YouSaid · the spoken record

Taggart Matthiesen

lines on the record: 79
first: 2017-08-14
most recent: 2017-08-14
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

“I still think so when we talk about commission drivers, I still think drivers will be in this equation. We can talk about the hybrid network. But if you just look at the autonomous vehicles, there is an opportunity for the car to become cheaper in terms of how it is manufactured, and then utilization of these vehicles. So we can get these vehicles into a very high utilization pattern, whether it's 60% or 80%. It's anyone's guess at this point. And then also just kind of positioning of these vehicles as well to ensure that we have the most optimal location for these passenger pickups. So it's a bit of a technology play. It's a bit of a subscription play, and it's a bit of kind of where these vehicles are evolving. And we think the combination of those will help us lower these prices over time.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the goal here is that the vehicles, the technology over time and as we scale will become cheaper and we can further optimize it to improve the pricing that passengers will get in the end.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One is safety. So autonomous vehicles are going to be far safer than anything that's on the road today. And actually, if you look at vehicle fatalities, the last two years we saw the biggest increase, about 14% in over and over 60 years. And that's pretty significant. And I think we have an opportunity, especially with these vehicles, to provide an extremely safe service, even more safe.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, sorry, Lyft absolutely is transportation as a service, but I think of it as almost like a subscription. Right. So that's where I think we evolve. You look at Spotify, you look at Netflix. We become yet another kind of subscription service that is an afterthought. It's a muscle memory of when I go outside. I need to get somewhere, I hop in my lift. And as the technology improves, we have an opportunity to really kind of improve that experience as well. And that's kind of that tighter integration that I was talking about.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A couple sentences. That's totally fine. All right. But yeah, we are evolving into basically a service, a transportation service. And in 10 years or 15 years, this will most likely be an autonomous service in terms of vehicles. The really interesting and exciting opportunity here is changing that experience. So it's not so much about getting someone from point A to point B, but what they can do with that time. And that's where focusing on personalization and whether that's me going from this office back to 185 Berry Street in San Francisco and hopping in an autonomous vehicle and that vehicle already being connected to my email or to my calendar. And for me to be able to take that time back and just kind of focus on work, there's a ton of things that we can do in these vehicles that go far beyond just the very basics of transportation.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In 20 years, I see this as a transportation as a service, very similar to the other service apps that you have, where it is an autonomous fleet of vehicles that provide the ability for you not only to just get from, let's say, point A to point B, which a lot of people think that's just it, but also an entirely different experience. And what do I mean by that? And you just asked for three sentences.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't talk to those areas, but if you look at the past, we've got launches every few months or so, both on the passenger side and the driver's side. And we're going to continue to do that.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you look at our competition, yes, they are going to continue to change in terms of how they push their brand. Again, I look at what we've done, and that is continuing our focus in the experience. So yes, they will change. They will come up with new initiatives. They will come up with a different branding technique. But we continue to look at how do we improve people's lives, both on the passenger and driver side. And I think that just means we need to continue to evolve. We can't just sit where we are today. We have to continue to innovate. And I think that actually is one of the reasons why we focus on autonomous and trying to figure out how do we slowly evolve these self-driving vehicles into our service and our network. So I think the best way to answer your question is, yes, they will evolve. They will change their branding. And we just need to continue to focus on both our passengers and our drivers in terms of improving that experience and improving our network as well, especially with the technology that we have.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, but there's quite a bit of intelligence behind the scenes in terms of how we identify those drivers. I can't get into too much detail. But yeah, we ensure that you as a passenger have a driver come and pick you up in the morning.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is scheduled or is that stupid? No, sorry. So scheduled rise, imagine you need to go to the airport tomorrow at 6 a.m. The nice thing about this is I can go into the app, I can schedule that ride. Let's say I want to.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Improvements in terms of ETAs. So having better supply, as well as just improving the passenger experience as it relates to the app. Calendar integration is a great example that was recently released. I keep coming back to scheduled rides because I use that almost every day. But yeah, it's a continued evolution of ensuring that we provide the right services to our passengers.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a good question. If you look at our strategy and how we're evolving our product, that's not something that we evaluate. And so we are continuing to try to improve the experience. At some point, that stuff will probably fade away. But if you look at the improvements that we have had on our service, I think that's where we would continue to focus.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's largely automated, and we do yearly tests on, we have certain days of the year, Halloween is one, New Year's Eve is one where we see significant amount of traffic on those given days. And we do a significant amount of validation and testing prior to that to make sure that those days are seamless. And so we expect spikes. It's just the nature of our business. And we're able to sustain when we need to enough services to support that added demand.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what did you have to dedicate any more energy to that once you saw it? Because did you, I mean, who could have expected that wave of new users? Is that something that you had to actually dedicate engineers to?”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing that we continue to focus on is, and I look at what's the technology that's supporting us, think of like mapping, locations, ETAs. So we spend a significant amount of effort ensuring first our system can handle this, both on the supply side with drivers for kind of this increased demand, but we're also improving the algorithms that we have behind the scenes to improve ETAs, to improve our kind of comprehension of traffic in terms of routing. And our intelligence around locations as well. And so, yes, we've seen an increase, but we have been focusing on the technology behind it to make sure that our service can scale.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a separate team. I actually was part of the original group working on that before the Autonomous Initiative. But no, we have plenty of product people in engineers that are focusing in these areas.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it says hi Taggart or whoever the passenger is. And it's a pretty interesting beaconing tool. The thing I like about it is if you're in a crowded intersection or an area of the city and you're looking for your vehicle, not only do you have this nice little emitting device in the vehicle, but on the passenger app you can see the same color that's getting flashed. And that helps you kind of disambiguate between some of the vehicles that you may think are coming to pick you up.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, yes, that had an impact, but really, I think the main growth here has been our kind of laser focus into how we create an amazing experience for both on the passenger and driver side. Again, I like looking at what we've done with drivers. We've had over 250 million dollars in tips that drivers have received. I look at some of the things that we've done for passengers, scheduled rides to even the amp, which is kind of our new beaconing tool that we've kind of rolled out to all of the markets, to the point where we, again, you talk about growth, we're doing over a million rides a day. So we've seen some pretty spectacular growth in the last year or so. And I think in terms of, what do you attribute that to? Kind of focusing on our core competency.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've continued to focus on the same kind of core goals that we've had as a company for a very long time. And you look at the experience, you look at how we treat passengers, how we treat drivers. We haven't really changed any of that. Yes, the question around the delete Uber movement. Yes, there was an increase in terms of passenger activations. We saw actually a 60% increase in passenger activations after that. Oh, wow.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. We see it as an extension. And so a lot of people have asked, hey Tigger, how does autonomous fit in with Lyft strategy?”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listeners. Sorry, yes, we should work on that acronym, self-driving system. So imagine it's basically the brain. Right. But we are deeply focused on that and have basically built, even you can call it a unit in terms of we have real estate down in Palo Alto that we're starting to spin up and plan to have hundreds of engineers focusing on this problem in 2018.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say autonomous is one of the key pillars that this organization is focusing on. And so we are dedicating a significant amount of effort. And as part of this SDS announcement, we even have...”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is my focus 100% and actually has been a majority of my focus for about a year and a half now. And so, in terms of day to day responsibilities, what we talked about earlier, again, it's how do we extend our platform, basically our network, as well as starting to build out the capabilities in the vehicle itself.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of the self driving car, the perception, the localization. Yeah, you're not touching that. No, no, we have some very talented people that are focusing on that, but I'm working with them in that area as well.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had a quick conversation with him about two years into my stint at Twitter, got an opportunity to meet John and Logan and Tolly who runs product. And amazing conversations loved what they stood for and kind of the focus and joined Lyft very soon after that. In terms of what I started with, I actually started kind of on the enterprise side on the platform. And your question, hey, Taggart, what is it in your background that allows you to kind of focus on self-driving vehicles? Well, the interesting thing is I've been building platforms for more than 12 years. And really that is kind of a key aspect. If you think about this open platform that we've built and how we're tying partners onto kind of our network, that is kind of key to what I've been doing for over a decade.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And really, the premise there is if someone like Coca Cola is not necessarily interested in the fact that there were a million tweets about their latest product, they were more interested in the demographic and psychographic key elements of those messages. And so how do you distill that into something that they can quickly evaluate? Those were the types of services that we started to build. And Peter Morelli, who is VP of engineering at Lyft, I was actually very close with him at Twitter as well as Salesforce.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would actually take it even farther back, and I actually spent nine and a half years at Salesforce right around the office or right around the area here. And most of the time I actually spent on building out that platform. So, that enterprise platform working through with number of partners, number of solutions, and figuring out how do we extend Salesforce as a product, an enterprise product, tying into a number of systems. And I then actually went to Twitter to do something very similar, which is how do we take Twitter and how do we provide value to businesses? And so this is kind of data platform that actually helped build out while I was there for two years.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. Yeah, so director of product responsible for autonomous at Lyft. In terms of what do I do, well, we're trying to solve a pretty hard problem in terms of how does a car drive itself. And looking at it, we have a team that is responsible for the platform for our network. And so most of the time it's working with them to figure out how are we going to extend this in support of some of the partnerships that we have, as well as working with our other team that we announced recently, which is actually the brains, the self-driving system that we are planning to bring to market.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We talked about Lift's new self driving ambition, working on actually building out the software, the brain of the car so you'll no longer have to fist bump with your lift driver. It would just be everybody there.”
2017-08-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Taggart Matthiesen, director of product, Lyft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT