doing so much to diversify. What is the end goal if it's not necessarily to be bigger, what is it to be more profitable? Is it to be more mission-driven? The point for you? 

David Risher   (22:34):
So I think the most durable businesses, the ones that really last for tens if not hundreds of years, are the ones that really figure out how to connect with a certain population, typically a large population, and continue to sort of innovate on their behalf, do stuff ahead of what they want and keep. And you can look at companies that are quite famous now that are still relatively recent, like an Apple or an Amazon or companies that have been around for a long, long time like a General Motors or a Ford. Typically these are companies that are doing really good work over long periods of time. And so when I think of Lyft's purpose beyond just maximizing value for shareholders beyond just quarter to quarter growth, all these things that are sort of more short term and financially oriented, typically, I think of two words really importantly, serve and connect. 

(23:25)
I want to serve rider and drivers better than they've ever been served before. And I want to connect people with the places they love, the people they love, the things they love to do. And I really think, and I'm quite passionate about this, I think as our world gets more sort of tech heavy, which of course it will, I think there needs to be almost a sort of an opposing force that says, yes, of course use technology, use the phone, but use the phone to get through it and get out in the world and experience the real world. If you look at real world experiences versus virtual, you typically find the real world are the better ones. So anyway, I think that's going to be what we do for many, many years. Things are going to change, technology is going to change, modes of transportation are going to change, but I think as long as we're serving and connecting, we're going to do just fine. 

Ann Berry (24:06):
I want to touch on your career path, David, because it's quite unique. I think, when I think about leaders in tech talking about mission and purpose. I don't think it's a controversial thing to say that there's a degree of healthy skepticism around whether they mean it, but your background's fascinating. Your last corporate role was in Amazon, you left in 2002, and since then you've been in the nonprofit world. So I have two questions for you. What was the board's reaction or thinking about taking someone who'd been out of the corporate world for 22 years and bringing them back to the big job at Lyft? Number one, because that could not have been an easy board discussion. And then number two, what's it like? Has that period, it was World Reader, which you founded, how has that been transferable? 

David Risher   (24:57):
Yeah, so great questions and something I think about from time to time. So look, I'll tell you the story briefly of how I got the job. As you mentioned, I had been running a nonprofit that I founded, world Reader, whose mission is to get kids reading all over the world using technology. By the way, originally Kindle is now cell phones. We've reached over 22 million kids so far. So 22 million people, which is so extraordinary and it's still growing and going great. And that's a real passion of mine. I've been a reader all my life. I was asked to join the board maybe four years ago or so by the founders of the company of this company, Lyft, John, and Logan, who realized something I think quite perceptive, which is that boards can be very focused on strategy and very focused on financial engineering and stability and so on. 

(25:44)
But typically they're not very customer focused. They're fairly far removed from the customer. And because of my experience primarily at Amazon, but even at World Reader, I would argue I've really had to be very, very close to customers for many years. And so anyway, they wanted that expertise to the board, which was wonderful and very flattering to be asked. So I was on the board for a couple of years and then one day John and Logan decided that they were going to step down and had been their only job for many years since graduated from college actually. And they were kind of ready for the next thing. The board started to execute a search. I wasn't on the search committee, I was just sort of watching from afar and kind of noticing that they were finding some pretty amazing people to talk to, which was great. 

(26:21)
And then something very surprising happened literally on Valentine's Day of two years ago, 2023, my phone rings and the board chair says David, John Logan and I have been talking the board chair's named Sean. So Sean, John and Logan are all kind of on this call, Sean's call, but they've been talking anyway, saying, David, we'd like you to consider applying for the job of CEO. And I said, absolutely not. That's just ridiculous. What are you talking about? I run a nonprofit. I've been doing this for the last decades. It's my life's work. And anyway, no, but they said, no, you should really consider this your background at Microsoft. You had to compete very hard against other companies. Your background at Amazon where I worked for Jeff for a long time, really understanding customer obsession. And I think equally importantly, your background running World Reader, which is a very mission-based organization, of course seems like a perfect fit for us. 

