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Ep 54: Lyft’s Kristin Sverchek on Expanding Beyond Legal into Corporate Leadership
105 Plays3 months ago
How can C-suite leaders take on challenging political issues that affect their company? How do you pursue a path of professional growth at a company over the course of a decade? What's required for taking on wide-ranging responsibilities at the executive level?
Join Kristin Sverchek, President of Lyft, as she discusses how she joined a small start-up as their first general counsel and grew with it as it transformed into a global ride-sharing powerhouse with a multi-billion dollar IPO.
Listen as she discusses the unexpected management challenges she faced and conquered internally as her role expanded beyond legal, as well as the external challenges of taking strong stances to protect her drivers in the face of adverse political climates. She also offers advice for lawyers looking to expand beyond the legal function and shares stories about innovating in industries where regulations haven’t been updated in over a century.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-54
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Finding your way to Lyft: 3:51
Taking on your first GC role at Lyft: 6:23
Building a legal team at a rapidly growing start-up: 8:23
Helping lead the IPO process: 10:48
Comparing work at public and private companies: 14:39
Dealing with the challenges of executive roles: 17:20
Transitioning into the President of Business Affairs role: 21:45
Working with an executive coach during major career transitions: 26:08
Advice to lawyers who want to take on GC “plus” roles: 27:56
Defining and living your values at Lyft: 30:30
Taking on the role of President: 35:58
Departing Lyft: 38:42
Book recommendation: 45:52
What you wish you’d known as a young lawyer: 46:58
Connect with us:
Kristin Sverchek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinsverchek/
Tyler Finn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft: https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Risk Tolerance in Company Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
As any company gets bigger and certainly when you make the move to public, your risk tolerance just has to go down. So you can accept less risk when you're an early stage company and you've got three big VC shareholders who know exactly the risk that they signed up for and they want you to go at it and swing for the fences and so. As a GC, you've got to be able to calibrate. And I think some GCs just sort of naturally run much more conservative and some run much more risk taking. And I think the the biggest thing is like there's not a right or a wrong answer. It's really just what is satisfactory and and exciting to you as a person.
Career Evolution and Business Roles
00:00:43
Speaker
How can you pursue a path of professional growth at a company over the course of a decade? What's required to take on wide-ranging responsibilities for a business? And how can C-suite leaders navigate challenging political issues that affect their companies?
00:01:00
Speaker
Today, we are incredibly lucky to be joined on the abstract by my friend Kristin Sierczyk, president of Lyft, which I would describe as the friendly ride-sharing company. She's got fun graphic in the background and she's wearing a fun shirt.
00:01:16
Speaker
For taking on the president role, Kristen was the president of business affairs. And before that, she was Lyft's first general counsel.
Kristin Sierczyk's Role in Lyft's IPO
00:01:24
Speaker
She helped lead Lyft's IPO, which raised about two and a third billion dollars in the public markets. And before joining Lyft, she was a partner at Silicon Legal Strategy, as well as starting her career at Gunderson, a law firm that I think a number of our listeners have either worked with or worked for.
00:01:45
Speaker
Kristen, thanks so much for joining me today for this episode of The Abstract. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. We are going to start outside of the law today. You actually studied molecular and cell biology at Berkeley. I think that's a fun fact. I don't think many people know that about you. I love i love dropping that fact. You have a built-in fun fact to go along with your name and where you're from and where you've worked for life. What did you think that you were going to be at that point?
00:02:14
Speaker
um So yeah, it's a great two truths and a lie fact, by the way. I was always interested in the sciences. I grew up in Livermore, a town that famously has Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. My parents were both scientists. And so that just felt honestly like a natural course of action for me. And by the way, my brother is a chemical engineer. So it's it's deep within our family's DNA. But I did a few summers working at Lawrence Livermore and as a resource scientist.
00:02:43
Speaker
um during college. And even though it was fascinating, I knew that I didn't want to be doing that for you know the next 40, 50, 60 years. um So by the time that I reached my senior year of college, I was pretty sure that I was not going to pursue a career in science.
00:02:59
Speaker
And you know you end up becoming a lawyer. Tell us a little bit about that decision. like what What led you to decide to want to go to law school and and pursue a different path? Well, um I was famously argumentative growing up. um So my parents had told me many times I would make a great attorney. And so as I kind of came to this realization that biology was not going to be a forever career for me,
00:03:22
Speaker
I thought, okay, law school feels like a good next step. And I would actually say that looking back upon reflection, the skills that you learn studying science, you know, the logical thinking, the detail orientation, the attacking a problem from every angle, they're super translatable to the legal field. So while it feels like a, you know, a disparate kind of career path for me, it actually felt really like a really natural step. Interesting. Tell us about how you found your way to Lyft. When I think about your story, when I think about Lyft's story, the sort of growth that you've experienced over your professional career and Lyft really sort of growing up, like these are very tied together in in my mind. So tell us about how you found Lyft and what was the company like when you first joined?
