Zimride

Last updated
Zimride
Company typeRideshare
Industry Service
FoundedMay 22, 2007;16 years ago (2007-05-22)
Headquarters San Francisco, California, U.S.
Key people
 Logan Green, co-founder
John Zimmer, co-founder
Rajat Suri, co-founder
ProductsRideshare
Parent Enterprise Holdings
Website www.zimride.com

Zimride by Enterprise Holdings was an American carpool program that matched inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It was offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. [1] [2] [3] The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. [4] [5] As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and had partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar. [6] [7] [8] [9]

Contents

In January 2015, the service removed the public ride sharing option and was offered solely as a matching service within universities and businesses. [10] On December 31, 2020, Zimride suspended their Service indefinitely according to an announcement on their homepage. [11]

History

Beginnings

The company was founded by Logan Green, John Zimmer, and Rajat Suri. [12] Green developed Zimride after sharing rides from the University of California, Santa Barbara campus to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles. He had used Craigslist's ride boards, but wanted to eliminate the anxiety of not knowing the passenger or driver. He began working on the app after Facebook opened its API to third-party developers. [13]

Zimmer was inspired by the empty seats he had during his commute from Upstate New York to New York City while an analyst at Lehman Brothers. As a student at Cornell University, Zimmer took classes on transportation. [14] After learning of the progression from canals to railroads to highways, he viewed ridesharing as the next step towards efficiency. [15] Noting that 80% of the seats on American highways are empty, Zimmer asserted that ridesharing is "a huge opportunity to create efficiency to save a lot of money and to reduce our environmental footprint. [16]

Zimmer and Green were introduced through a mutual friend and met on Facebook. [15] Green had posted details about his new company called "Zimride", which interested Zimmer, who had been keeping a journal about carpooling ideas. [17] The company name comes from the country Zimbabwe, where Green had observed locals develop a grassroots public transportation system. [15]

Investments

In 2007, Zimride raised $250,000 in seed money from Facebook's fbFund, expanded to six employees, [18] and took on Stanford and Dartmouth as clients. [2] [19] fbFund selected Zimride, along with ten other startups, out of 1,000 applicants. [20]

In August 2010, Zimride announced a $1.2 million round of seed funding from FLOODGATE, K9 Ventures, Keith Rabois, and Teddy Downey. [21] In 2011, Zimride closed a $6 million Series A round of funding from the Mayfield Fund, FLOODGATE, and K9 Ventures, bringing their total investments to $7.5 million. [19]

Growth

In 2007, Green and Zimmer launched the first version of the rideshare program at Cornell University; in six months, the service had signed up 20% of the student body. [2] [8] [22] Green and Zimmer promoted the service through guerrilla marketing; in particular, the pair would dress in frog suits and hand out flyers to Cornell students. [17] Later, while on a Lehman Brothers recruiting trip, Zimmer was recognized by a potential recruit, who had seen him wearing a frog suit on campus. [17] By 2007, Zimride was active on both Cornell's and UCSB's campuses. [16] Zimmer later quit his job at Lehman Brothers to work with Green full-time on Zimride. [2] [23]

In April 2012, Zimride had 29 employees, and had facilitated more than 26,000 carpools. [24] [25] The service is active at over 125 universities including USC, University of Minnesota, UCLA, UCSF, Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. [15] [17] [21] [26] Universities pay around $10,000 per year to use the platform. [27] Travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles was the most popular route on Zimride. [16]

In 2012, Zimride redesigned its website for use on smartphone web browsers. [28] The new version of the site was designed by LinkedIn's mobile product and design lead Frank Yoo. [28]

Lyft and sale to Enterprise Holdings

A car with a distinctive pink mustache that indicates its owner is sharing it through Lyft. Lyft Car Pink Mustache.jpg
A car with a distinctive pink mustache that indicates its owner is sharing it through Lyft.

In May 2012, Zimride announced Lyft, which allowed users to request a driver immediately and receive a ride anywhere. [29] After the rapid growth of Lyft, led the company Zimride was renamed to Lyft in May 2013, and ultimately Zimride the service (excluding Lyft) was sold to Enterprise Holdings on July 13, 2013. [5] [30]

Structure

Users first selected a network that a given corporation or university had set up. A driver could post a trip and available seats in his or her car, along with personal details like smoking and musical preferences, allowing passengers to find a match for the destination. [31] The service only connected people that work at the same company or go to the same school, reducing anxiety and lack of trust which according to Zimmer, was the number one reason for past carpooling failure. [15] [13] [32]

