LYFT COFOUNDER: Uber's Plan To Mess With Our Funding Didn't Work
But John Zimmer, Lyft's cofounder and president, told Bloomberg's Betty Liu Wednesday that Uber really didn't hinder Lyft's fundraising efforts.
In fact, the company raised more money than it intended. Here's what Zimmer said:
And here's the relevant portion of Kalanick's Vanity Fair interview, with regards to Lyft:
We knew that Lyft was going to raise a ton of money, and we are going [to their investors], 'Just so you know, we're going to be fund-raising after this, so before you decide whether you want to invest in them, just make sure you know that we are going to be fund-raising immediately after.On Wednesday, Zimmer also discussed Sen. Al Franken's privacy concerns about Lyft - he sent the company a letter yesterday, like he did with Uber a few weeks ago.
"I think we share [Senator Franken's] overall concern and respect for user privacy," Zimmer said. "If you look at our company and our company's values and the way we operate internally, we've always respected users' privacy. Over time as we've grown we've added more and more safeguards to those privacy policies internally. In the last few weeks, we've added additional tiers to what certain employees are able to see in regard to users' information. I think it's a good conversation to be having and one that we're open to working with him on."
Lyft announced last week that it recently had its biggest week ever in terms of how many rides were taken on the app, though Lyft would not disclose those numbers.
You can watch the full video of Wednesday's interview below: