00:00The growth strategy is international growth, David. What was it about Getz UK optionality
00:05here that you liked? So it is the big guy when it comes to London's black cabs and London's black
00:12cabs are awesome. I suspect, Carolyn, you've taken one or two in your life and you know they're
00:16amazing, right? So it's the best way to get around London and that's the idea is we are a customer
00:22obsessed company. We wanted to make sure that we could increase our footprint in London. This
00:27roughly doubles the size of our rides in London, which is wonderful. And I think something like
00:3175 to 80 percent of London cabs who have an app are going to have access to Lyft customers over
00:36time.
00:37So it's a great win-win. Now, David, you know, I think the best way to get around any city
00:41is to
00:41bike. And I'm pleased that you're also doing the bike optionality, the Santander bikes you have in
00:45London. Just what does this mean in terms of capital intensiveness? What does this mean in
00:49terms of investment you need to make in these new cities? Yeah, so it's not a very big capital raise.
00:55I mean, the nice thing about the sort of, let's say, traditional rideshare business, the one that
00:59we're in, is we don't own a lot of assets, right? The London cabbies own their own cars. So really
01:04what this does is it allows cabbies, taxicab drivers, who are, as you know, brilliant, to sort of make
01:09even more of their time, right? They're going to have more customers thanks to the Lyft app and our
01:13promotion of the Get By Lyft app. So anyway, that'll be great. They also have a big business-to-business
01:19audience. They actually do work with the BBC. They do work with The Economist. They do work with
01:24the Royal Albert Hall. So they've got a really nice, stable base that we can build on. And then
01:30as, you know, mobility changes over time, becomes more autonomous and so forth, it just gives us a
01:35bigger footprint in the UK. I want to understand, David, how this works in practice. In Western
01:40Europe, the taxicab is part of the culture. And in London, of all places, the black cab is at the
01:48heart of what it is to be a Londoner or a visitor to that city. So how does the consumer
01:54respond to a big
01:56American tech company coming in and bringing a brand like Get into its fold?
02:02I mean, I hope well, right? What we hope to do is bring the same customer obsession that we've that
02:08we
02:08bring here every single day in North America, you know, all across the world. As you guys know, we
02:13acquired FreeNow last year. They also have a significant presence in London, across all of
02:18Europe, really. And we've seen great growth with that brand and with our riders there because they're
02:23now seeing, you know, an even better experience. So that's our general strategy is, you know, customer
02:27obsessions what drives profitable growth. And I just love, to your point, the fact that we're going to be
02:32with the London cab system in such a deep way, because it's frankly going to teach us something about
02:37great service. London cabbies are amazing in that way. And hopefully it'll allow us to bring
02:41even better technology and sort of invest more in the whole marketing of the idea of taking a taxi
02:47when you're in London. David, you've joined us regularly on Bloomberg Tech, and you've been
02:52generous with your time in explaining how you've come into Lyft over now almost three years, I think,
02:57right, and put your print on it. The first part of the story was getting Lyft to be a cash
03:04flow
03:04positive. But you are in this kind of M&A strategy. And so could you explain how going shopping and
03:11acquiring companies in different markets is going to impact the final financial health of the
03:16business and free cash flow in particular? For sure. So yeah, it was actually my three-year
03:22anniversary just last week, Ed. So three years. Congratulations. And thank you. Loving every
03:26minute of it. Look, if you think of the stages, you're right. At first, we were losing money.
03:31We were losing cash. Now we're making money. We're profitable quarter after quarter after quarter.
03:35We're throwing off over a billion dollars in cash. So what that allows us to do now is to grow
03:41through acquisition. Exactly to your point. We can take that cash and put it to use. How are we
03:45growing? We're growing largely internationally. Why? Because that improves our sort of footprint
03:50and over time improves our economics because this is a scale business. And then if you look at the next
03:55stage, of course, with self-driving cars, you know, again, having a large footprint and having a large
04:00scale, frankly, is going to matter even more. So this is the sort of journey we're on. It's a step
04:04-by-step
04:04journey. But I love where we're going. And I love the fact that both our financial results and our
04:09customer results are improving every day as a result. How does the profitability focus fit into
04:15the robo-taxi and autonomous focus? I mean, I can tell you black cabbies aren't going to love that
04:21in many ways, David. Well, so I think you're talking about two things. I think you're right.
04:26Anytime you've got a big shift, you have a set of people who are, you know, doing something today
04:31and maybe they're worried they won't be doing that tomorrow. That's something we're very, very
04:35focused on in Lyft. I can give you a very specific example. We're now rolling out autonomous cars in
04:40Nashville with our partner Waymo over the course of this year. And we just announced that half of the
04:44employees in our very large new depot in Waymo, excuse me, in Nashville, are drivers. Half the
04:50employees are drivers, right? So part of it is we have to help that transition happen. When it comes to
04:55profitability, look, self-driving cars over time, frankly, should improve the economics of ride
05:00share. It should lead to, because, you know, they don't have a lot of the costs. They don't have
05:04the same insurance costs and so forth. But that's going to take a long, long time. I think right now
05:09it's really kind of early days for that. We're just trying to figure out a way to kind of make
05:12the transition in a very, I hope, very thoughtful way.
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