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, so in June of 2010, I was working at Silicon Legal Strategy.
From Zimride to Lyft: Legal Challenges
00:04:16
Speaker
I was representing actually Floodgate Fund, who were the investors in the series seed round of funding for a company called Zimride, which was a long distance online carpool platform, basically like a SaaS product. The company would sell these subscriptions to colleges and universities.
00:04:34
Speaker
So I was investors counsel for this round of private financing. After that deal closed, this, you know, teeny five person company, the co-founders, John and Logan were like, Hey, you were a great lawyer, you know, across the table. We want to be our outside counsel. And I said, sure. Um, and so I was there outside counsel for a couple of years. And in early 2012, we were in a board meeting. I was there as in my status outside counsel, and they started talking about this on demand mobile app sort of version of the Zimride service. And this of course will later become Lyft, but it was the earliest stages of this idea where. all the investors who were board members sitting around the table, you know, sort of swiveled their heads at me and said, like, uh, is that legal? And, you know, um, my answer to them was that regulations had not been written contemplating this, right? Like when, and this was, you know, San Francisco, so California specifically, the California public utilities code written a hundred years ago certainly could not have foreseen the ways in which a mobile app could connect to people. And so basically our premise at that time was, well, we're going to have to change some law to make sure that we have you know a safe harbor of sorts, but we're not doing anything that's strictly
Transition to General Counsel at Lyft
00:05:52
Speaker
illegal. And so you know I continued working with the company as outside counsel, but the calls started coming every day.
00:05:58
Speaker
And ultimately, in the fall of 2012, they asked me to join them full time as the company's first general counsel. I told them no, because I had a job that I liked. um I liked working with a bunch of different small startups, ah but they were super persistent. And ultimately, of course, I ended up saying yes. And so that's how I found my way to Lyft in the fall of 2012.
00:06:21
Speaker
It's a great story. This was your first GC role, right? Yeah, outside counsel. I'm sure you served as a quasi outside GC to a variety of companies before, but it's different being, you know, in the seat yourself. Talk to us a little bit about the learning curve in the, in the early days. And then of course I've got a bunch of follow-ups on, on sort of like, as you build out a big team, as Lyft really takes off. The learning curve was very steep and I certainly, I was not prepared for that at all because since I'd been working with this company as outside counsel and I'd known them for a few years at this point and I'd worked with a number of the employees because, you know, I helped them do all these deals. I thought like it was just basically going to be showing up to work at a different office. You know, when I switched from Silicon legal strategy to lift and I really didn't know. And thankfully I later learned that the role of GC is a fundamentally different job than the role of outside counsel. And I just, that was news to me. Right. And so, So, um, you know, what I realized is that when you're outside counsel, the relationship is much more of a push relationship. Someone comes to you, they decide to come to you. And so they're asking for your advice and you are already being sort of asked to give it to them. Whereas when you're in-house counsel, sometimes people are asking for your advice. Sometimes they're not, but you got to give it. So you really have to work on building those relationships and building that trust. And Lyft had a culture, which I'm super thankful for, but a culture of people challenging each other. And so there was not a strong hierarchy in terms of like, oh, I'm this, I'm the lawyer, so I get to tell you what to do. No, no, no, it was like the most you a junior person in the room could say, Kristin, I don't understand that advice. Why does that make sense? And there were moments really early on where I realized,
Lyft's Workplace Culture
00:08:15
Speaker
oh, they're right and I'm wrong. And so it was humbling, but it was also really fun and exciting. As the company grows, talk to us about building the team. Like, how did you bring in the right sort of talent? How did you grow as a manager? I'd imagine that's one of the sort of steepest curves as Lyft sped towards, no pun intended, an IPO. That was not in the script.
00:08:42
Speaker
um Sped toward, but always within the speed limit of course. When I joined, I was relatively junior in my career. My experience was all in the corporate transaction space. and um and you know I was joining a company that obviously was like heavily immersed in a sort of like a legal and regulatory tricky area from day one. And so even before I accepted the job, I was very clear to let the co-founders know that I'd be requiring budget for outside counsel to compliment my own skill set because I knew that I didn't know it all.
00:09:21
Speaker
And that was the sort of same philosophy I had as I went to build out the legal team. I really looked for people with skills that were different from my own. So, you know, some of the first people I hired both had litigation backgrounds. You know, another early hire was had an employment background.
