Earlier than David Risher was tasked with scripting a “comeback story” for ride-sharing firm Lyft, he made a profession transfer so audacious that it prompted a direct, and blunt, intervention from Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates. In a current look on Fortune‘s Management Subsequent podcast, Risher shared the second Gates advised him he was making “the stupidest choice I’ve ever heard anybody made.”
The yr was 1996, and Risher was having fun with a profitable profession at Microsoft through the heyday of Home windows. In truth, Risher famous he and his spouse simply had their thirtieth wedding ceremony anniversary, having met “on the primary day” at Microsoft. He mentioned it was a really formative time for him and his profession at a really aggressive firm.
However he had been in talks with a person named Jeff Bezos, who was operating a brand-new startup referred to as Amazon. When Risher determined to go away the tech large to affix the fledgling on-line retailer, Gates himself despatched an e-mail and referred to as him into his workplace.
“He says, ‘Maintain on for a second. You imply to inform me you’re leaving this firm for some tiny, little web bookstore that no one’s ever heard of … that has obtained to be the stupidest choice I’ve ever heard anybody made,’” Risher recalled.
Whereas Risher admitted the transfer wasn’t “completely rational,” he mentioned he was drawn to the chance. He had first related with Bezos a yr earlier, when the Amazon founder was conducting a reference examine. What in the end satisfied Risher to take the leap was Bezos’s intense concentrate on the client. “He was very customer-obsessed,” Risher mentioned, noting Bezos’s logic that on the web, “everyone seems to be one click on away from any individual else, so you must create an amazing buyer expertise.” (In truth, Bezos’s administration model pressured to Amazonians that they need to strategy day-after-day from a “day one” mindset.)
Bezos additionally laid out a compellingly bold imaginative and prescient: to develop the then-$15.6 million enterprise right into a billion-dollar firm by the yr 2000. Risher, an avid reader, was captivated by the prospect to construct one thing new on the “loopy intersection of know-how and tradition.” He joined Amazon as its thirty seventh worker, tasked with serving to construct the “every little thing retailer” by including music, video, and toy classes. The corporate hit its billion-dollar goal a yr early, in 1999. The transfer paid off so effectively {that a} “Thank You” letter from Bezos to Risher, dated February 2002, stays on Amazon’s web site to today.
One of many nice comebacks
Now, as CEO of Lyft, Risher is making use of that very same foundational precept of buyer obsession to engineer what he hopes might be “one of many world’s nice comeback tales.” He mentioned when he took the job in 2023, the corporate had “misplaced its means” a little bit bit, because it was shedding market share, and it wasn’t worthwhile. (Lyft inventory is down roughly 20% during the last 5 years, however has risen 60% year-to-date.) Risher’s technique has been to return to the fundamentals: understanding what clients really need.
To realize this, he famously works “undercover” as a Lyft driver in Napa Valley and San Francisco to be taught firsthand in regards to the rider and driver expertise. A dialog with a passenger pressured by variable pricing led on to the creation of Lyft’s “Value Lock” function. He insists on viewing drivers as clients, too, which led to a 70% earnings assure—making certain drivers all the time obtain at the least 70% of what riders pay, a transfer that has given Lyft a 19-point benefit in driver choice over opponents.
This obsessive concentrate on enhancing the service is a part of Risher’s combat towards what he calls “enshittification,” borrowing the phrase from Cory Doctorow that was named the “phrase of the yr” by each an Australian dictionary and the American Dialect Society for the way it summed up widespread frustration with the tech sector, even with trendy life. Risher described it because the gravitational pull that makes companies worse over time because of revenue and investor pressures. By breaking down issues piece by piece, his crew has drastically improved the consumer expertise, chopping the motive force cancellation price from a “tremendous irritating” 15% right down to under 5%.
From receiving a stark warning from a tech titan to incomes a everlasting thank-you from one other, Risher’s unconventional profession has been outlined by taking over bold challenges. Now, he’s betting that the identical customer-first philosophy that turned a small on-line bookstore into a worldwide empire can drive Lyft’s subsequent chapter of development.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the data earlier than publishing.
