Zimride, a San Francisco-based startup that helps commuters share rides, is bringing itself to the East Coast with a new route between New York and Washington D.C.
With an already popular route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, this will add another one on the other side of the country. The average passenger from New York to Washington D.C. should pay about $25 for a seat, and the average Zimride driver should make $150 if they sell three seats.
“With recent Chinatown bus closures in New York city and increased summer weekend travel along the country’s most trafficked corridor, the time is right to bring our rideshare success east,” co-founder John Zimmer tells us.
The geographic expansion caps off a very hectic spring and summer for Zimride. The company just added a third leg of its business in on-demand, mobile ride-sharing. Called Lyft, the product resembles Uber’s model except that it uses regular people who bring their own cars. Zimride, of course, vets drivers for their driving history, criminal records, auto safety and so on. They add some personal touches too with a fist-bump for every passenger and pink moustaches on the cars.
Lyft comes on top of two other prongs of Zimride’s business. There is the original ride-sharing program that works with universities. Then there is long-distance ride-sharing. To engender trust, Zimride uses Facebook to show friends or interests in common. Passengers and drivers can also review each other for reliability and response times. Zimmer says all three arms of the business have made the company enough revenue that it doesn’t necessarily need to raise another round of funding. The business supports more than 30 employees.
Since launching back in 2007, the company has seen close to 200 million miles shared and 360,000 users. A year ago, it hit 100 million miles. The company has raised just over $7 million from Mayfield Fund, Floodgate, K9 Ventures, Keith Rabois and Facebook’s original incubator fbFund.