Minimum wage increases for fast food workers and Lyft drivers
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies. On today's episode, Fast Company staff writer Pavithra Mohan on California's new minimum wage law. The Fight for 15 movement, which dates back to 2012, has been a key force behind raising the minimum wage more broadly across the country. Lyft CEO David Risher on a minimum wage compromise in Minneapolis.

Our goal is to stay, but we also are not going to create a service that's terrible for riders and drivers. It's just not how a customer-obsessed organization works. And as always, keeping tabs. It's like sexy death on the Nile with Mandy Patinkin. But first, here's the download. The news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation.

Free speech rights for Americans hang in the balance, at least according to TikTok, as the bill that could ban the app passed in the Senate on Tuesday after the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill on Sunday. U.S. lawmakers from the Democratic and Republican parties say that the app presents a security threat to the nation because China could ask the TikTok owner ByteDance to share the data of its 170 million U.S. users.

which is kind of scary. But then you think about the people who could buy this app and you're like, oh, yeah, sure. They can have this app. Yeah, that'll be that's great. Facebook definitely deserves all the data we've given. Yeah, exactly. They didn't ruin an election or whatever. So now that the bill is passed, President Joe Biden now has the decision to sign it or not, which he has indicated that he would sign the bill.

Clothing retailer Express filed for bankruptcy on Monday. Your wife's former employer. Yeah, I know. That's where she worked in. Liz, if you're listening to this, she's not listening to this. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for your loss. This filing will allow the sexy business attire company to stay in business while reorganizing its finances.

I can only describe their clothes as sexy intern, which is problematic in a lot of ways. But like when I was like 16, I was like, that's going to be me in an office wearing a cropped blazer. Another day, another Trader Joe's recall. The grocery giant. Yeah, a lot of these stories. It won't stop me. It won't stop me from going. I'm going there. They have good salmon. They have...

Terrible produce. Yeah, the classic Trader Joe's experience is going there to buy ingredients for like to make meals for the week and coming out with a bag of weird snacks. So many weird snacks. That's all it is. I can't do the produce there though, which is probably good because their organic basil, that's what was recalled this past Wednesday.

It was over concerns that it was causing salmonella infections. The basil was sold in 29 states and the District of Columbia, and infections have hit seven of those states and affected 12 people. So the FDA is recommending, which feels like a big duh. Do it. Throw it out. If you have it, don't eat it. Yeah, throw away your Trader Joe's salad. This is a PSA.

So AI is all the rage in Silicon Valley. Not really news to anyone. But now it's coming to the Olympics. It's competing in the decathlon. It's going for gold in the women's freestyle 200 meter relay. Well, with the 2024 Games just 100 days away, Josh, are you training?

Oh, yeah. You know what? A shot put title could be yours. That really could. Yeah, it could be. I was trying to think about if I started now, is there any Olympic sport that I could get good at? Curling. Curling seems like the most likely one. But even all of this, it's an absolute no. Yeah. Like, it's just all of the sports are so hard. But curling is definitely number one. Anyway. Anyway.

Organizers announced on Friday that they plan to use AI technology to identify promising athletes, personalize training methods, and improve judging. Some are excited about the technology's potential. Others are concerned. What a surprise. They're worried that the organizers' plans to use AI for security purposes could actually violate privacy.

Probably. They're probably best of either. AI's going to figure out who's banging in the Olympic Village. And the answer is everyone. And finally, starting next year, Netflix will no longer be disclosing member count. The news comes with the release of their Q1 earnings report Thursday that revealed that net subscriber additions more than doubled.

This decision is similar to moves made by tech giants like Apple, and investors seem to be fine with it, but we'll see how advertisers respond. When they started tracking households, did you have to buy a subscription? I did have to buy a subscription. Because I think that's probably why things doubled. Yeah. I mean, honestly, from a business perspective, good move. For a Josh's Bank account perspective, bad move. Well, me and Luis still, I'm on my parents' foreign Netflix. Oh.

But we can only cast it from an internet browser. That's fair. VPN? Yeah. Nice. I know. I feel like a hacker when we use it. Yeah. I'm getting into the mainframe. And that's the news you need to know today. So Josh, are you a Lyft guy or an Uber guy? I'm exclusively a Lyft guy. Why? I don't remember, but I stopped using Uber back when something happened. Yeah.

That we were all supposed to stop using. You were like, I'm taking a stand. I don't remember what it was over, but apparently Uber was bad for some time. And then I started using Lyft. And then I kind of never turned back because it's just as available. I'm too lazy to check prices. But you know what app I was keen on using back in the day? Juno. Do you remember Juno? I do remember Juno. Couldn't you like pick up people on the way? There was like a weird. Yeah, it was. There were some different things and it was a lot cheaper than the other ones and shopping.

Also, do you remember Via that basically reinvented the bus? Oh, yeah. That's no longer around because also – Revel, also the electric scooter company, now just like is a Tesla car service. Yeah, basically. Yeah, it's interesting. But Lyft and Uber are the two that survived. What about you? Are you Lyft, Uber, switcher? I'm a switcher. Oh.

And a switcher means, I guess, that I check for what's cheaper. That said, I did actually meet my husband in an Uber pool. Yeah, you've told this story before on the podcast. So you'd think I'd be loyal, but I'm not. Such a meet cute that I'm sure was like less. No, way less cute than you'd think. It's like, sup? Yeah. Yeah, can I get your number? No, it was more just like, no, no. At the time, we were both going to the airport for Thanksgiving.

And we were both running really late and got stuck in traffic. And I was like, what terminal are you getting off at? Because I was like worried. I was like, I need them to drop me off first. So, I mean, Uber, bringing people together. Yeah, it's true. But we'll get to rideshare services later in the episode in our second segment. But first, we've got a little bit more gig, kind of gig economy story going on. Yeah, we're talking about fast food workers who are often contractors. Yeah.

So, fast food workers in California are seeing an increase in their paychecks. Great news. This is because of a recent minimum wage law that went into effect earlier this month. The law requires fast food chains like McDonald's and Starbucks to pay workers $20 an hour. It will also affect restaurants that have at least 60 other locations nationwide.

Opponents of the law say that it will lead to layoffs and store closures, but for fast food workers who've been fighting for better pay, this could mean being able to get a decent living wage. Here to unpack all of this is Fast Company staff writer, Pavithra Mohan. This is pretty historic in that it's the highest minimum wage law in the country, with the exception of a city in Washington state where the minimum wage just crossed $20. I suggest we all move there. Can you take us back a bit and explain to us how we got here?

So, I mean, this came after years of worker activism and protests. The Fight for 15 movement, which dates back to 2012, has been a key force behind raising the minimum wage more broadly across the country. And we've seen a lot of states slowly increase their minimum wage, with a handful of them now crossing $15 an hour. And so the law that passed in California is historic and intended to secure higher pay for these fast food workers whose livelihoods are often very,

very much shaped by their managers and by corporate leaders. And when the law took effect earlier this month, the hourly minimum wage was raised to $20 an hour for half a million workers at over 3,000 fast food restaurants in the state.

So it's a significant increase. It impacts a lot of workers. And this is up from, I think, $16 an hour previously. And it's now the highest minimum wage in the state. I want to talk a little bit about something you just said a little earlier. You said a lot of livelihoods are shaped by the whims of managers and corporate leaders.

Tell us a little bit more about what that means. Is that because a manager might sort of dictate how many hours somebody works? Yeah, I spoke to somebody who had experienced exactly that, where their hours were just kind of changed and dictated by their manager, and they felt like they had time.

very little recourse and they asked why were my hours changed and didn't really get a response. I think they asked their boss's boss. This woman actually had experienced something really traumatic at work where she was feeling really sick, was in severe pain and wasn't allowed to leave her job.

for hours, I think pretty much the end of her shift. And I think that also speaks to exactly what I'm saying, which is that you don't have much agency when you're in these types of positions. And I think this minimum wage increase is an effort to address that lack of security and stability. But her experience is a really good example of exactly that, where she had this horrible experience. She was forced to go

leave work for a few weeks so that she could get the surgery she needed. It turned out she had an ectopic pregnancy, actually, which can be life-threatening if it's not addressed. And so this was a really serious issue. And when she came back from those several weeks off, she found that her hours had randomly been reduced. And she asked several people, like, why did this happen? And basically got no response. That sort of thing happens. And there's quite a bit of evidence that

Not only do people get their hours cut arbitrarily, but they also face issues like wage theft. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think when it comes to scheduling, it's not like this increase is going to stop that from happening. It will just hopefully give people more money. Is that fair to say?

We're already seeing that that has been the response from some of these companies. And I should also note that there was a lot of pushback to this minimum wage law. A lot of companies said, like, we're not going to be able to afford this. We are going to have to let go of workers and potentially cut hours. And so it's not much of a surprise.

after that resistance that we're starting to see companies doing that. We've seen them cutting hours at least based on my reporting. Companies like Burger King, McDonald's, workers have reported that this is happening. And yeah, again, I think it's not

unexpected from these companies. But I think there's a lot of evidence that indicates that when we've seen minimum wage increases in states like California and elsewhere, the outcome has not been as extreme as they've suggested it might be. Like it's actually turned out to be good for the economy. There haven't been these widespread job losses. And I don't think we've necessarily seen that yet, even in this instance.

But the law only applies to restaurants that have more than 60 national locations, right? So we're talking about your Burger Kings and your McDonald's, not necessarily like a small mom and pop local franchise. Right. And I think, again, that was, you know, an intentional carve out, obviously. And now the sort of $20 minimum wage is different from the federal minimum wage, right?

Yeah. So the federal minimum wage is still, if you can believe it, at $7.25 an hour. That's a cup of coffee in Brooklyn. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a latte. When I started, my first job was working for minimum wage for Walgreens when I was, this was in 2006. And I believe the minimum wage was like in the mid $6 ranges. So the fact that it's only gone up on the federal level, like is wild. It has. It has.

And this is true of so many things, but like we've seen progress on the state level that we obviously are not seeing reflected in the federal minimum wage. But it's tough because then it really depends on what state you're in. And while we've seen minimum wage increases across the country, it's really only a handful that have gone up to $15 an hour. So the majority of them are still well below that. And the progress is really, really slow.

We're actually later on in this episode going to chat with the CEO of Lyft about a contentious issue in Minneapolis where they're trying to basically, Lyft is threatening to leave the city if minimum driver pay increases goes to $15 an hour. So this is sort of an interesting companion to that discussion. Certainly. I want to talk a little bit more about the response from fast food companies and their franchisees. You mentioned there's been pushback recently

What does that look like so far and what can we expect? Yeah, again, there were a couple of things that had already come up prior to this being passed and going into effect. Prices being increased was something that a lot of companies had said might happen. It has. So I don't think that's much of a surprise. But again, the thing that has come up quite a bit from workers is that they are seeing their hours cut. And I spoke to workers not only like Laura, who

I mentioned earlier, who had gone through this really horrible experience and is now seeing all of her co-workers' hours cut after the law went into effect. And I want to just note that the law went into effect literally April 1st. So this is just over the last few weeks that we're already seeing

And then I spoke to another worker, Fernando Valencia, who had lost hours and shifts actually before the wage increase itself. And so, again, this kind of goes back to that point that this is something that has been happening. I think companies often position these changes as something they have to do as a result of laws like this. Right. But they've been doing it. And I think...

It's clear that that's not a new thing. And so his experience really reflects that. And he had actually filed a wage theft complaint with the state of California. And he claims that after that, you know, as retaliation that he started to see his hours cut.

McDonald's and Burger King didn't comment for this story, I should say, but these allegations of wage theft are not unusual at fast food restaurants in California. The Fight for 15 campaign has actually done a study of this where they surveyed over 400 fast food workers and the majority of them had experienced wage theft. So, again, these issues are not uncommon. And I think we've already been seeing companies cut hours in response to that.

Fernando mentioned that he's seen many of his co-workers get their hours cut, and he's had trouble trying to get additional hours himself, even as the company continues to hire a lot of other workers. It's been, I think, challenging for a lot of these workers, and they don't necessarily feel like they have a

an option here and a way to get back those hours without taking a more extreme step like going on strike or something of the sort. I'm going to ask a dumb question. What is wage theft exactly? I realize in the context of this, it's really about cutting hours. But in terms of filing a legal complaint or

what we're talking about, what's the scope of that? What does that look like in the broadest possible sense? Yeah, that's a great question. And I should have clarified that because I think cutting hours itself is not necessarily wage theft. I think in his case, Fernando's case, it was, and this is a common issue where a lot of it is overtime related wage theft. So in his case, he was being asked to essentially cut

sign into his shifts as two different workers so they could avoid paying overtime. That was the call. That's so funny because that's like so blatant. I know, incredibly blatant. Like he said that he literally signed in with like one thumb and then the other for two different workers.

or to sort of count as two different workers. These two workers have remarkably similar thumbs, very soft. Right, and this is apparently one of the more common forms of wage theft. It's not just that, there's many different forms that it can take. But yeah, to your point, it really kind of runs the gamut. So that's one I would highlight. I think another, it sometimes just has to do with like paid sick days and not getting what you're entitled to and things like that.

So you mentioned the fact that fast food companies have been kind of cutting hours and doing these shenanigans for a while. But the minimum wage in California has been raised every year since 2015. Have there been any trends in that time from companies?

Yeah, it's interesting because, again, like looking at the response to this increase, California has seen some of the biggest minimum wage increases over the years. And so there is some evidence to go off of when we're talking about what happens when you do this in a state. And so far, you know, experts have said that the data indicates that there have not been these widespread job cuts, as I said. And in fact, these fast food restaurants have added like hundreds of thousands of jobs in that time.

We haven't seen the sort of extreme outcome that a lot of them, I think, had suggested we might. And granted, like the minimum wage has not gone up to $20. So obviously that is a big shift. And typically these minimum wage increases are a lot more gradual, like they kind of go up slightly every single year. So it's generally progressive and it doesn't just sort of jump like this. But so far it has not been cause for alarm.

So I want to talk about the larger trend that the minimum wage is getting higher.

How does this law that you reported on sort of play into the larger movement? Is there anything we can look forward to? It fits within this broader theme. That's not quite the right word, but this broader sort of rise in minimum wage during the last decade, I would say, which is really when the Fight for 15 movement kind of picked up steam. I think it dates back to 2012. And since then, we've seen it sort of spread to different parts of the country.

And so in recent years, we've seen hourly wages go up, of course, in California, but also in states like Washington and New York and New Jersey. As they've phased in these minimum wage laws, you see a slight increase year after year, and then eventually you get to that $15 an hour. So right now, I think the minimum wage has surpassed $15 an hour in California.

seven states and Washington, D.C. And what's interesting is it's it is largely the states that we think of as more progressive, you know, the California, Washington and Colorado, those types of states, but also the states with higher cost of living. Absolutely.

And that is, of course, one of the big reasons behind this in the first place, right? The California $20 minimum wage is because the cost of living is incredibly high. But what is interesting is that in the last few years, we have seen states like Florida also adopt measures like this. And so they are not yet at that $15 an hour number, but...

they will eventually get there as they sort of phase it in gradually. But yeah, so I think that's an interesting example of where we are seeing this trend in the sort of usual suspects, but also seeing other states that are maybe not wholly blue that are adopting measures like this. This is probably just a sort of segue into our next conversation, but I'm curious, is there a difference between somebody who's employed full-time in the minimum wage versus gig workers?

No, that does make sense. I think a lot of these workers actually, and even one of the workers that I spoke to is not working full time at McDonald's. Actually, he is like working there one day a week and actually took on another job because he was getting his hours cut and not able to get more hours, you know, stuck around for that one day in part because he wants

his coworkers not to think that he got fired for speaking out and to sort of empower them to speak out, which I thought was really interesting. So, I mean, I don't think these workers are necessarily all full-time employees. Gotcha. I mean, all of this is complicated. I think a lot of these workers lack stability in part because they are not always seen as full-time employees. Well, there's kind of, and this is literally me just playing sort of anecdotal expert here, but every time I hear about

things like the McDonald's fight for 15 and these kind of these service jobs, gig economy work. Something that I hear a lot from kind of opponents of that or CEOs or C-suite people is that, well, these jobs aren't necessarily intended to be someone's only job. Most of our workers are working multiple jobs, or this is an addendum to what they're doing.

As kind of a way to pass the buck a little bit, it's almost like every job that's like, well, this is just part time and really they're doing something else that should be providing for them. But no one seems to be taking responsibility for their workers in a way in this level.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's been a really common narrative, right? When we're talking about fast food workers in particular, I feel like this law is very much a response to exactly that idea that like they have several jobs. Like, why do you need to increase the minimum wage? And I think it's apparent that that is not, in fact, true for a lot of people. You know, for a lot of folks, this is their full time job. And I think in some cases, even if it's not, they want it to be right. Like there are workers who are asking for more hours and asking to not have their hours cut.

I do think not, and I don't think this negates anyone's point here, that there are different types of gig work, right? I think taking a shift at McDonald's versus deciding to be

an Uber or Lyft driver where you can really dictate your hours is materially different, right? In one, you can really get your hours cut in a way that I don't necessarily think you can on the other service unless there's lower demand. I just think that distinction is kind of important to make when we're talking about this. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. There's very different types of gig work.

I think in the larger sense, though, just kind of like what's a company's responsibility to their workers, regardless of that, in the broadest possible sense, it doesn't take the same form. But I think the kind of thing that I'm harping on is just is, I think, indicative of like a larger lack of respect for workers.

a certain type of worker. Yeah. Also, this work is physically taxing. I think that's another thing people often forget. You know, and these are workers that were, a lot of this is coming off of like during the pandemic, these are workers that were forced to go to work, right? And I think we're seeing some of these gains as a result of that and the fact that it highlighted what their working life is like. And I agree that there is this desire to sort of

see it as like low skilled work, right? And to say that like they don't deserve to be paid more. And I also would just say like a lot of these workers are women and people of color and the kinds of communities where historically there's been less interest in seeing them get these gains. Thank you so much, Pavithra. We're going to take a quick break, followed by my interview with Lyft CEO David Risher.

When Lyft CEO David Risher took the helm of the rideshare company from co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer a year ago, his mandate was clear. Create a sustainable business by getting the perennially second-place rideshare company to stop bleeding money. The former Microsoft and Amazon executive laid off more than a quarter of the company's workforce last April and exited ancillary business lines like car rentals.

That's helped Lyft lower the prices of its rides so they're in line with Uber's. It's all part of what Risher calls his key strategy. Customer obsession drives profitable growth. You may have heard that from someone like Jeff Bezos, his former boss at Amazon. Anyway, all of his moves are paying off. The company reported that it was cash flow positive in the fourth quarter of 2023 and says that trend will continue for 2024.

Risher is now facing one of the biggest tests of his growth strategy in a standoff with the Minneapolis City Council, which is pushing to remove rideshare companies exemptions from the city's minimum hourly wage, which is just over $15. Lyft is now threatening to leave Minneapolis, along with rival Uber, unless the city accepts a compromise. That compromise would equate to paying 89 cents per mile or roughly 49 cents per minute. What happens next could set a precedent for the way drivers are compensated in other cities and states.

Richard came to the studio to talk about the company's future in Minneapolis, whether self-driving cars will transform the industry, and what he learned heading up U.S. retail at Amazon under Jeff Bezos.

