I met john Zimmer a couple years ago and I've been a big fan of Zimride.com and Zimmer ever since. You may be surprised to know that Zimmer did not name Zimride after himself. In fact, although he had created a very similar service in college it turned out that Zimride was a competing service that Logan Green had started. The two eventually joined forces and Zimmer became part of Zimride. I'm a big fan of Logan too.

Today these guys gave me a chance to look under the hood an see what makes Zimride the leader in ride share. Car share, as you probably realize, has been popularized by services like Zipcar and in the peer to peer space by services like Getaround. Zimride and ride share as a category is about sharing seats not vehicles. So as a user you post the routes you normally drive or where you would like to get a ride to and then you get matched. It's digital age hitchhiking all vetted through Facebook so you know lots about your potential commuting partner.

Recently, Zimride which was focused on creating programs for closed communities like universities has begun to open their service to the general public and they've begun opening routes. One of the first routes, SF to LA is already generating a hundred ride matches a day. When you consider that is just a single route you quickly realize the enormous potential of this platform. If you've done the math already you would not be alone. John recently closed their A round with a 6 million dollar

raise as investors scramble to make their mark on this collaborative consumption space that has created mega hits like Airbnb.

John and my wife Ana and my daughter Nadia and I popped over with John to check out the new ride he treated himself to after closing the latest round. But instead of pulling into a Porsche dealer we pulled into Mission Bikes and John threw a leg over his sweet new single speed townie. He's going to use it to commute to work. When he's not using Zimride of course.