Lyft S-1 Analysis and the Future of Lyft from a Startup Founder with 2,000+ Rides as a Driver

Startups are a matter of survival. That’s what drove me to driving Lyft.

Motivations for Driving Lyft

If you’re here on my site (oh wait, this is on Medium so you don’t know me but keep reading), you know about RentHoop. It’s a low-frequency-consumer app which is notoriously hard to monetize. Rather than use company funds to pay me, I wanted to continue to support myself however I could. I also didn’t want to attach myself to a job because I travel quite a bit so I needed something that was flexible.

Lyft appealed to me in a different way, too; as an interesting cultural experience. More on this later, but this is where my Lyft journey starts.

I first heard about a program called Lyft Express through Facebook Ads about halfway through 2018. Lyft Express allows you to rent a car and make rides through a Lyft partner, Hertz.

I live in Hollywood, California and decided it was easier to live my life without a car so their ad targeted the right person. Living in a city like LA without a car was previously unimaginable, but with how affordable ridesharing is and my apartment being really close to public transportation, it made sense for me. Finding parking at my apartment complex is a nightmare so I wanted to deal with that as little as possible as well.

The signup bonus from that particular ad was $1,250 after 300 rides in the first…