Zimride
 |
|
| Rideshare | |
| Industry | Service |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco |
|
Key people
|
Logan Green, co-founder, CEO John Zimmer, co-founder, COO |
| Products | Rideshare |
| Website | www.zimride.com |
Zimride connects inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking and is the largest rideshare program in the United States. The service has over 350,000 users, is active on 125 university campuses, and has partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.
Co-founder Logan Green had the inspiration for Zimride after sharing rides from the University of California, Santa Barbara campus to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles. He had used Craigslist's ride boards, but wanted to eliminate the anxiety of not knowing the passenger or driver. When Facebook opened its API to third-party developers, Green thought "Here's the missing ingredient".
John Zimmer was inspired by the empty seats he had during his commute from Upstate New York to New York City while an analyst at Lehman Brothers. As a student at Cornell University, Zimmer took classes on transportation. After learning of the progression from canals to railroads to highways, he viewed ridesharing as the next step towards efficiency. Noting that 80% of the seats on American highways are empty, Zimmer asserts that ridesharing, "is a huge opportunity to create efficiency to save a lot of money and to reduce our environmental footprint".
Zimmer and Green were introduced through a mutual friend and met on Facebook. Green had posted details about his new company called "Zimride", which interested Zimmer, who had been keeping a journal about carpooling ideas. Although the names Zimmer and Zimride are similar, the company name comes from the country Zimbabwe, where Green had observed locals develop a grassroots public transportation system.
...
Wikipedia