00:09:39
Speaker
At the time, insurance, well, but still today, insurance is very big for us, but at the time it was within my purview, and so I you know hired someone with an insurance expertise. And it was only like five or six hires down the road that I ultimately hired you know another corporate person to effectively sort of duplicate myself such that I could be in more of a leadership role versus a practitioner role. And you know I looked for people who were diverse,
00:10:06
Speaker
And I looked for people who were better than me at their jobs. And I did that, you know, knowing full well that like some people might be threatened by bringing in a cohort of folks who were really, really good experts in their fields. But for me, like this was the ticket to success. And I was very right to bet in that way because All of these people that I'm talking about, you know, very quickly gained the trust of the co-founders and other management because they were so good at what they did. And many of them, some of them are still at left today, by the way, and, you know, a decade later and and others of them that have since gone on, stayed a long time and have gone on to really amazing things.
00:10:47
Speaker
I'm curious about the the IPO. I think we should talk about that a little bit. you know A first sort of question to you is, was that inevitable? and and Did it feel inevitable? and What was your role in that process? and then I'm also really interested in how your role changed, how you felt your role changed. and We can talk about what it's like to be a public company GC and how that's different than a privately held business. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess one thing I'll say about management before I move on, just because it's been in my head is, um, you know, I spoke about how the culture at Lyft was one of individuals respectfully challenging one another. This was very true on the legal team too. So in terms of how did I learn to become ah an effective manager, it's because people told me when I was doing things wrong. And yeah that was not just you know substantive legal stuff. That was also personnel management. And they helped me to account. And I am so grateful for that because that is how I developed as a manager. And so just, I guess, a certain like a piece of advice is like, this is the way that leaders should act. And and for me, I sort of had no choice because i because I knew that I didn't know a lot. But as I become later in my career, I am really intentional in trying to remember that I can still learn from others all of the time. Of course. um So going public, it definitely was not sort of you know preordained that Lyft would go public. I mean, certainly when I first joined the company, and by the way, it was
00:12:16
Speaker
30 people series B you know operational in San Francisco only. I didn't even know if the company was going to succeed, let alone even if it did succeed, you know maybe it would be acquired in like a year or two for some tiny fraction. I don't think I could have. And and also when I joined in 2012, like the IPO markets were not hot. And so there was a long period of time with like very little in the way of tech IPO activity. And so I actually think an IPO was like the furthest thing from my mind when I joined the company. And in fact, if I had known that part of the job would be taking the company public, I might have been more scared to say yes, because i my background was really in private company work. And i I didn't necessarily feel that I had the appropriate background and skill set for public company work. But the beauty of my job is that, you know, I started in 2012, we took the company public in 2019. So I had seven years of step by step learning, gradual, you know, organic growth versus
00:13:19
Speaker
Zero to 60 and so I also think like it's easy for people to forget that you know I didn't just become a public company in GC overnight the company with me I grew up the company and So if we had gone out in 2015 gosh, that would have been scary But by the time it was 2019 or 2018 when we were really preparing in earnest I was ready and we'd gotten more mature in our process processes, you know the team had been built out both on the legal side, but also on the finance side, accounting side, you know the other partner teams that are super important for legal to have in a public company.
IPO Preparation and Challenges
00:13:52
Speaker
And so we were a fairly well-oiled machine by then. And so from being private to public in that moment, it did feel more like a stepwise change, you know a small step, not a major step. And I am so thankful for having had that long runway to prepare, because I can't imagine what it would have been like to do it immediately. But I also, look, I also leaned on my outside counsel then too. So, you know, you always have to have life words around you. And it was a startup and I've worked for various startups. I feel like a year in a startup environment, it's like dog years, right? So seven years in a company like Lyft is very different than seven years at a company like PepsiCo, let's say. 100% agree. Yes, um sometimes it feels like I've worked here for 40 years. so Looking at at sort of your your life before the IPO and after the IPO, well, I talked to public company GCs, and to private company GCs. What are your thoughts on how those day-to-days look different? and I think you really have thrived in a public company environment, but but who's that right for? because I don't necessarily think public company life is right for for everyone.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, I think the biggest change is that demand of the quarterly calendar. and And it is still shocking to me, you know, five and a half years post public offering, how fast those quarter ends come around. And so you really are sort of owned by by that annual calendar and everything is, you know, your're you're sort of working backwards planning from earnings every quarter.
00:15:32
Speaker
And um that is a big part of the role for a public company GC or a public company CFO. And so then everything else you do, people management, you know, the performance cycle, compensation planning, annual planning.
