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Zimride
Zimride by Enterprise Holdings was an American carpool program that matched inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It was offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and had partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.
In January 2015, the service removed the public ride sharing option and was offered solely as a matching service within universities and businesses. On December 31, 2020, Zimride suspended their Service indefinitely according to an announcement on their homepage.
The company was founded by Logan Green, John Zimmer, and Rajat Suri. Green developed Zimride after sharing rides from the University of California, Santa Barbara campus to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles. He had used Craigslist's ride boards, but wanted to eliminate the anxiety of not knowing the passenger or driver. He began working on the app after Facebook opened its API to third-party developers.
Zimmer was inspired by the empty seats he had during his commute from Upstate New York to New York City while an analyst at Lehman Brothers. As a student at Cornell University, Zimmer took classes on transportation. After learning of the progression from canals to railroads to highways, he viewed ridesharing as the next step towards efficiency. Noting that 80% of the seats on American highways are empty, Zimmer asserted that ridesharing is "a huge opportunity to create efficiency to save a lot of money and to reduce our environmental footprint.
Zimmer and Green were introduced through a mutual friend and met on Facebook. Green had posted details about his new company called "Zimride", which interested Zimmer, who had been keeping a journal about carpooling ideas. The company name comes from the country Zimbabwe, where Green had observed locals develop a grassroots public transportation system.
In 2007, Zimride raised $250,000 in seed money from Facebook's fbFund, expanded to six employees, and took on Stanford and Dartmouth as clients. fbFund selected Zimride, along with ten other startups, out of 1,000 applicants.
In August 2010, Zimride announced a $1.2 million round of seed funding from FLOODGATE, K9 Ventures, Keith Rabois, and Teddy Downey. In 2011, Zimride closed a $6 million Series A round of funding from the Mayfield Fund, FLOODGATE, and K9 Ventures, bringing their total investments to $7.5 million.
In 2007, Green and Zimmer launched the first version of the rideshare program at Cornell University; in six months, the service had signed up 20% of the student body. Green and Zimmer promoted the service through guerrilla marketing; in particular, the pair would dress in frog suits and hand out flyers to Cornell students. Later, while on a Lehman Brothers recruiting trip, Zimmer was recognized by a potential recruit, who had seen him wearing a frog suit on campus. By 2007, Zimride was active on both Cornell's and UCSB's campuses. Zimmer later quit his job at Lehman Brothers to work with Green full-time on Zimride.
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Zimride
Zimride by Enterprise Holdings was an American carpool program that matched inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It was offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and had partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.
In January 2015, the service removed the public ride sharing option and was offered solely as a matching service within universities and businesses. On December 31, 2020, Zimride suspended their Service indefinitely according to an announcement on their homepage.
The company was founded by Logan Green, John Zimmer, and Rajat Suri. Green developed Zimride after sharing rides from the University of California, Santa Barbara campus to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles. He had used Craigslist's ride boards, but wanted to eliminate the anxiety of not knowing the passenger or driver. He began working on the app after Facebook opened its API to third-party developers.
Zimmer was inspired by the empty seats he had during his commute from Upstate New York to New York City while an analyst at Lehman Brothers. As a student at Cornell University, Zimmer took classes on transportation. After learning of the progression from canals to railroads to highways, he viewed ridesharing as the next step towards efficiency. Noting that 80% of the seats on American highways are empty, Zimmer asserted that ridesharing is "a huge opportunity to create efficiency to save a lot of money and to reduce our environmental footprint.
Zimmer and Green were introduced through a mutual friend and met on Facebook. Green had posted details about his new company called "Zimride", which interested Zimmer, who had been keeping a journal about carpooling ideas. The company name comes from the country Zimbabwe, where Green had observed locals develop a grassroots public transportation system.
In 2007, Zimride raised $250,000 in seed money from Facebook's fbFund, expanded to six employees, and took on Stanford and Dartmouth as clients. fbFund selected Zimride, along with ten other startups, out of 1,000 applicants.
In August 2010, Zimride announced a $1.2 million round of seed funding from FLOODGATE, K9 Ventures, Keith Rabois, and Teddy Downey. In 2011, Zimride closed a $6 million Series A round of funding from the Mayfield Fund, FLOODGATE, and K9 Ventures, bringing their total investments to $7.5 million.
In 2007, Green and Zimmer launched the first version of the rideshare program at Cornell University; in six months, the service had signed up 20% of the student body. Green and Zimmer promoted the service through guerrilla marketing; in particular, the pair would dress in frog suits and hand out flyers to Cornell students. Later, while on a Lehman Brothers recruiting trip, Zimmer was recognized by a potential recruit, who had seen him wearing a frog suit on campus. By 2007, Zimride was active on both Cornell's and UCSB's campuses. Zimmer later quit his job at Lehman Brothers to work with Green full-time on Zimride.