John Zimmer

For the American ornithologist, see John T. Zimmer.

John Zimmer is the co-founder and former president of Lyft, an on-demand transportation company,^[1] which he founded with Logan Green in 2012.^[2]

John Zimmer
Zimmer in TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2013
Born	(1984-03-14) March 14, 1984 (age 41)
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
Occupation(s)	Co-founder and President of Lyft
Partner	Cristina García Rivas
Children	1
Father	Larry Zimmer

In March 2023, Zimmer announced that in June he would step down as Lyft president and become vice-chair of the board of directors.^[3]

Early life and education

Zimmer grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut.^[4] In 2006, Zimmer graduated from Cornell University School of Hotel Administration where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity, Mu chapter.^[5] After graduation, Zimmer worked as an analyst in real estate finance at Lehman Brothers in New York City.

Zimmer left Lehman Brothers three months before it declared bankruptcy.^[6] In 2007, while Zimmer was working at Lehman Brothers, he and Logan Green founded Zimride, a ridesharing platform across college campuses.^[7]

Zimride

While at Cornell, Zimmer was inspired to develop a rideshare program by filling the empty seats he had during his rides home over school breaks.^[8] Logan Green had also been thinking along those lines and had started "Zimride".^[9][10] Zimride launched the first version of its rideshare program at Cornell University where, after six months, the service had signed up 20% of the student body.^[11][12] Later in 2007, Zimride was active on both the Cornell and UCSB campuses.^[13]

Zimmer quit his job at Lehman Brothers to work with Green full-time on Zimride.^[11] Green and Zimmer focused the service on carpooling between connected users and making carpooling fun and interesting.^[14] By April 2012, the company was renamed Lyft and had raised $7.5 million in funding and was active at over 125 universities.^[9][10][15]

Lyft

After leaving his job at Lehman Brothers, Zimmer moved to Silicon Valley with Green to work on Zimride full-time.^[16] Lyft was launched in the summer of 2012 as a service of Zimride,^[17][18] before Zimmer and Green officially changed the name of the company from Zimride to Lyft. Zimmer did not take a salary during the first three years of Lyft's operation, and he and Green worked on the company out of an apartment they shared.^[16]

Personal life

Zimmer is married. He met his wife while studying abroad in Seville, Spain;^[19] they have a daughter.^[20]