00:15:47
Speaker
all has to fit within that calendar. And sometimes those things layer on top of each other. I mean, a great example, um, in May of this year, so our, when we were reporting our Q one earnings, we had earnings. We also had a trial with the Massachusetts attorney general. And so you had the legal team, you know, flat out like a dozen people on one thing, a dozen people on another. And like, you know, you really try to plan to avoid stuff like that. It's not always possible, but it can be really difficult. Whereas private company, I think there is a huge urgency to everything, but you don't have these drop dead, super fixed deadlines like that.
00:16:29
Speaker
um And I also think the the other major difference, and this is a sort of a sliding scale, is as any company gets bigger, and certainly when you make the move to public, your risk tolerance just has to go down. um So you can accept less risk you know when your shareholders shareholders are out there in the public market than you can when you're an early-stage company and you've got three big VC shareholders who know exactly the risk that they signed up for, and they want you to go at it and swing for the fences. And so as a GC, you've got to be able to calibrate. And I think some GCs just sort of naturally run much more conservative and some run much more you know risk taking. And yeah, I think it's i think the the biggest thing is like there's not a right or a wrong answer. It's really just what is like satisfactory and and exciting to you as a person.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yeah. Let's talk about some of the challenges or of of being an executive, right? Like having to lead. We talk about the IPO, the markets changing, making that possible. um But the success of Lyft you know as a business, as a business model from a regulatory perspective, from the competitors that were in the market. yeah right it was not It was not inevitable.
Resilience and Leadership at Lyft
00:17:42
Speaker
and There were a lot of folks who probably doubted the vision and also may have doubted specific decisions that you and other yeah executives made. How did you handle that sort of questioning? How did you get tougher over time? Yeah. I mean, look, like I would say there were so many of those moments more than I can possibly count. And, you know, the major ones, I think were a lot of the ones you mentioned being severely underfunded relative to our largest competitor. And, you know, having COVID happened and sort of the bottom dropout with respect to like, all of a sudden people weren't taking rides in a way that was really unpredictable. And, but there were so many other moments, you know, in between, um, and,
00:18:26
Speaker
And I guess a couple things I would say. One is this is an important thing to think about when you're hiring. You want to make sure you hire the person who has grit and resilience of their own. And, you know, we we had some of those people who just really they couldn't take that kind of stress. And so and again, it's not there's nothing wrong with that. It's just those people left and and they went for a job that was more stable. But The people who were here and really wanted to fight through are the people who are ma you know they're amazing. like They really have that. It's that internal motivation of knowing that perseverance through a tough job and completing it in ah in a really great way is
00:19:10
Speaker
like That is its own reward. and so The way that I tried to motivate as a leader was talking to people about that. and Even in the really negative times, frankly, I also talked to people about the fact that that was good experience too. No, no it's not a fun. Yes, we all love the up and to the right times, but as a professional, you're not well-rounded if you've only seen good times and not bad times. and so For me sometimes, some of the motivator was, I really want to know, I want to learn how to lead through all situations. Yeah. Were there ways that you tried to manage the stress? i mean It's one thing to have say a fidelity or questioning the vision of the business or right analysts. right that That's one piece. and Another piece is
00:19:59
Speaker
you know you as an executive personally you make a tough call and you have a bunch of employees who are or contractors or whoever they dissatisfied with that that's very different it's it's much more personal yeah talk to us a little about that yeah i mean the biggest the biggest way i know how to lead is through transparency and so I think that as a leader, it's important to show your work. And what I mean by that is take your team members along on the journey that you went through in making a certain decision or or deciding on a certain course of action and acknowledge that there might be some imperfections in your logic or some things that like you can't quite square. But ultimately, like people want to understand your methodology and they want to understand
00:20:48
Speaker
did you think about X, Y, and Z possible pitfall? And I think usually like people are okay with an imperfect decision if they understand why you made it. But people really don't like it when you just like give them the headline with none of the news underneath. And so for me, I think that was the best way to do it. And and people got to know me. I also, by the way, and and this has been sort of less true in recent years, but for many, many years,
00:21:16
Speaker
I spent tons of one-on-one time with people just talking to them so they could understand the ways in which I thought about things and where I agreed with leadership, where I didn't agree with leadership. And so, um and you know, that's one of the biggest things that I've talked to people about through the years is how I go about making a judgment or advising in a particular situation. um So, you know, it's it's it' not the decision. It's everything behind the decision that matters. so Your role over time also evolved quite considerably within the business. And I think this is one of the most interesting things that's happening in executive leadership right now. You're seeing this at companies like Microsoft or with Brad Smith or Kent Walker at Google or others. Maybe one could i mean Sheryl Sandberg sort of played a similar-ish role for many years. You transitioned to become president of business affairs. Let's talk about that
Kristin's Expanded Role and Leadership Style
00:22:13
Speaker
first. yeah Is that something that you wanted to create? Did your CEO come to you and say, Kristin, we're going to create this for you? like What did that look like? yeah um so What it looked like was in 2021, I was coming back from maternity leave, having had my third child at Lyft. Yes, thank goodness for that maternity leave policy. and um
00:22:37
Speaker
Which I'm sure you played a role in crafting. I absolutely did. And I will probably take a lot of credit for that. um And but I will say it's been all of the leaders here have modeled it as well by taking it. So that's the kind of thing that's only meaningful if everybody utilizes it. But so I came back from that maternity leave and I was talking to one of our board members and that board member said something to me like, you know, you've been here nine years at this point. You're a great leader. You have created a following within the company. You have retained so many folks. You have trained them up. You need to do a little more here and I'm not going to get that for you. You need to go get it for yourself. So I went and talked to our co-founders and I sort of pitched them on this idea about like, I can take on more of the behind the scenes type stuff. um And, you know, at the time I owned legal, but I pitched them on policy and a few other things. And, um you know, to my, I wouldn't say like overwhelming surprise, but, you know, slight surprise. The answer was just immediately, yes. They were like, you want more, we're happy to give it to you.
