RIDEGURU
Did you guys know that Lyft has been around longer and older than Uber? They used to be Zimrides and started in 2007, while Uber launched in 2009.
Lyft may be smaller than Uber, but it has been around longer:
The Lyft app launched in 2012 (Uber, originally called UberCab, in 2009), but Lyft started life as a side project for Zimrides, a carpooling service founded in 2007 that leveraged Facebook and students for long-distance ride-sharing back when Uber was just a limousine-shaped gleam in the eye of Canadian co-founder Garrett Camp. It was Lyft's team that provided the first regulatory window in San Francisco to test ride-sharing, a practice that most suspected would be illegal for drivers without a taxi licence (according to journalist Brad Stone's excellent book on Uber's founding, The Upstarts). Lyft has had tipping as a core part of its service and to date has distributed more than $350-million in tips to drivers. Uber only introduced tipping in the summer of 2017 (in its first two months drivers earned $50-million). Lyft Line (a car-pooling offering) was introduced in 2014, just as Uber launched the competing Uber Pool option. Lyft is in close to 400 cities, in all 50 states, and says it is reachable by 95 per cent of the U.S. population. Uber is in more than 450 cities around the world.
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Here's their announcement on TechCrunch: Zimride's Lyft is Going to Give Uber Some Lower-Priced Competition
Take a trip down memory lane
Zimride faces a number of upcoming competitors. Uber has mostly stuck to the higher-end of the market with private drivers and black cars, but there are signs it is moving downmarket. There is also another app that hasn’t publicly launched but is in beta around San Francisco called Sidecar. It has an extremely similar model.
Wait, what? Zimride still exists. They were bought by Enterprise as some corporate and school related bulk transportation. essentially shuttle.
Yep. From Wikipedia.
In May 2012, Zimride announced Lyft, an app that allows users to request a driver immediately and get a ride anywhere.[30] The company vets each driver with a thorough interview process and criminal check, and users pay for the ride with a donation, which is approximately 30% less than a cab fare.[31][32]
That's so weird. Uber started with black cars and seemed like this super innovative idea. Then a few years later they introduced Uber X and it was like whoa.
Meanwhile Lyft had been doing it for years already. I guess it's true that history is written by the victor.
Burn.
Ya, wasn't there a whole lawsuit between Lyft and Uber where Lyft claimed Uber copied them or stole the idea or something?
How could uber copy from Lyft? Uber was way more popular ages before Lyft. If any copying occurred, it's by Lyft
read the article. This post is literally talking about how Lyft came before Uber.
The entity has existed before Uber but not Lyft and its rideshares. Look closer. Uber in 2009 and Lyft in 2012.
Lyft (zimrides) started the whole ridesharing thing while Uber was just doing black cars. Lyft did scheduled rides first. Lyft had in app tipping first. In my books, Uber is the copycat.