By 2007, Zimride was active on both Cornell's and UCSB's campuses. Later, while on a Lehman Brothers recruiting trip, Zimmer was recognized by a potential recruit, who recognized him wearing a frog suit on campus. Green and Zimmer promoted the service through guerrilla marketing in particular, the pair would dress in frog suits and hand out flyers to Cornell students. In 2007, Green and Zimmer launched the first version of the rideshare program at Cornell University in six months, the service had signed up 20% of the student body. In 2011, Zimride closed a $6 million Series A round of funding from the Mayfield Fund, FLOODGATE, and K9 Ventures, bringing their total investments to $7.5 million. In August 2010, Zimride announced a $1.2 million round of seed funding from FLOODGATE, K9 Ventures, Keith Rabois, and Teddy Downey. fbFund selected Zimride, along with ten other startups, out of 1,000 applicants. In 2007, Zimride raised $250,000 in seed money from Facebook's fbFund, expanded to six employees, and took on Stanford and Dartmouth as clients. The company name comes from the country Zimbabwe, where Green had observed locals develop a grassroots public transportation system. Green had posted details about his new company called "Zimride", which interested Zimmer, who had been keeping a journal about carpooling ideas. Zimmer and Green were introduced through a mutual friend and met on Facebook. Noting that 80% of the seats on American highways are empty, Zimmer asserted that ridesharing is "a huge opportunity to create efficiency to save a lot of money and to reduce our environmental footprint. ![]() After learning of the progression from canals to railroads to highways, he viewed ridesharing as the next step towards efficiency. As a student at Cornell University, Zimmer took classes on transportation. 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. He began working on the app after Facebook opened its API to third-party developers. He had used Craigslist's ride boards, but wanted to eliminate the anxiety of not knowing the passenger or driver. Green developed Zimride after sharing rides from the University of California, Santa Barbara campus to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles. The company was founded by Logan Green, John Zimmer and Rajat Suri. ![]() 1.4 Lyft and sale to Enterprise Holdings.On December 31, 2020, Zimride has suspended their Service indefinitely according to an announcement on their homepage. In January 2015, the service removed the public ride sharing option, and was offered solely as a matching service within universities and businesses. ![]() As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and has partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. ![]() After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. It is offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. Zimride by Enterprise Holdings is an American carpool program that matches inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services.
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