00:23:39
Speaker
So, um you know, I'd been prepared to really like advocate for myself and it was it was actually much more simple than that. And so the role in its earliest stage ended up being legal policy people, the chief information officer and ah business development and global supply chains. So we went from an org of about 170 people to an org that was about 10x that size, you know, really overnight. So it was a major, major change. But the good news was that, you know, all of these teams that I sort of folded in together in the business affairs org, you know, these were all leaders that I knew and have worked with really well for many years.
00:24:18
Speaker
Did that feel like a risk at the time going and asking for that? I mean, if the answer is no, it I don't know. that yeah that That might change your trajectory. I'm a big believer in the worst someone can do is say no to you. um So I am a big believer in asking the question. you know All of that said, like I wouldn't push someone to ask that question after three months on the job with no reputational currency um and and no proof points as as far as to why they could make such a request but you know at this point in time again you know I'm i'm nine years into the role two years past taking the company public I've I've handled all sorts of thorny situations and and had this really long-standing relationship of trust and so so I knew that if the co-founder said no I wasn't gonna be in a worse position maybe a little ego bruise but um sure I but it wouldn't be damaging sort of to my career prospects at the company in any way.
00:25:20
Speaker
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00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, i um I have had executive coaching at many points during my um during my career and that was certainly one of them. And I think like as with sort of the early days of leading the legal team, one of the big things I did then was make sure that the leaders could speak for themselves about what role they needed me to play. And so I made sure that they had their own autonomy as far as, you know, they were still leading their own org wide meetings and the person who was promoted to into the GC role to backfill me, you know, she was now leading the legal team meetings. I wasn't, but I would drop in whenever it was helpful as far as, um you know, if there was a rough time and they and they felt like, you know,
00:27:20
Speaker
the team needed to hear from from another executive voice. and I would bring the collective organization together on a quarterly basis to talk about issues of common interest, which frankly, there were many because those orgs, you know we sort of created this like massive Venn diagram, but it showed like the various overlap between the different teams. and There was quite you know quite a bit of things that touched two to three teams at once. um and Like I said, these were all seasoned leaders who deeply knew what they and their teams needed for success. And that that was the role that I tried to play.
00:27:56
Speaker
I see more and more, I mean, I mentioned some sort of like big figures in the public discourse, and I think your role is a little bigger than like a typical GC Plus role, but you're seeing more and more of these GC Plus roles, which are GC Plus head of people or GC who also owns all the facilities and IT and, you know, InfoSec, etc. Do you have advice for people who aspire to maybe first grow their remit or maybe even grow into something bigger like the roles that you've had or a COO role. Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. I think one is make sure you can take your legal hat off because that can be really hard to do. um And um like the policy team here, for example, it makes fun of me because sometimes when I'm talking to them, I i even today will say things like,
00:28:47
Speaker
Okay, I have to, here's what it here's how this is, I'm hearing this from a legal perspective, but let me take my legal hat off and then weigh in. Because you're going to lose your credibility as a leader of ex-other org if you are only talking to them as a lawyer. You have to remember that that is no longer your job or it is not your job in that particular instance. and so Um, so, so I often do say that sort of explicitly because I got to remind myself to even after, you know, several years of sort of being in that plus role. I think the other thing is, you know, you need to have the the trust and confidence of the CEO or, or, you know, COO, you know, whoever else is sort of maybe it might be even the CFO, whoever else is calling the shots in the organization, because if they can only take you seriously,
00:29:40
Speaker
as the gc then you're not getting fatigue as the head of people and and so I think it's like a combination of those two things and then I guess with the third being a theme that we've touched on a few times already which is know what you don't know and be willing to learn from the experts around you so if you're newly taking on a head of HR role.
00:30:01
Speaker
you know you better hope you have like a really great number two who maybe is a more seasoned HR professional and is willing to work with you. and Maybe they themselves are not ready to be in the leadership role for whatever reason, but maybe you can sort of help them with respect to leadership and they can help you with respect to the substantive knowledge or or management or whatever it is. But I'm definitely a big fan of like ah coming into a new role with a really good degree of humility.
00:30:30
Speaker
I'm going to ask you in a minute about the sort of transition to the broader president role, but yeah you know as soon as you made that leap to president of business affairs, or I think around that time, I think of one of the big initiatives as being Lyft's willingness to take a position on certain political issues. right yeah I've always sort of thought about Lyft as having great friendly branding. Obviously there were this sort of regulatory battles around, you know, how are drivers classified, et cetera. But it became much broader than in the sort of public dis discourse, like we might see you on CNBC. I guess my question is, you know, how did that come about? Did that come about organically? And how do you think about companies sort of living out their values? How do companies define their values to take positions on issues like, say, a law around abortions in Texas?
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, ah so for us, because we did start as an as an organization that always had to be pretty engaged in the political sphere, given the fact that you know we had to go out and and make new laws really from day one,
00:31:37
Speaker
We had to quickly define our values as they related to the external policy landscape and how we thought about things. And so we had taken political stands you know even before i I stepped into that business affairs role. So you know one example is In 2017 i think when we spoke out against the muslim ban and donated i think a million dollars to the aclu at that point in time and the reason that we did that in that case was because many of our drivers are muslim americans and um and immigrants and
00:32:14
Speaker
So a ban like that deeply affects one of our super important stakeholders. And similarly in 2021, yeah, 2021, when we took a stand on Texas's SB8, and I was very proud to be the face of that, it was because that law was so, was and is so unique in that it provides for this private right of action for individuals to sue one another to the extent that the person they're suing has either gotten abortion care or aided someone else in getting abortion care. And so we were hearing from our drivers that they were they were really worried about being personally liable to the extent that they drove somebody to a planned parenthood. And this was like an untenable situation for our drivers. And you know certainly it's a horrible law.
00:33:10
Speaker
I'll go on record as saying that. um But we felt that we really had to act because we we did not feel okay with our drivers feeling that they were in personal financial jeopardy just by availing themselves of the flexible earnings opportunities that Lyft drivers are always able to avail themselves of. and so We took a really bold stand there too, but again, it was but because of this nexus to our driver population.
Lyft's Political Stance
00:33:35
Speaker
and so Certainly, like you can't as a company be taking a stand on every issue under the sun because there are so many and there are so many important ones. You have to decide, I think, really what is core to you. and so
00:33:49
Speaker
You won't see us at Lyft taking a stand everywhere, but I think you know you will see us being really thoughtful when it relates to the populations that really matter to our business and and drivers being being one of those. Yeah, it's not a unique idea that that I've had. you know It's others, Adelman or Axios.
00:34:08
Speaker
This idea that CEOs are now often called upon to sort of be yeah politicians to a certain extent, right? Actually, I mean, trust in a lot of businesses is higher than trust in other institutions, which is a big problem, unfortunately. But but but this is this is sort of, a I think, a requirement of operating as a company in the modern yeah world.
00:34:29
Speaker
I'm sure not all employees agree every time with an executive team's decision to make a call to take a position or to not sometimes take a position. Like this is not something that we're going to comment on publicly. How have you sort of dealt with that and and helped guide the company? You talked about transparency, maybe that's a big piece, but yeah do you how do you deal with that piece too?
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, look, like we try to know our team members and our customers to the best we possibly can. Right. So we understand ah what people think and feel about things. And so we try to calibrate ourselves to our stakeholders as much as we can. um But yes, there were certainly some internal and external stakeholders who were unhappy with that yeah around Texas SBA. There were many more that were happy. And ultimately, we felt that this was so core to this population, particularly in Texas, that it was right. But I think what's most important is not that you not that you achieve 100% consensus, but that you understand you know who you're reaching and what sort of all angles of the problem. So so you know what the people who are not happy are going to say and what the people who are happy are going to say. And so you're making as much of an informed decision as you possibly can. and and I think we did that pretty well. and you know Ultimately, from like a business perspective, we certainly didn't see any lingering negative impact. You became president of Lyft about a year ago. I'm curious what changed in your day-to-day when that happened. yeah how did that How did that role come about? Yeah. so we had in
00:36:12
Speaker
I think March or April of 2023, we announced that our co-founders were transitioning in and one of our board members, or excuse me, transitioning out and one of our board members would be transitioning in as our new CEO, David Risher. And part of my job has been really to help him with that bridge between old to new.
00:36:32
Speaker
Um, and then part of that job has also been to help him reach folks that, you know, he just doesn't have time to reach. And so I still have a lot of those core areas of responsibility. They spoke about earlier policy and legal, and we now call it our partner's organization, which is like business development, but.
00:36:51
Speaker
sort bigger than it used to be and but then i've also done a bunch of just what was called for in a given moment which included like leading the constant marketing teams twice over the past year transitioning the people team over to david.
00:37:07
Speaker
um I did a lot of the um media on our Women Plus Connect product, which matches yeah or ah allow allows and drivers to express a preference to be matched with one another, um women and non-binary folks. and so um so It's been you know a lot of the same role, but a lot of new stuff as well.
Looking Ahead: Kristin's Next Steps
00:37:27
Speaker
I've been participating on the earnings calls.
00:37:29
Speaker
um So, speaking of that you know public company calendar that comes around, um and that's really been just an and ah you know an incredible sort of added growth experience, like another step up from that President of Business Affairs role. Do you even think of yourself as a lawyer anymore? Do you think of yourself as a quasi lawyer?
00:37:49
Speaker
Well, as a lawyer is probably the right word. you know In my heart, I'm still a lawyer, right? um yeah and um But I do like that I i you know i think life is about life is about continuing to grow and learn. And that's not to say i I couldn't continue to grow and learn in a purely legal role. Of course I could. there's so So much more a lot of learn that I've that I haven't come across, but for me here at Lyft, it was nice to be able to expand into different things. And, you know, I was been joking with the marketing team, you know, for example, the first time I led that team, I really had to like, get to know the lingo and you know, and just even having been around it hadn't been deep in the funnel and thinking about, you know, user acquisition and,
00:38:31
Speaker
you know, now having done two stints leading the team, I've just thought so much more deeply about it. And so, so yeah, the lawyers always in there somewhere, but there's a bunch of other stuff in there too. that's great As we record this, and a lot of security filings have already been done and such. um We should say you're actually planning to depart Lyft in a few weeks, and we'll be releasing this episode soon after you more sort of personally announce that to friends and colleagues and peers. mike Well, congratulations on a good run. and My first question there is is how do you prepare a company for a transition like that? because
00:39:12
Speaker
you know as As you've alluded to, you have a lot of institutional knowledge about about this business and this company, even more than your great ability to execute on things on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. um It's been hard. It's been really hard. and First, I guess I should say thank you. Honestly, it's very bittersweet because I love this place, I love these people, and I love this business. But I'm also very tired and 12 years,
00:39:40
Speaker
12 years is a long time anywhere, let alone in the dog years that you and I spoke about yes earlier. And so um so I'm ready for a bit of a break. So no, I don't have any like new job to announce my- Well deserved, yes.
00:39:55
Speaker
hanging out with my husband and kids. um but um But the preparations took a long time and and is is the honest truth. It's several months and um and you know in some ways it's been an even longer term journey of being able to make myself redundant and duplicate a lot of the institutional knowledge. You know in the early days I think I was a much more pivotal part of Lyft because so much of it was in my head and nowhere else and you know through the maturation of the company and the maturation of the other leaders. like Now we have systems in place and you know people are people are in the machine themselves doing the things. and so um so it's It's really a great time to be leaving because I can leave without a lot of guilt feeling like people are in great shape. and and you know I think they'll they'll miss me, but they're not they're not in any trouble with me going. and and That is such a nice feeling to have.
00:40:53
Speaker
leaving a company is always tough. I'm sure the conversation with the CEO, maybe it was expected, but it's ah it's important to at least, I think, really try, especially in a position that you're in, to leave with a lot of grace too. And it sounds like you've managed that very well, unsurprisingly. Yeah, thank you. i mean you know like i've There were times in the past when I thought about leaving, um but I never wanted to leave in a moment of crisis because I did feel like the organization could not withstand that. and We are happily not in one of those moments as I sit here today. and and so That feels good. like I never wanted the feeling of
00:41:32
Speaker
you know, the ship that's sinking and people are jumping off and I'm one of them because that is not what leaders do. Um, I would be the last one on the ship and, and you know, right now the ship is in calm waters and that is great. As you reflect on your tenure at Lyft 12 years or so, what are you most proud of having accomplished?
