This chapter recounts the transition from board member to CEO, detailing the unexpected offer and the tough decisions that followed. It emphasizes the challenges of leading a troubled company, including market valuation issues, workforce reductions, and the critical focus on customer obsession and effective pricing strategies.
Guest: David Risher, CEO of Lyft
David Risher can measure his career in phone calls, from the one that introduced him to Jeff Bezos in 1995, to the call from the Lyft board in 2023, asking him to vie for the CEO job. But initially, he believed his life’s legacy might be the nonprofit Worldreader, which has brought books to more than 22 million readers around the globe; he had to convince himself that turning Lyft around during one of its most difficult eras was also a call worth answering.
In this episode, David and Joubin discuss reliable exercise, pickleball, Sean Aggarwal, John Zimmer and Logan Green, return to office, Women+ Connect, reference checks, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Adam Bosworth, interracial marriages, children of divorce, powdered wigs, Barnes & Noble, the University of Washington, Barcelona, the Galapagos Islands, Amazon’s Kindle, Steve Kessel, expat talent, Bucky Moore, rideshare insurance, robo-taxis, Elon Musk, and data science.
Chapters:
- (00:45) - Biking to work — and across the US
- (03:44) - Lyft Bikes
- (07:35) - How David became CEO
- (12:18) - 14 months later...
- (15:28) - Customer obsession
- (17:40) - Jeff Bezos
- (21:00) - Leaving Microsoft
- (24:28) - Drive + empathy
- (27:39) - David’s parents
- (30:38) - Being straightforward
- (36:20) - Loving the Work
- (38:42) - Amazon’s early days
- (40:49) - Bezos’ farewell easter egg
- (43:44) - “What else is out there?”
- (48:36) - Ariel Cohen
- (49:56) - Living overseas
- (53:06) - Starting Worldreader
- (58:15) - The lifelong journey
- (01:00:40) - Growing profitably
- (01:04:09) - Waymo and driverless cars
- (01:10:45) - Physical businesses at scale
- (01:14:03) - Who Lyft is hiring
- (01:15:19) - What “grit” means to David
Links:
Connect with David
Connect with Joubin
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
