YouSaid · the spoken record

John Zimmer

lines on the record: 90
first: 2025-10-23
most recent: 2025-10-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, so we're a bootstrap startup, as I mentioned, and we consistently are selling out of inventory due to demand, but we have limited capital. The current tariff policies are exacerbating the problem with the uncertainty around our capital needs. Delivery delays due to related increased customs inspections activity, what strategies or funding options would you recommend so we confront our inventory investment needs, reliably meet demand and grow sustainably?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, that's awesome. And so I've got weighted vests, and I'm just curious, and forgive me, I just don't know, right? How would it be designed different for a woman”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rook stars. Okay, I love it. So these are way to backpacks rucking, right? Awesome. Great for zone two exercise. You just put like strap one on and then you take a walk and it increases your heart rate. Tell me, how did you get into this?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There you go. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another collar, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raw, stick around. You're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Ros, and my guest today is John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft, and we are taking your calls, and we are ready for our next caller. Hello, welcome to the advice line around with John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. Tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you know why? Because the guy's name is Tim Leatherman. That's why it's called the Leatherman. Yeah. A perfect name for the knife, and his name is Tim Leatherman.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I like that. I really love when you've got a founder who's invented something. You know, most of the time it's engineers and They just know how to build stuff. Dyson, Litter Robot, we've had Leatherman, the Leatherman knife. Do you know why it's called the Leather”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's why, I mean, I think there's a few different approaches. I do think focus matters, particularly when you're a team of one. But I imagine there is a bigger opportunity or an additional opportunity beyond mobility. So that's why the initial thought was run a few experiments with AdWords, Google AdWords or some other product like that or something on Amazon. You can market it in a couple different ways and understand your cost to acquire that customer. you know, for the thousand people or the 10,000 people that saw the ad, how many clicked, how many purchased and what was the cost to find them, that would be really interesting information to me if I was making a decision about going wider at this point.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, John, I'm just curious if you're looking at a product like this, right? I mean, it does make sense. You want to come to the U.S. market, and there are all these use cases, but, I mean, what do you think? I mean, should he spend most of his time focusing on retirement communities, people with mobility issues, every hotel you go to has an ADA rooms and things like that? I could see this in Marriott comfort-ins and residence inns and stuff like that.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think if you find the right maybe up and comer who's excited entrepreneurial and could have those longer lead time conversations with you or for you, because I agree with the sentiment. Both Alan, I think your pushback is good on focus. Focus is really, really important. And you're kind of winning in that category. But the number of beds you just outlined, that's a pretty exciting opportunity. And so if someone could be And I think in the US, it's pretty consolidated. Obviously, there's a long tail, but there are some players that have a lot of those care facilities. And so those feel like really good conversations to be having.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, at this point, John, I'm thinking he's got to take the leap and hire like a BizDev person. I don't know. What do you think in terms of, I mean, it's hard because it's still a small business and he doesn't want to lose, you know, it's risky. You got to pay somebody, but maybe there's a way to attract somebody to do business development and give them some equity.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's really smart. I think back to some of the episodes we've done like Peloton, or even Warby Parker, Peloton started with Sirius Cyclists, like hardcore athletes, and then it became a huge fitness thing for mass consumers. Even Warby Parker was for a certain kind of person frustrated with expensive glasses, and now it's a brand. It's a fashion brand, right? Like it's just you go in and you get, it's everywhere. I think that really leaning into that category of mobility, people who need extra help, that's a really smart play. I'm curious, are there, I mean, I have to imagine in the UK there are, like in the US, retirement villages and large care facilities, have you tried to connect with some of these places to see if there is a world where you've got large orders?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it is one of the many business books you read that says when you've got a product that can do everything, pick one thing and really focus on it so that I decided to focus on mobility as a starting point.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I would, I think there are obviously very low cost ways to bring this to the US. Maybe that it doesn't give you the same amount of margin, but at least you're learning. And so I would want to like test and learn as I expand into a big market because, you know, one risk of going too wide early is that, you know, maybe you're tweaking the product or the way you market it and can do it more efficiently. balanced with i think uh it's exciting to see the fast start so i wouldn't i wouldn't wait too long”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a really good idea Yeah, so I mean, my quick reaction is I would want to run a few tests on the different use cases. So now I didn't even think of until you said that the dog use case and the luxury use case to really understand kind of what's your cost per acquiring a new customer. And it feels like that could be easier to do it in your current home market and really understand the Unit economics of, okay, I want to go find that luxury user. I want to go find that dog washer. But to understand those basic economics, I think in the way you ask the question, I don't know that you need to set up the warehousing yourself, whether you think about using someone either like a third party logistics solution or Shopify or Amazon.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it's perfect for my daughter. Oh, that's a really good idea. I cannot keep my dog still because this was perfect for my dog.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. And I love the kind of personal story of why it's meaningful to you, Alan. I think a lot of the best products and businesses come from a passionate place. So I loved hearing that you built it for a family member.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how do you and should you get into the US market and obviously make sense? You've got 65 million people in Britain, but I mean, 330 million in the US, right? It's a market that everybody wants to come to. John Zimmer, I want to bring you in. Have you seen this? Are you looking at their website? Have you seen this?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so tell me where the business is at right now. You've got this thing. I'm assuming you're selling mainly online.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awesome. I'm bootstrapping. Reminds me of another great British adventure, James Dyson, who was on our show many years ago. I mean, did the same thing and he struggled and struggled. He spent all his cash and then, of course, that vacuum cleaner went crazy. It's now the base vacuum brand in the world.