Creating a Zimride profile is free. [15] The site uses an algorithm that accounts for the distance to pick someone up and the time for detouring to a passenger drop-off point. [16] [33] The site then ranks the options and assigns a score to the best matches. [16] Drivers decide what to charge passengers, although Zimride offers suggested charges based on gas costs. [34] Passengers can pay with PayPal or credit card, and will receive a full refund if the driver fails to pick up. [35] The routes between San Francisco and Los Angeles and San Francisco to Lake Tahoe are both public routes, which means drivers can sell seats in their cars to buyers, who purchase the trip like a plane ticket. [17] The majority of Zimride users are women. [36]

Zipcar partnership

In 2009, Zimride partnered with Zipcar to allow customers who have rented out a Zipcar to bring passengers on trips. [33] The plan originated years before when Zimmer reached out to Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith while working at Lehman Brothers. [17]

Results and reception

The site had over 350,000 registered users as of July 2013. [28] Representatives at the University of Southern California note that Zimride is "a lot different than reading a blank ad. It's been received well on campus". [15] Reuters noted "The Zimride brand promise is to reduce CO2 emissions, lower the annual strain on our transportation infrastructure and help everyone involved save money. They just may have a shot at making carpooling sexy". [15] In 2009, Zimmer and Green were named finalists in Business Week's list of America's Best Young Entrepreneurs. [27]

Zimride has partnered with concert company Live Nation and music festivals Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Lollapalooza to hold ridesharing contests that award users with prizes. [7] [37] [38] Zimride has also partnered with Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews Band, and Sheryl Crow to provide ridesharing to their events. [24]

Zimride users sometimes become friends with their passengers or drivers. [16] [25] Zimmer's goal for Zimride was to bring "communities together and help people save money".

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carpool</span> Sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car

Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves. Carpooling is considered a Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) service

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slugging</span> Informal carpools for commuting

Slugging, also known as casual carpooling, is the practice of forming ad hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. A driver picks up these non-paying passengers at key locations, as having these additional passengers means that the driver can qualify to use an HOV lane or enjoy toll reduction. While the practice is most common and most publicized in the congested Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, slugging also occurs in San Francisco, Houston, and other cities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyft</span> American ride-sharing company

Lyft, Inc. is an American company offering mobility as a service, ride-hailing, vehicles for hire, motorized scooters, a bicycle-sharing system, rental cars, and food delivery in the United States and select cities in Canada. Lyft sets fares, which vary using a dynamic pricing model based on local supply and demand at the time of the booking and are quoted to the customer in advance, and receives a commission from each booking. Lyft is the second-largest ridesharing company in the United States after Uber.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Zimmer</span> Co-founder and president of Lyft

John Zimmer is the co-founder and former president of Lyft, an on-demand transportation company, which he founded with Logan Green in 2012.

PickupPal Online Incorporated was a free online ridesharing service, that allowed its members to coordinate carpooling and ridesharing activities around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shared transport</span> Demand-driven vehicle-sharing arrangement

Shared transport or shared mobility is a transportation system where travelers share a vehicle either simultaneously as a group or over time as personal rental, and in the process share the cost of the journey, thus purportedly creating a hybrid between private vehicle use and mass or public transport. It is a transportation strategy that allows users to access transportation services on an as-needed basis. Shared mobility is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of transportation modes including carsharing, Bicycle-sharing systems, ridesharing companies, carpools, and microtransit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turo (company)</span> American peer-to-peer car rental company

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carma</span> Irish transportation technology company

Carma Technology Corporation is a real-time transportation technology company headquartered in Cork, Ireland. Its flagship product, Carma Carpooling, matches users with nearby commuters and enables them to share the cost of driving. Carma also has offices in San Francisco, California and Austin, Texas.

carpooling.com was a carpooling service that connected drivers and passengers so they can share a ride. It was Europe's largest carpooling network. In 2015, it was acquired and folded into BlaBlaCar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wingz (company)</span> Vehicle for hire company

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logan Green</span> American entrepreneur

Logan D. Green is the chairman and former CEO of Lyft, which he co-founded with John Zimmer in 2012. Lyft grew out of Zimride, a ride share company previously founded by the duo in 2007.

Sidecar was a US-based vehicle for hire company that provided transportation and delivery services. It was founded in 2011 in San Francisco and closed on December 31, 2015.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ridesharing company</span> Online vehicle for hire service

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BlaBlaCar is an online marketplace for carpooling headquartered in Paris. Its website and mobile apps connect drivers and passengers willing to travel together between cities and share the cost of the journey, in exchange for a commission of between 18% and 21%. It also operates BlaBlaBus, an intercity bus service. The platform has 26 million active members and is available Europe and Latin America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vugo (company)</span> Software company developing rideshare advertising platform, based in Minneapolis

