Today I am thrilled to announce a watershed moment in my career: I am starting a company! Before I get into the details of what the new company is about, I will start with a bit of recent history.
During my 8 (!) years at Lyft we built some very impactful systems that enabled Lyft to weather its hypergrowth years. During this time we learned a lot of lessons that are broadly applicable across the industry. For the last year and a half I’ve had the opportunity at Lyft to develop a new business unit, aimed at commercializing some of the pieces that we felt would be most impactful, especially given the recent industry-wide renewed focus on infrastructure cost cutting. During this time we have made tremendous progress, including acquiring our first external customers.
By late last year it had become clear that in order for the fledgling opportunity to reach its full potential it would be necessary to spin out into an independent entity, so my co-founders Pete Morelli and Martin Conte Mac Donell and I set out to do that. After months of ups, downs, and close calls (it turns out spinning out a company is hard!), we are an independent entity named bitdrift. We are starting as a team of 9, with 6 folks from Lyft joining us on this journey: Jackson, Miguel, Rafal, Sarvar, Snow, and Vicky. This is a fantastic team, and I could not be more excited for what we and the new company are going to accomplish.
By now you are likely wondering: what does this company do? We will share much more soon, but we are going to stay in stealth a while longer while we work with more design partners and finish our go to market feature set. However, if you want a bit of a tease and a way to sign up to be notified when more info becomes available, check out our website at bitdrift.io.
While it is certainly bittersweet that my time at Lyft has come to an end - I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to build Envoy and share it with the world - I am beyond excited for this new chapter. More soon and onward!