I want to talk about your earnings first. I won't bring up the typo. Seems like that was really rough for everyone. But in your earnings, you said Lyft would generate positive free cash flow for the first time in 2024. That's right. What did it take to get there? That is a great question. And the answer is a lot. Yeah. So, you know, I joined almost exactly a year ago now. And

My mantra from the beginning has been customer obsession drives profitable growth. So in order to make that come true, first of all, we had to cut some costs. Because you can't, if you want to make sure you're pricing at the right level, if you want to make sure drivers are getting paid at the right level, you got to make sure you can afford it. So we cut about $300 million, a bit more of cost.

That was very hard. That was laying off a quarter of your workforce? That's right, 26%. Yeah, really hard. How did you approach those layoffs? By saying exactly what I'm saying now. You know, you can't be a great company if you can't afford to focus on your customers. And we couldn't afford to have our drivers earn what they need to earn in order to make a good living, for example. Or for our riders...

to be able to not actually have to overpay for a ride. So it really was that. Did you cut any specific sectors? Did you cut a layer of management? Because that's what it seems like. How did you think about making cuts and still letting the company grow? Yeah. So it was two things. And it's really interesting. If I put myself back on sort of day one, it was, OK, we're really going to focus primarily on our rideshare business, right? John and Logan, the CEOs and president and founders,

you know, as one does over time, they got themselves into a whole bunch of different things. And we said, you know what? Let's stop doing a whole bunch of different things. One of the things I said is,

Everything, everywhere, all at once. It's a great movie. It's not a great strategy. You really kind of have to focus. So we focused on ride share, number one. We really focused on our riders and drivers and tried to figure out what it was going to cost us to be able to run the business efficiently. And then we looked at the things we were doing that didn't really kind of achieve that objective, and that's what we ended up cutting. What were some of the ancillary businesses you got into that you realized just weren't going to work?

Well, you know, we were doing some things with rental cars, for example. Yeah, I saw that shut down. We were doing some things with what's called garage internally involving car repairs and sort of a relationship with kind of a AAA type of thing. And it's interesting that you call them businesses. The truth of the matter is they were more product lines that we were sort of exploring, but they weren't actually earning any money and they were actually being quite costly for us. So it was really everything that didn't really focus on bringing customers.

you know, riders and drivers together to get people where they need to go to help drivers earn more. Everything that wasn't that, with the exception of bike share, which is a very important part of our business as well, we said, you know what, we just have to move on. I remember when ride share companies sort of first burst onto the scene. And the idea was, you know, by this year,

Self-driving cars were going to be real everywhere. You guys would print money. That's obviously not really the case, but you do have a self-driving program. Tell me what the future looks like there. Let me actually go to the other side of that for a second, the print money side. Yeah. Which, by the way, only the Mint gets to do that, so that's actually not our business model. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In our businesses, you're really disciplined about cost. You really focus on your customers. And then you drive more volume across that platform. Every time a rider and driver get in a car together, you know, we might get an extra dollar or two for us. Obviously, the driver gets most. And the more volume, so we now do about 700, over 700 million rides a year. If you do 700 million rides and you make money in your rides, you actually start to make money.

Just to make it clear, like, there's no world where every single person wants to have a car without a driver in it during a snowstorm, during a rainstorm, during a time where self-driving cars aren't, you know, anyway. So there are all kinds of things that are going to make the progress of that sort of slow and maybe not 100%.

Having said all that, if you've been in San Francisco recently or Phoenix or a little bit in Austin, even a little bit in L.A., you do see more and more self-driving cars. We've decided not to do the direct investment ourselves. We actually sold that part off even before it came. Yeah, Uber did as well, right? That's right. What was the reasoning behind that? It's too expensive. Too expensive? It's billions of dollars. And it's also billions of dollars to run a rideshare company.

You can probably pick one of the two, but you probably shouldn't try to pick both at the same time. Right, that makes sense. Yeah. And so what's happened now is other companies like Cruise and Waymo and Zoox and others have really focused on creating what they hope will be a great self-driving car experience.

What our hope is and the way we're approaching this is we're going to be a great partner for them because we're going to be effectively a distribution channel for those cars, right? If you spent billions of dollars building this technology, you want somebody to buy it. And it's probably not just going to be folks like you and me on the street buying a self-driving car. It's probably also going to be big fleets. I think it's multi-year.

Not just because the technology takes a while, but also socially it takes a while for people to get used to new things. I was going to say, what does customer adoption look like or what are attitudes like right now? Mix. And just like any new technology. But this is a technology which is so both interesting about it, but also it can be a little bit frightening to people. These companies are running effectively beta tests. But those beta tests are like we're part of it even if we're not in the car as a pedestrian.

So it's one of those things that is happening at the city level, which means, of course, mayors are interested, city councils are interested. There are groups of people who are not super excited about this. And so it's going to be a push-pull for a long time before we kind of get to the other side. And what do your drivers think about self-driving cars? So they're mixed, too. And that might sound strange. You might think, well, they hate them.

But there are, I've actually had drivers myself who've said, you know what, by the time these come onto the scene, I'm going to be doing something else. Or I'm going to be, and this is, you know, our drivers and I will talk about this. I'm like, look, just because you're not driving doesn't mean maybe you're not going to be, you know, the car tender who's like shaking the drinks in the front and helping people get to a party and not actually driving the car but part of the experience anyway. So I think there's so many ways where things are going to change that are sort of a little bit beyond what we can even imagine right now.

I don't think there's any particular reason to be worried, let's say, but I think there's a lot of reason to be aware and to be close partners with them, which is what we're doing. When you think about the economics of self-driving cars, how much money are you going to save compared to cars with drivers? So your first impression might be you're going to save a lot, right? Yeah. Okay. Here's the other, though, truth is...

You know, it's not just the cost of the driver in a car. It's also, for example, the cost of insurance. Very significant cost. Now, this might sound like the least sexy thing you're ever going to hear. It's like insurance is really, you know, super fun, right? But it turns out that insurance companies are actually quite worried about self-driving cars because they don't have the data to know how to insure and what happens if they get in an accident.

who's responsible for that? You know, it's not the driver. Is it the car manufacturer? Hold on. Maybe it's the component that failed that the car manufacturer bought from somebody else. Maybe it's the software that's part of the component. So there are all of these interesting regulatory and policy things which are frankly going to add expense and complexity to the whole environment of this. So short answer is I don't actually look at it as really a cost-saving thing per se at this point. I much more look at it as these are going to be new cars that enter our system and

alongside drivers. That's going to allow us to pick people up faster, give them new experiences, and we'll see where it goes. Now, in the past year that you've been in the job, we've seen a huge amount of companies claiming they're using generative AI. I imagine there's a bunch of AI used in self-driving cars, but how is it transforming your business?

