Lyft CEO David Risher oversees a rideshare operation with more than 1 million drivers, but about every six weeks, or whenever he can find time, Risher gets behind the wheel of his own car to do the same thing as the company’s contractors. Along the way, he said, he’s been astonished by the make-or-break nature of a Lyft ride.
“The most surprising thing is we are a really important part of a lot of people’s lives.” Risher told Fortune. “I think it’s sometimes easy to overlook that.”
Risher recalled picking up a customer at 9:30 a.m. in “a not very beautiful part of town in San Francisco” and asked him why he takes Lyft. The passenger said arriving at work on time was crucial to keeping his job.
“He said: ‘Look, if I get there at 10:01, I’m fired. I got to get there by 10 o’clock. And public transportation—as much as I’d like to use it because it’s less expensive—it’s not reliable enough,’” Risher said.
Risher took the helm of the rideshare company from cofounders Logan Green and John Zimmer in 2023 when Lyft was losing ground to Uber and struggling to turn a profit. In the nearly three years Risher has been CEO, Lyft’s stock has risen more than 75%. Lyft launched Lyft Teen on Monday, a feature that allows 13- to 17-year-olds to hail rides on the app, a reversal of the company’s policy requiring adult supervision for minors. Uber launched a similar feature for the younger age demographic in 2023. Over the summer, Alphabet-owned Waymo also introduced teen accounts in some parts of the country.
Risher previously told Fortune that acting as a driver periodically enables him to target areas for improvement within the company. He picked up a woman in Sausalito, Calif., one morning, who told him if the price for a ride gets too expensive, she’ll drive herself to work and find her own parking spot. From his conversation, Risher said he learned customers are vehemently against surge pricing, which informed the decision to implement a price lock feature on the app.
“I drive to learn, not to earn,” he said. “But I really want to learn about what the driver experience is like and what the rider experience is like.”
Full-circle career moment
Before Risher got behind the wheel of a Lyft, he was no stranger to the gig economy and delivered copies of the Washington Post as his first job. Through high school and college, the CEO worked as a waiter and in food service. He drove a used Honda Accord that his mother, who primarily raised him, bought from her ex-boyfriend. Risher said if Lyft was around during his upbringing, it would have been preferred by his mother, who wanted to avoid the expense of an extra car.
“That would have been great for her, and frankly, great for me,” he said.
After earning his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1991, Risher worked at Microsoft in its early days and served as Amazon’s senior vice president of U.S. retail under Jeff Bezos from 1997 to 2002.
Risher’s career came full-circle when Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, became Risher’s boss. Risher said Bezos’s business advice still informs his decisions at Lyft: “Bet on the things that never change, and build products for things that never change.”
