Why Lyft's CEO Is Embracing Waymo And 'Falcon Mode' For Its Turnaround

Lyft CEO David Risher warns founders about the 'dark side' to Founder Mode in an Upstarts sit-down interview.

Lyft CEO David Risher, seen here at this week’s all-hands meeting known as Pit Stop, stresses the importance of storytelling for inspiring employees. Credit: Lyft

The Upshot

We naturally cover a lot of startup launches at Upstarts, mindful of our mission to cover the ecosystem from inception through IPO.

But the stubborn ones are interesting, too: tech companies that, despite going public, lose some of their buzz and market shine – then keep marching along as public small-cap or mid-cap stocks.

Founders like Box’s Aaron Levie, Dropbox’s Drew Houston and Snap’s Evan Spiegel, through sheer stubbornness or love of the game – or some combination of the two – keep at it despite years of treading water in the public markets, long after the rush of success and a career-defining payday have passed.

(Counterpoint: Confluent, which agreed to be acquired by IBM this week for $5 per share less than its 2021 IPO price.)

The alternative of handing over the reins is no sure thing. You might lose the benefits of ‘Founder Mode,’ the term coined by Airbnb’s Brian Chesky to describe a leadership approach in which a founder’s internal credibility helps them to shun bureaucracy and make hard decisions.

Bumble tried to get some of that magic back earlier this year, when Whitney Wolfe Herd returned. (Her work is far from finished, as Bumble’s stock is down another 30% since she strapped back in.)

At other companies that once graced the covers of magazines like Forbes, such as Pinterest and Twilio, a turnaround job now falls to new leaders.

One such company is Lyft, the longtime (and much smaller) rival of Uber that went public in 2019. There, the challenge falls upon David Risher, a former early Amazon executive who then founded and led nonprofit Worldreader and joined Lyft’s board in 2021. Two years later, Lyft founders John Zimmer and Logan Green offered him the CEO job.

Under Risher’s watch, Lyft has launched into new markets, shipped new products like Lyft Silver, a version of its app for seniors, and embraced autonomous vehicles through partnerships with Tensor and Waymo. Revenue reached a record $1.7 billion last quarter, and shares are up about 50% so far this year.

“There aren’t that many tech turnarounds, to be honest,” Risher tells Upstarts in a visit to Lyft’s NYC offices earlier this month. “For a lot of them, once they start to go in a certain direction, they end up kind of irrelevant. But I don’t mind challenges.”

The job is far from finished – Uber still outnumbers Lyft rides in North America by 2 to 1, and Lyft has only just moved beyond the continent – but Risher says he embraces an Upstart mentality.

And he offers an alternative to ‘Founder Mode’ that’s worth any startup leader incorporating into their toolbox: meet ‘Falcon Mode’.

Paid subscribers can learn about that below, and get the curated highlights of our interview, including:

• Where Lyft went wrong

• Embracing new tech

• Storytelling as a superpower

• The “dark side” of ‘Founder Mode’

• How ‘Falcon Mode’ can help

Not a subscriber yet? We’d love you to see what Upstarts is about. For a limited time, you can check out one month of a paid sub on us, fully free – or lock in a monthly or annual sub through our best deal of the year: 20% off.