Why you should listen
As a growth strategy, the ride-hailing platform, Lyft is making investments outside of its core business and expanding to self-driving cars. The Self-Driving (Autonomous) Division is being lead by Lyft Chief Strategy Officer Raj Kapoor.
Raj’s expertise is evaluating new business areas. He envisions the future of transportation to be multimodal and community-centric. He is working with community leaders and partners to push for better urban design and development with a shift in priority from individual mobility to shared access of more sustainable transportation services.
Prior to Lyft, Raj was the Co-Founder and CEO of Snapfish, one of the largest online photo services in the world with over 80M members & peaked over $300M revenue. Raj sold Snapfish to HP in 2005 for $300M. He was also Co-Founder of Fitmob which grew into one of the largest fitness networks in the US in 8 cities. Fitmob joined forces with ClassPass in 2015 to create the world’s largest fitness marketplace and subscription service operating across 40 cities and 4 countries. Today, he serves as a board advisor for ClassPass, and a Venture Advisor at Mayfield Fund, a global venture capital firm with $1.8 billion under management.
Hear Raj speak at Worldwebforum 2020 about the fast-changing future of mobility.
About Lyft
Lyft was founded in 2012 by Logan Green and John Zimmer to improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation, and is available to approximately 95 percent of the United States population as well as select cities in Canada.
Lyft is committed to effecting positive change for our cities by offsetting carbon emissions from all rides, and by promoting transportation equity through shared rides, bikeshare systems, electric scooters, and public transit partnerships
Biography
Studied Mech Eng/Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, helped create first interactive networked media applications at Bell Atlantic in early 90s (including VOD and interactive TV), joined @Home when it was a startup and ended managing e-commerce product and sales for the public company Excite@Home. Cofounded and ran Snapfish as CEO from 1999-2005. It’s now one of the largest online photo services in the world with over 80M members & peaked over $300M revenue. The company was profitable and growing faster than the market. We sold Snapfish to HP in April 2005 for $300M.
Became a Managing Director at Mayfield Fund in August 2005 – a top silicon valley venture capital fund with over $3B under management. I invested in 14 companies over 7 years in consumer internet/mobile, e-commerce, SMB, online adtech, social, and marketplaces – including early rounds in Lyft, Rubicon Project, Qunar, Fivestars, and Red Beacon. I also sourced Moat.
In 2012, I started a new vehicle to cofound companies alongside awesome founders (cofounder.co) and then started and ran one of the companies in 2013 – fitmob – which grew into one of the largest fitness networks in the US in 8 cities. Fitmob joined forces with market leader ClassPass in May 2015 to create the worlds largest fitness marketplace and subscription service operating across 40 cities and 4 countries – I ran international and new supply. I then was a Board Advisor at ClassPass and Venture Advisor at Mayfield Fund.
In 2016, I joined Lyft in my current role as Chief Strategy Officer. I am responsible for evaluating new business areas outside of the core and spend most of my time leading the business of Autonomous (self driving) on our network.
Specialties: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Strategy, Product Management, Venture Capital investing, General Management, Financing, Marketing, Business Development, & Financial Analysis.