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 latest look on Fortune‘s Management Subsequent podcast, Risher shared the second Gates informed him he was making “the stupidest choice I’ve ever heard anybody made.”
The 12 months was 1996, and Risher was having fun with a profitable profession at Microsoft through the heyday of Home windows. The truth is, Risher famous he and his spouse simply had their thirtieth marriage ceremony anniversary, having met “on the primary day” at Microsoft. He stated 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 depart 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 received to be the stupidest choice I’ve ever heard anybody made,’” Risher recalled.
Whereas Risher admitted the transfer wasn’t “fully rational,” he stated he was drawn to the chance. He had first linked with Bezos a 12 months 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 shopper. “He was very customer-obsessed,” Risher stated, noting Bezos’s logic that on the web, “everyone seems to be one click on away from someone else, so you need to create an ideal buyer expertise.” (The truth is, Bezos’s administration type burdened to Amazonians that they need to method every single day from a “day one” mindset.)
Bezos additionally laid out a compellingly formidable imaginative and prescient: to develop the then-$15.6 million enterprise right into a billion-dollar firm by the 12 months 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 “all the things retailer” by including music, video, and toy classes. The corporate hit its billion-dollar goal a 12 months early, in 1999. The transfer paid off so properly {that a} “Thank You” letter from Bezos to Risher, dated February 2002, stays on Amazon’s web site to this present day.
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 stated when he took the job in 2023, the corporate had “misplaced its approach” just a little bit, because it was shedding market share, and it wasn’t worthwhile. (Lyft inventory is down roughly 20% over the past 5 years, however has risen 60% year-to-date.) Risher’s technique has been to return to the fundamentals: understanding what prospects really need.
To attain this, he famously works “undercover” as a Lyft driver in Napa Valley and San Francisco to be taught firsthand concerning the rider and driver expertise. A dialog with a passenger burdened by variable pricing led on to the creation of Lyft’s “Worth Lock” characteristic. He insists on viewing drivers as prospects, too, which led to a 70% earnings assure—guaranteeing drivers at all times obtain no less than 70% of what riders pay, a transfer that has given Lyft a 19-point benefit in driver desire over rivals.
This obsessive concentrate on enhancing the service is a part of Risher’s struggle in opposition to what he calls “enshittification,” borrowing the phrase from Cory Doctorow that was named the “phrase of the 12 months” 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 providers worse over time as a result of revenue and investor pressures. By breaking down issues piece by piece, his group has drastically improved the person expertise, reducing the motive force cancellation charge 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 formidable 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 progress.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the data earlier than publishing.