00:41:55
Speaker
It's so hard to pick one thing. um I'm proud of myself for taking a chance on myself all those years ago, even when you know it was it was a big leap of faith to join this teeny tiny little company doing this thing that needed to still be made legal. um ah and And I think from like a team and company-wide perspective, I would say the IPO. and And not because of the reason that I think people think about, which is like, oh, the company is getting a bunch of money and if you're famous now. um it was It was because that was a moment when, and you know, as a GC at the time, nearly every person on the legal team worked on that IPO. Obviously, the corporate team was the one, you know, reading every word and and every period and comma, but we had all of our litigators and, you know, privacy team and everybody else
00:42:49
Speaker
involved in the zillions of diligence calls we had to do. and so In some ways, like that that morning ringing the bell, it felt like the external validation and culmination of so much hard collaborative work by the legal team to put this S1 out into the world. and So much of the work that the team does is you know, behind closed doors. And so it it just was so wonderful to get to see the team have the recognition they deserved. and and And, you know, one of my team members called it like the Super Bowl for lawyers. And that's how I always think about it.
00:43:27
Speaker
That's fantastic. Last question before a few sort of fun ones that I like to ask guests. and that's you know You're going to take some time off. Any idea what's next for you? um I am joining my daughter's school board. um I may join a public company board or two, um but it really, really taking some time off. And then you know looking out to the future, I'm not sure. I like to keep an open mind. i've had I've been very deep ah in the Lyft ride sharing world and I'm excited to pick my hat up and look around. So I guess, you know, stay tuned is really like, it'll be a far in the future decision. So I don't know.
00:44:11
Speaker
That's good. Enjoy the the fall, winter, maybe the spring and and more, and hopefully you can read some good books and and relax a little bit after a long run. A few fun questions for you as we start to wrap up. The first one, which may change very soon, ah what's your favorite part of your day-to-day or your daily routine?
00:44:34
Speaker
Well, for sure, my morning coffee, and you've seen me drinking my fills um all through this interview, um I will not be able to get my fills anymore, um not coming into the lift office. ah so But my husband, thankfully, is a great ah coffee maker um himself. And so um so I will enjoy my coffee at home in a leisurely fashion in the future.
00:44:57
Speaker
Fantastic. Do you have a professional pet peeve? I think this is kind of a funny one. um Gosh, I mean, so many. now one A big professional and personal pet peeve is lateness. I cannot stand when people are late, I find it. extraordinarily insensitive. and um And, you know, there's, of course, those moments when, you know, everybody has their late moments, and and there's nothing they can do to control it. So if it's, you know, 1% of the time, I'm cool with it, but I'm not cool with it when it's 99% of the time.
00:45:33
Speaker
This is a commonality. Uh, I was doing another podcast interview before this with the GC turned founder CEO and his professional pet peeve was the exact same thing. So, uh, in good company and he's in good company to say we will meet on time then. Yes.
00:45:52
Speaker
I am a big reader. Maybe you haven't read a lot of books recently, but hopefully you will soon. So anything that you've read or that's on your list that you would like to recommend to our audience.
00:46:05
Speaker
um I am also a big reader, actually. and That is like one of the things I do to unwind as I read every night a little bit before I go to bed. Sometimes it's only five pages because I'm so tired, but I but i do try and read every night. um And this summer I've i've i done a little more traveling, so I've had more time to read. And I just finished a novel, a brand new novel called Long Island Compromise.
00:46:28
Speaker
And it was excellent. So I would recommend that without reservations. But I've got, I can send you a whole list of books. um We'll put them in the show notes. Okay, good. We can do a whole LinkedIn post on book recs from Kristin. I would love that. Well, I should say I actually also co-chair a book club with some parents at my daughter's school. So um so i wrote that is like one of the hobbies that I have kept up even with my job because it just keeps me sane.
00:46:57
Speaker
I think that's really great. Last question for you, Kristin. If you could look back on your days as a young lawyer sort of just getting started, maybe right out of law school or or at the firm, ah something that you know now, that you wish that you'd known back then.
00:47:15
Speaker
I think what I wish I had known is that imposter syndrome can actually be a gift, not um not something that harms you. And what I mean by that is that there were moments when I spent extra time you know, obsessing and preparing and combing through things. And that imposter syndrome, that that fear really drove me to be the best that I could be. I wish that we had, we need to rebrand imposter syndrome, I think with a positive spin because ultimately what it ended up being for me was that drive to really excel and do well and
00:47:55
Speaker
and put my best self forward and that actually helped me tremendously. and so i wish I wish I had that positive framing versus the negative frame of, oh my gosh, i i I don't know what I'm doing and I don't belong here. That's really interesting. Thank you so much for for this interview, Kristin, and congratulations. Thank you. A fantastic 10-year at Lyft and and everything that's going to come. Thank you so much. It was really great chatting with you.
00:48:25
Speaker
And to all of our listeners, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of The Abstract, and we hope to see you next time.