First, let's just all admit that the whole generative AI hype thing is maybe a little over the top right now. Yeah, machine learning's been around for a while. Been around for a while. Exactly right. Exactly right. But it is true the generative piece is quite new. And obviously the human interaction now is different because chat GPT is a very different experience. Right.

So I'll give you a couple of examples. Some of them are internal productivity things, and some of them are much more external customer-facing things. On the internal productivity things, we, like many, many companies, are finding enormous adoption in our technical community with products like Copilot and others that really just help you write products

code more efficiently and test things more efficiently. You also might be able to lay off your marketing team is what you're saying. I don't think so. Actually, our marketing team is a huge user of it. They'll literally send a prompt to ChatGPT and get five ideas of ways to design something or what have you.

But I think what's even more interesting is now the closer you get to customers. So, for example, a lot of our drivers are first-generation Americans. A lot of them, we have many, many recent immigrants. In many cases, their English is not great. This actually causes them a fair amount of shame and frustration. You know, riders, too. But the driver's like, I want to be able to communicate. Well, of course, we're developing real-time communication between rider and driver that will allow people to bridge language barrier between English and

Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, that'll be really a great way to kind of, you know, strengthen that bond. And then if you go down the driver's side even more, imagine on the rider's side you do the unthinkable and so frustrating thing. I don't know if it's ever happened to you. Leave your cell phone in the car. Has this ever happened? The worst. It is the worst. It is absolutely the worst. All of a sudden you feel almost physically naked and you're like, I don't even know how to reach out to this company anymore because I like literally don't have the thing that I rely on for my whole life. So, okay.

Guess what? It turns out that AI actually can be pretty smart about that because it can see, and this is not even very sophisticated, that your phone is moving and you're – Not in the car. You've gotten out of the car. Like the car stopped, dropped you off. That's really interesting. Right? So maybe that roots the driver back, right? And maybe it automatically comes up with the right amount to pay the driver to take him or her or to take them out of their way back to you. So literally by the time you're starting to do the panic attack, the driver is right there handing you the phone. So I want to talk a little bit about the relationship between Uber and Lyft. Yeah.

It's a strained relationship. Because honestly, it can sometimes, and this is from a consumer point of view, and it's good for us, but it can feel like a race to the bottom a little bit. When Beyonce's album dropped, both companies started, you know, launching increasingly steep discounts on rides to compete with each other. How do you think about competing with them? Because I guess you're fighting with them on a sort of government level. You're both on the same team to some extent. But in the marketplace, you...

Yeah. Fight for drivers. And riders, yeah. I mean, I think you've laid it out nice. I think in terms of policy and even insurance and some other things, actually we have more in common than different. That's clearly the case. Because we're both trying to create a new industry that's a profitable, healthy industry that treats people well and so forth, and both companies are trying to do that. Now, when it gets down to the day-to-day, I mean, yeah, it's a, it's, I don't want to say, what do you want to say?

Cage match. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And the Beyonce example is a great one, right? They came out with this 16% off thing. And our marketing team just went bananas with it. They literally like, they sort of took pictures of themselves like asleep in bed at night, peacefully feeling like this is a big fat nothing burger. Yeah. And the internet agreed. The internet was like, you know what, Uber, you kind of over-promised on this one and under-delivered. And so, yeah, so we came out with a 50% coupon thing and then actually a 60% thing. Yeah, yeah. I got involved in the mix and it was kind of ridiculous. But what was fun about it was watching people

The community, both, I believe it's called the hive, the beehive. The beehive. So the beehive just went bananas and they're like, oh my God, it's so great to see Lyft showing up in a way that felt really authentic because it's true. I remember the album dropped, I think it was a Thursday night, Friday morning. It was roughly midnight West Coast time, I think maybe 3 a.m. here, something like that.

And so I was actually listening to the album. I was literally listening to Jolene, Beyonce do Jolene at the same time. And I'm like, this is an amazing album anyway. That's just me. But meanwhile, like our social team is going nuts saying like the internet is just completely on fire with all the different ways we're showing up for Beyonce fans and the way that the competition isn't. And that for me was an exciting moment because it allowed us to show our values. Like we're about bringing people together and tapping into community and all that. And they're about something else.

Now, on the economics, yeah, it costs a little bit of money, but oh, man, the goodwill. The number of people we got who signed up, who follow us on social media, the amount of, as they say in the business, unpaid media we got for it, more than made up for it. I would describe myself as a switcher, which is I just check which one is cheaper. Yeah.

and go with that. How do you convince someone like me to stay with Lyft? So I love this question because it gets to, I think, a really kind of fundamental point. The first thing you have to do is for switchers, you just got to show up, right? So when you're switching back and forth, I want Lyft to be no more expensive, maybe even a little less expensive. I want us to pick you up just as fast as the other guys, maybe even a little bit faster.

Right? And that is our goal. Yeah. So as a rider, you are a woman. Mm-hmm. Okay? We launched a product about six months ago now, a little longer ago, called Women Plus Connect. And that allows you as a woman rider to request getting a woman driver. Mm-hmm. And vice versa. It works in both directions.

That's an example of something where if that's important to you for reasons of comfort or safety or just mood, whatever it is, it turns out we're the only game in town. Then you're not going to switch back and forth. You're going to say, I want to pick Lyft. Now, by the way, it turns out that that's been a very popular feature. You can see on social media people's responses to it, and I can see it in the data. I can see the number of women drivers signing up to drive with us now is going up day by day because they're saying Lyft.

This is the experience I want. So that's part of our job is to be customer-obsessed, first do the basics, and then start to create products and services that really are different. How else are you persuading?

drivers to? A whole bunch of different ways, and I can give you a very specific example. So we launched a product called, it's the 70% earnings guarantee. We call it the new pay standard. And one of the areas that drivers get frustrated by is they say, gosh, I picked up a rider and they told me they paid 30 bucks and I only got 10. What's going on there? That's very, very frustrating. Yeah. Right.

And that is frustrating. Of course it is. So we said, look, okay, let's look at that. Let's look at why that happens, when it happens, and what we can do about it. Because it's not our model. Our model is not to pay small. Our model is to pay as much as we possibly can. So what's going on there? So we put in place a guarantee a couple of months ago. We're actually expanding it nationwide over the coming weeks.

And it guarantees, guarantees that every week, if you as a driver make less than 70% of what riders pay after some fees like insurance and stuff, we'll top you up. We'll top you up. And I was just, so it's a 70% floor. You will always make more. By the way, most drivers make about 87 cents on the dollar using this same math, but sometimes it's less. And our driver sentiment has changed by 20 points in terms of

How fairly do you feel paid through the Lyft platform? It's gone up by 20 points. So I want to actually talk about fair compensation. In January, members of Minneapolis City Council introduced a bill that would remove Uber and Lyft's exemptions from the city's $15.57 per hour minimum wage. My question here is why don't you want to pay –

Drivers at minimum wage. We do, and we already do. But it's a little complicated, and it sort of goes down a little bit of a path. So when you're a driver on Lyft, you literally are getting a choice every single minute. Do I want to take this ride? Do I not want to? First of all, when do I turn the app on? When do I take it off? But second, you know, you get a steady stream of rides, right? And you choose the ones that you like, and you don't choose the ones you don't like.

By the way, often, just like you as a rider, you've got multiple apps. You've got Rider. You've got Lyft. You've got Uber. You might even have DoorDash and something else. So when you're on the clock with Lyft, in other words, literally going to pick you up, Yaz, picking you up and moving you around, on average, drivers are making, and this is nationwide, but it also is roughly true in Minneapolis, you're making about $30 an hour gross per

about $20 an hour net. And what net means is after gas, maintenance, all of these things. Okay, so that's obviously more than minimum wage. But let's be clear, that's only when you're on the clock, right? That is a true statement. Like in other words, and so if you're waiting for your next ride, it's true, you're not making that. By the way, oftentimes you're then driving for Uber. Like you're literally going back and forth. Drivers actually do, they tend to do pretty well. Let's just start right there. And that's something we pay a lot of attention to.

Now, what's happening in Minneapolis is they're saying, well, we want to set a wage that's much, much higher than that, much, much higher. It is, in fact, so high that it will drive prices and take that $20 ride I was just talking about and make it $30 or $40. What will happen then, and we know this because we see the data all the time, is riders will stop riding. And so drivers will actually make less. And it sounds counterintuitive. You're going to pay them more, but they're going to make less. Sure, because guess what? No one's going to take the $40 ride or the $50 ride to the airport that used to cost $20.

So we're saying, guys, it's not that we want to be jerks about this. It's not that we want to fold up our table and go home. We just don't want to create a system that is bad for riders because it's too expensive and bad for drivers because they're going to make at least 20% less. So we've offered a compromise. They're in the process of looking it over. I hope they'll say yes. They've moved the date, I think, to July 1st now. Our goal is to stay, but we also are not going to create a service that's terrible for riders and drivers. It's just not how a customer-obsessed organization works.

Maybe I'm not understanding this, but I saw the median driver pay in Minneapolis and nearby St. Paul, according to a government study, was $13.63 after expenses. And it seems like they're trying to raise it to about $15. Why does that mean that

customers like me would pay $10 to $20 more. So first, not to sort of go into weird technical weeds, but the way they calculate those costs, I would say it's just, it's disingenuous because they're basically assuming that a new driver is coming in, buying an entire car just to drive for Lyft,

And that's not how the world really works. The world really works. Most drivers, it's a second job. It's maybe 10 to 20 hours a week. They're using a car they already have. And so the expenses they have are not the full cost of owning a car. The expenses are what's the additional mileage, the additional depreciation, the additional maintenance, the additional cleaning, the additional gas costs.

All of those are expenses that are absolutely associated with rideshare. And using that method of calculation, we're talking more like $20 an hour. So that's the first thing. The second thing is when you start to raise fares, which you would have to do in order to raise the pay for drivers even more,

fewer people will take your service. And so the calculation that we've done suggests that fares will go up at least 20%, maybe more. And if fares go from $20 to $24 or from $30 to $36, fewer people take Lyft.

And what happens then— So then the fares go up more. The fares go up more, drivers actually drive less, and the drivers actually make less money. Do you think that two or four dollars really makes a difference? I do. I do. Yeah, and it's not just I think. We know. Like, we do this—so we give two million rides a day. In those two million rides, we can change by a dime, and we can see how much people stopped riding as a case. People are very sensitive. Maybe this is the same quibble you had with the calculations, but the same study from the Minnesota Department of Labor

found that drivers in the state were three times more likely than other Minnesota workers overall to require assistance like food stamps or Medicaid insurance coverage. I mean, doesn't that suggest that they're not

making that much or enough money. So the compromise that we've actually put forth, actually they put forth to us and we've accepted, increases their earnings, for sure. So increasing earnings, if you do it well, if you do it thoughtfully, is a super good thing for everybody. Super, super good thing for everybody. So I don't know that particular part that you're quoting, but I can absolutely tell you, like, the compromise that's in front of them right now, which does increase driver earnings, seems super good for us. And then on the point of

benefits, we are absolutely happy to offer more benefits and offer drivers new ways to get benefits than they have today. And that's really what our focus to be, rather than on trying to raise the rates such that people are going to not find the whole value proposition working anymore.

So you've threatened to leave cities before as kind of a lobbying tactic, or I feel like it's like a game of brinksmanship to some extent. Tell me about your lobbying strategy. Yeah. So really our lobbying strategy is to help policymakers understand that the gig economy is here to stay and that the drivers really do need

this might sound disturbing, but also go talk to drivers, that it fits in their lifestyle. So again, the vast majority of drivers, over 80%, are doing this. Why? Because maybe they're between jobs, right? They've just lost their full-time job and they need a quick way to earn money. There are very few jobs where you can come into a new earning opportunity and within 48 hours be earning money. Or they're doing it part-time to work with parental care or child care or something else in their life.

Or they're doing it part-time to interleave with a W-2 job, a full-time job that maybe only employs them 25 or 30 hours a week. I've actually met a driver like this just recently who said the maximum number of hours I can work a week at my other job is 29 hours because of some weird benefit thing, whatever it is. So I use this supplement in my income.

Or it's recent retirees who say, "I'm going crazy at home. I want to get out. I want to be part of the community." You can't have two full-time jobs next to each other. That doesn't make sense. You can't really be a retiree who says, "I want poker money, but I also want to come in Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays." So that's a big part of it is saying this flexibility and control really, really works. And yes, there are trade-offs. It is true. It's not guaranteed in the way that a full-time job is. Of course,

Unlike a full-time job, you know, we don't typically fire you either. It's a new set of work. And it's really important, the last thing I'll say on this, for the economy, for individual peoples, for, you know, communities, but also for the economy. It's a way that sort of buffers all the weird, you know, recession and kind of boom-bust cycles because it allows people to enter and exit the economy. So it helps millions of people, you know, make money every single day. And so let's embrace it and figure out how to move it forward. Are you primarily talking to state legislatures at this point?

More of state than federal, just because a lot of the regulations are at the federal level. But, you know, I'll be in Washington, D.C. later this week. I'll talk to federal folks as well. Because it's important for them to understand that, again, this is part of our economy. And it's not fringe. And it's not weird.

It's millions of people's lives every single day. What percentage of your employees are just basically full-time Lyft drivers? Well, so no driver is an employee. Let's start with that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all contractors. They're all contractors. Exactly right. But of those, it's roughly 15% who you would consider full-time. In other words, they're driving for 40 hours a week or more. Yeah. Do you offer them any benefits? No.

It depends. And the reason I say that is because it's very, very state by state. So as you probably know from your personal life, insurance is different. You know, healthcare systems are different. You know, Kaiser's big here. You know, Aetna's big there and this sort of stuff. But I can give you a very good example. So in Washington State, we actually kind of brokered a deal, in fact, with organized labor that allows drivers to plug into an existing – to a benefits program.

There's even a sick leave kind of provision, the more you drive, the more you can plug into that. And that's really the model. You know, if I could look at one state right now and say, gosh, let's do this 49 more times, it'd be that Washington state model. Right. That makes a lot of sense. I want to come back to the argument that sort of rideshare companies say that higher wages for drivers –

might increase cost and lower demand from riders, which in turn would obviously decrease the amount of services available. Just talking about price sensitivity here, how big does the price sensitivity gap have to be before somebody just closes the app and decides not to?

It might sound funny. It literally can be as little as a nickel or a dime. Now, most people don't, right? But you can see it every single day. So prices go up because remember, you know, the same route, I know this is quite annoying, by the way, but the same route that costs, you know, $10 today.

It's raining and Beyonce just got out. Yeah. All of a sudden that ride costs a lot more. Why does it cost more? Because drivers are earning more. Let's be very clear. That's where that money is going to. Drivers are being paid more to heavy up when it's raining or when there's a whole lot of demand, all the same thing. So we can see very quickly if you go up $1, if you go up $2, if you go up $3, and every single increment up, even 50 cents, it cuts demand dramatically.

you know, significantly. We never want to raise prices because people don't like it, but sometimes we have to mostly to get drivers to drive more. This is too much personal information, but I actually met my husband in the back of an Uber pool. Oh, interesting. Because we were both cheap. Okay. All right. And I have noticed now I don't think I could afford one. We've been together for, what, eight years? Congratulations. Prices are really different now. Yeah.

Tell me why that is. Is it just because you realize SoftBank doesn't have money forever? Lyft is not a SoftBank company, I know, but...

or your public. Tell me how you think about that. The short answer is the industry was underpricing in the early days. Got it. It just was. And now we're at a point of sort of equilibrium where companies can, I mean, companies have to be profitable in order to exist, not just exist. Like eventually they just go out of business otherwise. I want to go back to the Minnesota City Council. They've pushed back, you know, the date to July 1st for all this stuff to go into effect. What needs to happen for Lyft to stay? And I'm also curious about

how your actions in this case might set a precedent for how you act? All that has to happen right now is they just have to say yes to a proposal that they actually co-authored, they and the state. And here, to be honest, I'm a little far away from the details, but there have been sort of proposals and counterproposals. And we went to them a couple of weeks ago now and said, basically, this current proposal that's on the table, we'll sign it tomorrow. So that's all they have to do.

Now, if they don't, then we're going to leave. And again, the reason we'll leave is because we don't want to create a service that's bad for riders and bad for drivers. By the way, we're going to leave in as low impact a way as we possibly can. Funnily enough, this is a Minneapolis ordinance. But if you've been to Minneapolis, you know that Minneapolis and St. Paul, the two cities are, and St. Paul is not going down the same path. So we'll still operate in St. Paul. Got it. We'll still operate at the airport. It will be complicated because we literally are not even supposed to drive through the city of Minneapolis, which

to get from the airport to St. Paul means we're going to have to go around the thing. So that's going to be, you know, weird. And we're going to have to work all that out. But we're dedicated to doing it because we want to be as customer-sensitive as we can within this framework. You know, now, about precedent, okay, if you look at the feedback that legislators have gotten on this...

And I'm quoting from them now. They say the amount of rider and driver feedback from disabled people saying, how am I going to get to work? Black and brown communities saying, you know what? Taxes don't work. First of all, there aren't enough. And second of all, they never come to my community. People who use this every single day. And I'm not talking about us. I'm talking about the competition, too, to get to their kid's soccer game and they don't have a car. And they're like, this is part of the way. Drivers saying, guys, this is how I make money. Don't mess with this. Just cut it out and figure out a way to come to compromise.

The precedent we hope we set here is one where we say, you know what, guys? This is a really important part of your city's social infrastructure. We are happy to come to compromise. We're happy to kind of work with you, but please don't do things that

despite your best intentions, end up driving us out of town. I want to talk a little bit about your background now. You mentioned that you ran a nonprofit before. You're also a shark. You worked at Amazon. You worked at Microsoft. Amazon, famously tough corporate culture. But tell me why you decided to, you know, come back in and run a public company. Yeah. So it is a crazy story. So I'd been on the Lyft board for about 18 months when all this went down.

John Zimmer and Logan Green, who are the co-founders of the company, decided at the end of 2022 that they were ready to leave. So the board did what boards do. I mean, I was watching it as a board member, but I wasn't part of that whole process. Anyway, February 14th of last year comes around, Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day, yeah. I remember, yeah. So you said you've been, how long did you say you've been married to your husband? Eight years? We've been married for a year and a half. We've been together for eight years. Together for eight, married for a year and a half. Okay.

So I'm a little bit older than you are, and I've been married a little longer. I've been married now 28 years. You don't need to brag. And I don't want to – exactly. I don't want to brag. I don't want to brag, but I've got a little bit more mileage. So I'm walking along the streets of San Francisco in between two other meetings, and my phone rings, and it's the board chair. And he says, you know, David, I've got an offer you're not going to be able to refuse. So I'm like, what?