(27:09)
So anyway, after telling 'em, I thought it was a big waste of time for them to even be having a conversation. One thing led to another, but then right to the core of your question, and I'll stop here, but I think the board was honestly mixed. I had to interview with every board member, and some were clearly skeptical, not because they didn't know me, they knew me as a board member, but they certainly didn't think of me as a ceo o, nor did I. Then I had to do sort of a group presentation on sort of a hundred day plan. It was really quite a thing. But the thing that they did, which was very clever, is they said, just to be clear, you have to apply. You're not getting the job. You have to apply for jobs. So I got competitive. So I guess they like what they saw and here I am. But it was quite an interesting process 

Ann Berry (27:48):
And sort of hidden away in that. David, you described without saying Specificly, something that you have referred to as Falcon Mode as something that's part of your leadership style. Just real quick, talk to us about what Falcon mode is. I think it's fascinating. 

David Risher   (28:03):
Yeah. The idea is a Falcon typically lives thousands of feet above sea level, above land level actually, because they're, they're migrating and they're flying, they're doing their thing, but eventually they get hungry, so they have to come to ground. So the question is how from whatever, 2000 feet, a thousand feet, I'm not quite sure how high they fly. How do you decide when to come down and how to focus on something and then grab it and then get back up as quick as possible where there are no predators or where you're most comfortable. So this is sort of a metaphor I use from time to time about deciding when to kind of dive deep in an area, and you have to use it judiciously, right? If you're always down at the one foot level, you're people who work for you don't tend to like that a whole lot, but if you're always up here, I don't think you really know what's really going on. And so I see people make mistakes on both sides. So that's kind of the sort of idea. And yeah, that's just that 

Ann Berry (29:05):
There's a whole separate podcast. We need to have on four mode. You'll have to be ya and Oracle guest on that one. We are going to finish up with some rapid fire questions. And the first one is, which company do you most admire? And you cannot say Lift. That is a cheat answer. And 

David Risher   (29:21):
I am so bummed that I cannot say lift because that is the answer, but I will try to accommodate the question. This is not a controversial or bold statement. Starbucks I think is an extraordinary organization, 

(29:35)
And I think they're an extraordinary organization because they have taken effectively a commodity. They have made it over many, many years, and it's something much, much more than that for a time, sort of a third place to be and so forth. And I see this even in my own neighborhood with kids coming in and hanging out there, they managed to sell a sort of basic product at a premium price over at time. They continue to innovate. Look what they've done with drive-throughs, look what they've done with their loyalty program. I think they've done a very good job. And then they've withstood changes of leadership and Howard Schultz coming and going, coming and going, all this sort of thing. So I think it's quite a resilient company. I think it does a great job for both as a business but also for their customers. 

Ann Berry (30:16):
Back to your point on durability and what builds a durable business, David, what is your dream lift vehicle? You can pick any, make any model. That's your Lyft car. 

David Risher   (30:27):
I mean, the problem is it doesn't exist yet. 

Ann Berry (30:29):
That's okay. 

David Risher   (30:30):
I so want. Okay, cool. I want a flying car. 

Ann Berry (30:33):
Oh, fantastic. I 

David Risher   (30:33):
Want a flying car. I absolutely do. Sitting in traffic is no fun. I just drove this past weekend and I was coming back across the Bay Bridge and in San Francisco and what should have been a five minute thing was it's just a nightmare of a 20 minute. It just grind because of traffic and Toll Plaza and stuff. I just wanted to just get up about 15 feet above and just cruise. It would've just been an amazing experience. 

Ann Berry (30:54):
I've wanted one since reading Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a child, by the way. So I'm with you. And last question, if you were to be a Lyft driver in just one city for the rest of your life, which would it be? 

David Risher   (31:06):
I have to pick Barcelona Bar. I lived in Barcelona, my family and I lived in Barcelona for a number of years. And as much as I love San Francisco, as much as I love New York much, especially, I think London is one of the world's great cities. I think Barcelona's got it 

Ann Berry (31:16):
All. Oh, it does. It's got a special soul Barcelona. That's a great answer. David. Richard, thank you for joining. Thank you for bringing such great energy, a great studio and a fantastic shirt. I felt I just had to say that. We'll say at the end, come back 

David Risher   (31:29):
At you. 

Ann Berry (31:30):
Thank you very much. I'm Anne Berry. Thanks for tuning into After earnings, the show that brings you up close and personal with the executives behind the world's most interesting publicly traded companies. If you learn something today, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with your friends. Upcoming episodes will feature CEOs and CFOs from Carver and Block and many more. Come back and we'll see you next time.