Diversification

This post is going to be about another company that shows some ways that Lyft could actually diversify into other options for customers. They already have a fleet of drivers at their disposal, so why not find other ways to use them!

I want to showcase a company called PostMates. From on online newspaper:

"The concept of couriers is far from new. The idea traces back to America’s earliest roots, but Postmates looks much different than the Pony Express. Founders Sam Street, Sean Plaice and Bastian Lehmann founded the company in 2011 after realizing the logistics of moving goods around a city weren’t up to speed. There was no easy way to move something from point A to point B,” Postmates spokeswoman April Conyers said, “so they created Postmates with the intention of solving that problem.”

Conyers said the company has had “huge growth.”

The company has raised more than $22 million in capital so far, according to venture capital company Spark Capital. Conyers said Postmates has about 8,000 couriers in 22 markets. Conyers said consumer demand has fueled their success: “It’s the adoption of the on-demand kind of movement. Being able to get things when you want them is appealing.” Douglas Olsen, an associate professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, agreed and said he believes businesses like this have adapted to our culture.

“There’s no question that we have become a fairly impulsive generation,” he said. “We do expect things to the extent that we can get them now with fairly minimum effort. That’s something that we have certainly been gravitating to.”

I don't see why a company like Lyft couldn't maximize its efforts by letting its drivers respond to two types of calls.