Our goal was never to create a better taxi.
We created Lyft because we want to establish a radically different concept of personal transportation. We want people to think of transportation as a service enabled by technology instead of as an expensive and large piece of hardware to own.
We're moving from a centralized understanding of the world to a decentralized understanding of the world.
When we first created the Lyft community, we wanted to make cities feel smaller and more connected by bringing people together through transportation. In 20 months since we launched, we've seen drivers and passengers redefine the true meaning of community through Lyft in countless ways.
But it is as silly to think about peer-to-peer as applying just to music as it would have been to think about the Internet as applying just to pornography. Whatever the initial use of the technology, it has nothing to do with the potential of the architecture to serve many other extremely important functions.
Alternative accommodations is a $100 billion-plus category.
People don't use Airbnb overtly to trust people more. They use it because they want to get a better sense of the culture and to save money. A by-product was that they live in someone else's shoes.
When the idea of 'We' came in, it started as a 'WeBlank: WeWork, WeLive, WeSleep, WeEat.' That was the premise at the very start.
In the big picture, we see WeLive as a huge opportunity, as big as WeWork, for sure.
Insurance and funding traditionally drive capital investment. But in a world based on access, not ownership, the duration, value, cost and extent of financial services is distinctly different.
A new model is starting to take root and grow, one in which consumers have more choices, more tools, more information, and more power to guide these choices. I call this emerging model 'The Mesh.'
Transportation is going to transition from ownership to transportation as a service. What is the best model to address the largest part of that market? We believe it's peer-to-peer.
Every mom in a minivan, every person commuting - anytime they are on the road, they should be able to go into driver mode and give a ride to a neighbor. That's how we achieve scale.
Every time we share something rather than own it ourselves, we reduce the stress on the planet. That could make the critical difference as the global population continues to grow.