Like, what's about to happen here? Is he going to try to convince me to be the head of the audit committee or some soul-crushing thing right now? And he's like, no, no. Actually, John Logan and I have been talking, and we would like you to consider throwing your hat in the ring to be the next CEO of Lyft. And I said...

flat out I am super flattered and there is no way that's going to happen zero percent chance in fact I was like you're wasting your time right like get back to work now because you're just wasting it and the reason was as you said you know I had worked at Microsoft you know for a long time I worked at Amazon for a long time

But I was now running a nonprofit that was getting kids reading. And this is something I've been passionate about for many years. And I have a great life. And I said that. My life is amazing. I get to work super hard. It's something I'm very passionate about. Anyway, he said, look, why don't you think about it? And then, by the way, they said, oh, just to be clear, you're not getting the job. You're applying for the job. And then I got competitive. Then I'm like, well, hold on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you're not going to take it away from me. Let me call Jeff. Exactly. So let's get Jeff on line one and tell him why I'm such a good boy. So anyway, I put together a 100-day plan. I presented it to the board. You know, the board looked at it with a skeptical eye, as you would expect, and said at the end of the day, you know what? I think if you can pull off what you're saying you can pull off, let's give it a try. So they made a big bet on me, and I'm so glad they did. There were a bunch of new things with this job for you, right? What were some of the things you brought to the table, and where was the steepest learning curve?

So, first of all, customer obsession driving profitable growth, like, that's a winning strategy. You know, it's hard to find a company where it's like, let's be less customer obsessed. We think that's like a better way to go. Another thing is, like, using technology at scale. I had learned that at Microsoft. I learned that at Amazon. You know, Lyft has incredible scale and uses an enormous amount of amazing technology. That's something else.

But you know what? In the end, some of the biggest learnings I had that I brought to this were from— Lessons. And lessons. Something I can't stand. People using the word learnings. Oh, yeah. Good point. Why was I saying that? It's not a real word. 100% right. No, and yes, I super appreciate that. You can cut that if you want to, or you can keep it as a little object lesson. Sorry, that was such a jerk thing to do. 100%.

Lessons. One of the lessons, thank you very much, that I learned was the importance of leading with purpose, bringing people together.

the importance of the team. Oh, my God, you're only as good as your team. And I had to come in and make some changes to the team, you know, but now I've got an amazing A+++ team. And I actually learned how to do that actually at WorldReader in a lot of ways where we're getting millions of kids reading on using technology. So it was sort of surprising the amount that I was able to bring from my past and sort of redeploy even though the context was different.

Well, this was great. Thank you so much for coming on our show. Oh, no, for sure. And you taught me a good lesson today. So I appreciate that. Okay, we are back with Pavithra and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each one of us shares a story, trend, or piece of pop culture we're following right now. And Pavithra, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on?

Well, I am still keeping tabs on Beyonce always, but specifically the album. I'm still listening to Cowboy Carter on repeat. But also I just want to highlight the video that she just dropped this week of her using her haircare line because she basically was telling everyone who was like, why haven't we seen your natural hair? She's like, here it is. And it's a great video. She's like quietly hilarious in it, which I think we all knew she was already, but it's great. I've watched it several times.

It took me so long to figure out that her brand was pronounced sacred. Oh, I didn't know until that video, honestly. I was like, sacred? What are you going for? Wait, how is it spelled? C-E accent, like the E accent in Beyonce, C-R-E-D. Oh. It is confusing. Yeah, not as obvious as you'd think.

Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? I'm keeping tabs on, I'm going to go back to sports. I'm keeping tabs on the NBA playoffs. I'm a diehard NBA fan. It was the first weekend of the NBA playoffs. And last night, which was Monday night as of our recording this, was probably the best game of the weekend so far. The Denver Nuggets versus LA Lakers that ended in a Jamal Murray buzzer beater. Super great game. Yeah.

NBA playoffs are the best playoffs in sports. So I'm going to be not getting work done for the next couple of months while these play out. And hopefully my Celtics take home a title. Yaz, what about you? What are you keeping tabs on? I have nothing to add to that one. I know. I was just going to throw it out there. We were both just like so nice. Good for you, Josh.

It's nice when people have hobbies. It's great. I'll say this. I think a team being called the Nuggets is really funny. And I know it's to do with gold nuggets, but it will still... It's still hilarious. It's really funny. The names in the NBA versus other sports, I think, are so whimsical in comparison. Like, there's the Wizards. There's the Pelicans. The Rockets.

The Rockets are fun. The Timberwolves. I think it's just a fun league of names. The Jazz. The Utah Jazz, which I know is because the team moved away. Not great. It's great. No, I love it. The Knicks. It's just, yeah.

fun team names all around in the NBA. It's way more fun. Yeah. So, well, in terms of what I'm keeping tabs on, there's a newest show on Netflix by comedian Richard Gad called Baby Reindeer. Oh, I keep seeing this pop up on my Amazon. It is just fantastic. It's like the writing is so sharp and original and good and

There's obviously been a lot of really great TV out, but it's really the first show since like maybe Fleabag that it felt so fresh to me. I will warrant content warning. It takes an unbelievably disturbing turn a few episodes in, which...

I think is worth watching, but definitely like I didn't see it coming at all and was like not in an emotional state to receive it. Oh no. I think Richard Gad is a total genius. I think that show's amazing and deserves all the awards and credit it gets. So it's based on a one man show.

So that's cool. Just like Fleabag. Just like Fleabag. Exactly. I've been overall like a little disappointed with the TV offerings recently. There's been some stuff that has come out and I know we have the strike and we have kind of like slimmer. The issue with all of these shows, I really believe this is like my unifying theory of TV shows is pacing is

You know what show is the most crazily... The Mandy Patinkin show, Death and Other... That show is so insane. That show is like... I'm not convinced that show was not written by AI. It was not written by ChatGPT. It makes zero sense. I also would never say this normally, but there were actually too many twists. Yeah.

Yeah. But the twists were just like in conflict with each other. It was just like, and now this. There were so many times in that show where I felt like, did I zone out? Do I have to rewind? Did I miss something? What is this? And I'd go back and like, nope, just seems like several scenes were missing. Yeah. Editing nightmare, I'm sure, over there. When I watched that show with my husband, he kept cracking up at the fact that the main actress's name is Violet Bean. Yeah.

Every time it came up, he'd be like, ha ha ha. It is really funny. All I can describe that show is is like sexy death on the Nile with Mandy Patinkin. And not as smart. Not as smart, no. I watched it while I was recovering from surgery. Sorry.

So I was like on Percocet and I was just like, what? I don't know if that would make the experience better or worse, but it's, yeah, it's a wild show. Anyways, make better TV. I need stuff to watch. Or just watch Baby Reindeer, a phenomenally paced, well-written show. I will. I will watch that. I will watch that. And that's it for Most Innovative Companies. Pavithra, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me.

Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom with an assist from our interns, Layla Frankina and Ellie Stevens. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate and review and we will see you next week.