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love this. So, all right, so I'm looking at your website now. So now I can see it. It is basically a soap dispenser that you connect, just screw into the shower. Yes, handheld that you attach. And tell me how did you fund it? I mean, did you raise money? How did you get this manufactured?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You just turn it off. All right. You're not just like in suds all that. Okay, so this is like a device that you screw onto the pipes. Yeah.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's a showerhead that basically takes the soap, like the shower gel or shower soap, and then combines it with the water. And so you're just getting sprayed with the...”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, welcome to the advice line. You're on with John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one line about your business.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's, I mean, absolutely critical. And I think we're going to probably talk a bit more about that. Why don't we bring in our first call? Are you ready?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it really comes back to the basics of sleep, diet, and exercise. And it's, I don't want to blame externalities. Like I myself was putting a lot of pressure on myself. Like, I should be working at all hours to make this succeed. I have a lot of people depending on me. People have invested in the business and I want them to do well. I want drivers and riders to be safe and do well. So it felt selfish almost to take time for myself. But I think the main learning is if I don't do that, if I don't get the necessary sleep exercise and nutrients, then I'm not going to be able to better serve all those different populations. So it's really, really basic. But in the storm, hard to see.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You also mentioned just the challenges of lift, and I know I've seen you from time to time over the years, and it's a big job. And Lyft is an amazing brand. I still use it, just use it from the airport recently, just actually last week. And you have been pretty open about the mental health struggles that you face, right? Because a lot of people, even around you, they look to you, you're the leader, you've got to be strong, you've got to be decisive, but then you come home at night and you're like, I can't sleep. My brain is reeling, or I've got anxiety. And it happens to all of us, right? What do you think Would have been helpful for you to know, or I guess what would you have done differently?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think that's a great outcome. I mean, you can build a successful business off it, but what we're seeing in food is that, you know, more and more people are looking for healthy outcomes. And so I said, well, how could we create multiple consumer businesses that are tuned to the modern world of social media, internet, and AI, but that have self-fulfilling very positive outcomes? So simply, you know, we're creating a platform to help more and more people build those type of businesses.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so just at a high level, I got to zoom out a lot during that time. And to the point of thinking about capitalism as a whole. And I remember listening to a speech from Malay, the leader in Argentina, and he gave this speech about how capitalism and entrepreneurship are the most amazing thing ever. And it was actually quite inspiring, but he also just said any form of growth is good. And so I felt like he got 80% of the way there. But if I thought about, well, soda, in my opinion, if you get people to drink a lot of soda, you apply capitalism to sugar water, you get diabetes.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you now made this announcement that you were leaving Lyft in August, you also announced the launch of a new venture called Yes and it said, I think you said something like, I'm going to leave everybody hanging here. What can you tell us about it that you're comfortable talking about now?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so, yeah, it's been a journey since then. But, you know, I advise several entrepreneurs, made some investments and now going back to kind of more full-time work again. And so I love doing it. I love creating businesses with missions that I believe in. And that's the plan.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was. It's a privileged problem to have. But, you know, for three months, I think I felt relief. My shoulders dropped. I was on constant cortisol adrenaline rushes when I was at lift and kind of in this fight or flight mode for many years because of all the early battles you mentioned. And then after those three months of just feeling almost like a physical ah, like I feel a bit relieved, then I felt a little bit lost. And, you know, I'm in the kitchen with my wife talking about how we could, you know, reorganize different canisters. And she's like, you need to do something else.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'd just like to dive into that for a moment because I think a lot of people assume, oh, wow, you know, you build this huge thing and it's a huge brand and then you get to do a victory lap and then you can go and drink margaritas in Mexico. But when you go from working at operating at 100 miles an hour and then all of a sudden... Like you are at home, you wake up, and there is no, all those things that you had to do are gone. You don't have to do them. It's actually really hard.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think the harder step for me was leaving the operating role. It was what I did every day. It gave me a lot of purpose and meaning, you know, outside of my family life. And then going from being, you know, I would argue obsessed with making lift the best possible company it could be to not doing that every day, to having all my time in the day free. It was a hard transition. But the second part of the transition kind of moving off the board was a little less difficult. And I'm also excited about building again.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was very difficult. We love Lyft, love the team, love the CEO, David, who's doing a phenomenal job. But we wanted to both have another chapter in our lives and make sure that Lyft had the right leadership in place for its own next chapter. And we felt that it did. And so we had a two-year process where we went from operating rules to the board and then off the board just a few weeks ago.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The board, and then just last month, I think you both left Lyft entirely. So tell us a little bit about that. Why did you leave? Why was now the right time to do it?”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We first had you on the show back in 2017. You also came to some of the How I Built the Summits, so awesome having you. When you were on the show, and we'll put a link to this episode in the podcast notes, you told us about how you and your friend Logan Green built what started as a carpooling platform, and then you built it into one of the biggest rideshare apps in the world, of course, Lyft. It's an incredible story. You guys went up against so much along the way. There were governments telling you to cease and desist. You had an epic battle with your main competitor, Uber, which was quite ugly. And there's actually sort of a dramatization of this that came out a couple years ago. I thought you came out really nicely in that, actually. Anyway, since then, there's been some pretty big changes since we last spoke. We were president of Lyft. Logan was CEO then in 2023. Both of you guys transitioned to non-executive roles.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Ross. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges each week. I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me today is John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. John, it's great to have you back in the show. Welcome back.”
2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT