Lyft申请200-250亿美元IPO，2018年亏损9.11亿美元

做的是什么生意

Lyft is a ride-hailing marketplace: its app connects passengers with independent-contractor drivers, Lyft sets fares, sometimes discounts them, and collects a commission on each trip.

启动资金：$4.9B in venture funding through early 2019, per Crunchbase figures cited in the LA Times column.

起因

Lyft was co-founded by Logan Green (CEO) and John Zimmer (president) and, with about $4.9B of venture money behind it, became the number-two US ride-hailing app behind the bigger Uber. In 2016 Zimmer published a Medium manifesto, "The Third Transportation Revolution," predicting driverless vehicles would handle the majority of Lyft rides by 2021 and that private car ownership would "all but end in major US cities" by 2025.

经过

The registration statement made public in early March 2019 showed the gap between story and economics: revenue more than doubled to $2.16B in 2018 while the net loss grew 32% to $911.3M. Drivers' share of bookings fell to 73% in 2018 from 77% in 2017 and 82% in 2016; critic Hubert Horan calculated that holding driver share at the 2016 level would have cost Lyft an extra $941M. The filing's "Why Lyft Wins" section promised that fleets of autonomous vehicles would unlock a new mode of transportation, and it gave Green and Zimmer shares with 20 votes each against one vote for public stockholders.

可借鉴之处

当数字无法证明价格的合理性时，故事就必须发挥作用——而且故事有保质期：Lyft的IPO宣传依赖于自动驾驶车队和削减司机薪酬，而不是盈利途径。