Plan Lyft's Entry into Delivery Using Its Existing Rideshare Drivers
Company: Lyft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Lyft and have been asked to design a delivery offering for the company. Decide what Lyft should deliver and for whom, identify the problems worth solving for that group, propose and prioritize solutions, and explain how you would measure success.
```hint Start from what Lyft already has
Several large companies already deliver meals and groceries. Before choosing what to deliver, list the assets Lyft brings (its drivers and their cars, its rider app, its dispatch and pricing systems, and when its drivers have spare capacity) and look for where those give it an edge.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- What counts as delivery here: restaurant meals, groceries and convenience goods, orders from local shops, or packages sent from one person to another?
- Should delivery run inside the existing Lyft apps using current rideshare drivers, or launch as a separate brand with its own couriers?
- What is the main goal: new revenue, more paid hours for Lyft drivers, or more reasons for riders to open Lyft?
- Is the launch limited to cities where Lyft already has dense rideshare supply?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A deliberate choice of what to deliver and why, grounded in Lyft's assets and in how crowded each delivery category already is.
- The whole marketplace (customers, merchants or senders, and drivers), with one primary segment chosen and justified.
- Pain points of that segment mapped to solutions and prioritized into a focused first release, with the reasoning on impact and effort.
- How delivery interacts with the rideshare business, especially the shared driver supply and rider wait times.
- A north-star metric with guardrails, a launch plan and the main risks.
### Follow-up Questions
- If drivers can choose between rides and deliveries, how would you keep delivery demand from making riders wait longer at rush hour?
- How would you decide between building delivery yourself and supplying drivers to an established delivery platform as a partner?
- After three months in the launch cities, what results would make you expand, and what would make you stop?
Overview: A product design question asking how Lyft should enter delivery: what to deliver, for whom, and how to use its existing rideshare drivers. It tests choosing a segment in a crowded market, prioritizing solutions into a first release, protecting rider wait times when drivers are shared, and defining success metrics with guardrails.