Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Angel

John Zimmer is the co-founder and President of Lyft, the on-demand ridesharing platform, that was founded in 2007 with Zimride as its first of two products built to create a more social, sustainable and affordable transportation system.

John’s interest in peer-to-peer transportation began at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. Upon learning that only 20% of seats in cars on highways are occupied, he began working on ways to use existing information infrastructures to solve the problem of unused empty seats. After graduating first in his class, John spent two years at Lehman Brothers before (luckily) leaving to rideshare his way from New York to San Francisco to join co-founder Logan Green in launching Zimride. John was recognized in 2009 as one of Businessweek's Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25, and has spoken at top tier events such as SXSW, The Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT) International Conference and Stanford Business School.

With Lyft, John hopes to fix the current state of transportation across the country, and eventually around the world, to make cities safer, more affordable and better connected. Since unveiling the product in June 2012, Lyft has quickly become one of the fastest-growing tech companies with more than $80 million raised from leading investors Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund and has been featured in The Economist, the New York Times and on NBC’s TODAY Show. Lyft is currently available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C., with more than a million rides shared on the platform to date.