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References

  1. ↑ Car Sharing and Pooling: Reducing Car Over-Population and Collaborative Consumption Archived November 23, 2014, at the Wayback Machine . Stanford University. April 9, 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Sullivan, Colin. Startup Bets that Social Networking Will Spur Carpool Craze. New York Times. July 29, 2009.
  3. ↑ Raymond, Rose. Stop Job Costs from Sucking Up Your Salary. Fox Business. April 19, 2012.
  4. ↑ Yeung, Ken (2013-07-12). "Lyft Founders Sell Carpooling Startup Zimride To Enterprise Rent-A-Car". The Next Web. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  5. 1 2 "Lyft-Off: Zimride's Long Road To Overnight Success". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  6. ↑ Lazlo, Luz. Zimride offers college students cheap -- and checked out -- rides. The Washington Post. December 30, 2011.
  7. 1 2 Nelder, Chris. Bikes, Car Shares and Buses: The New Transportation Era is Here Archived May 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine . The Txchnologist. April 17, 2012.
  8. 1 2 Kessler, Sarah. Zimride Brings Carpooling to the Masses. Mashable. August 17, 2011.
  9. ↑ "Why Enterprise Bought Ride Share Upstart Zimride | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News". WNYC. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  10. ↑ "Zimride Is Closing Its Public Ride-Sharing Service To Focus On Corporates And Students". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  11. ↑ "Important Update". Zimride. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
  12. ↑ Susskind, Alex M.; Maynard, Mark (2019). The next frontier of restaurant management : harnessing data to improve guest service and enhance the employee experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN   978-1-5017-3652-0. OCLC   1075077371.
  13. 1 2 Bell, Josh. Two Startups Harness Facebook's Power to Connect Riders to Rides. ABC News. September 4, 2007.
  14. ↑ Shaughnessy, Haydn. How to Win Friends AND Cut your Travel Costs. Forbes. November 18, 2011.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cohen, Deborah. Former Lehman's banker drives startup Zimride. Reuters. September 15, 2010.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Booking a ride in someone else's car. Smart Planet. April 9, 2012.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Shah, Semil. Why Zimride's John Zimmer Left Wall Street to Start a Company. TechCrunch. April 19, 2012.
  18. ↑ Warren, Katie. "How Lyft's cofounders, Logan Green and John Zimmer, went from organizing carpools on college campuses to running a ride-hailing company worth $29 billion". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
  19. 1 2 Garthwaite, Josie. With $6 million in New Financing, Zimride has some Car Seats to Fill. New York Times. September 21, 2011.
  20. ↑ Zimride mini-doc @fbFund Rev 2009. fbFund REV. April 13, 2010.
  21. 1 2 Tsotsis, Alexia. Carpool Community Zimride Lands $1.2 Million In Seed Funding. TechCrunch. August 23, 2010.
  22. ↑ Schomer, Stephanie. Zimride: Carpooling for College Students Archived 2012-06-15 at the Wayback Machine . Fast Company. January 5, 2011.
  23. ↑ Eldridge, Andrea. Compute: Recycle electronics and make greenbacks. East Valley Tribune. April 6, 2012.
  24. 1 2 Takahashi, Dean. Zimride raises $6M for ride-sharing car service. VentureBeat. September 21, 2011.
  25. 1 2 New, Catherine. Apps Give Carpooling a New Twist, With Same Old Headaches. Huffington Post. April 3, 2012.
  26. ↑ Hargarten, Jeff. UMN Morris acquires ride-sharing network Archived 2012-06-05 at the Wayback Machine . Minnesota Daily. October 7, 2011.
  27. 1 2 2009 Finalists: America's Best Young Entrepreneurs Business Week.
  28. 1 2 3 Empson, Rip. Zimride Goes Mobile. Tech Crunch. April 5, 2012.
  29. ↑ Cutler, Kim-Mai. Zimride's Lyft Is Going To Give Uber Some Lower-Priced Competition. TechCrunch. May 22, 2012.
  30. ↑ "Enterprise acquires Zimride ride-matching business". St. Louis Post-Dispatch . July 12, 2013.
  31. ↑ Carpenter, Susan. Here's a (cheap, green) ticket to ride form S.F. to L.A. Los Angeles Times. August 17, 2011.
  32. ↑ Kwan, Connie. Zimride's John Zimmer. Triple Pundit. November 1, 2010.
  33. 1 2 Nassauer, Sarah. Zipcar Plans Partnership With Zimride. Wall Street Journal. April 8, 2009.
  34. ↑ Koskey, Andrea. Website hooks up Bay Area drivers Archived October 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine . San Francisco Examiner. December 28, 2011.
  35. ↑ Schwartz, Ariel. Ridesharing apps that could change the way you get to work. Fast Company.
  36. ↑ Logan Green – Zimride Archived 2017-08-17 at the Wayback Machine . Founderly. April 18, 2012.
  37. ↑ Getting to the Festival Archived May 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine . Coachella.
  38. ↑ Getting Here. Lollapalooza.
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