Logan Green and John Zimmer, co-founders of Lyft, are stepping down to make room for a former Amazon executive as the ride-hailing service battles to recover from the pandemic while long-time rival Uber has been regaining pace.

According to the revised order released Monday, Green will stand down as Lyft’s CEO on April 17, and Zimmer will step down as the San Francisco company’s president at the end of June.

Green will be succeeded as CEO by David Risher, who helped turn Amazon into an e-commerce behemoth. Green will remain Lyft’s non-executive chairman, while Zimmer will become vice chairman after leaving management.

The reorganization comes roughly a month after Lyft announced a $588 million loss for the final three months of last year, more than doubling from the same period in 2021, and issued a bleak prediction for 2023. This exacerbated Lyft’s stock decline, which had dropped its shares below $10, a roughly 80% loss from their price at the end of 2019, only a few months before the announcement of a global epidemic halted demand for ride-hailing services.

The reorganization comes roughly a month after Lyft announced a $588 million loss.

While Uber’s ridership has returned to pre-pandemic levels, Lyft has failed to find a means to recover, leading its losses to rise and investors to flee the shares. Uber expanded its operations to include food delivery, a popular choice amid government lockdowns that kept people opening the Uber app.

Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives called Lyft’s last six months a “train wreck” that necessitated a change in leadership. He stated that Risher had so much work ahead of him that Lyft would consider selling him. An acquisition would be less expensive than it would have been a few years ago, as Lyft’s current market valuation has dropped to $4 billion, down from around $14 billion at the end of 2019.

Risher said in a prepared statement that he was “gobsmacked” when asked about becoming Lyft’s CEO and that he is now “prepared to take this business to new levels of success.”

Risher was hired as Amazon’s 37th employee and proved so valuable to the Seattle company that when he departed, its founder, Jeff Bezos, issued a thank you statement thanking Risher for helping to develop a company that “is all about working hard, having fun, and making history.”

With consumers reducing their e-commerce purchases due to the epidemic, Amazon has announced 27,000 layoffs since late last year.

Risker founded Worldreader, a San Francisco organization that teaches young children to read.

Uber, also based in San Francisco, experienced a considerably more traumatic leadership transition in 2017 when its co-founder Travis Kalanick was forced out in a high-profile power struggle that was depicted last year in a Showtime TV series. Dara Khosrowshahi, the company’s new CEO, has been attempting to transform Uber into the transportation equivalent of Amazon.

SOURCE – (AP)

William Shatner is unhappy with one of Elon Musk’s recent Twitter policies. He went on Twitter to express his displeasure over the blue check mark. The paid subscription adds a blue checkmark to user accounts.

Before Musk purchased Twitter, prominent politicians, businesses, journalists, and personalities received the blue check for free.

Currently, the monthly cost for the blue badge is $7.99. Users with the blue checkmark associated with their accounts before Twitter began charging for it was permitted to retain it for a grace period.

This grace period ends on April 1, when all legacy checkmarks will be removed.

“Hey @elonmusk, what’s the deal with blue checks disappearing if we don’t pay Twitter? Shatner tweeted, “I’ve spent 15 years contributing my time and witty thoughts for nothing.” Now you’re telling me to pay for something you gave me for free? What is this, the Columbia Records and Tapes Club?

Hey @elonmusk what’s this about blue checks going away unless we pay Twitter? I’ve been here for 15 years giving my ⏰ & witty thoughts all for bupkis. Now you’re telling me that I have to pay for something you gave me for free? What is this-the Colombia Records & Tape Club?🙄

— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) March 26, 2023

The advantage of checkboxes is that they indicate to platform users that the information posted by an account originates from the person or organization claiming to be behind the account.

In theory, the checkmark lends credibility to a Twitter account’s tweets.

Shatner’s comment was met with responses from Twitter users.

@jsatz tweeted, “You have been such a pleasure to read on Twitter, @WilliamShatner.” “However, Musk is riding this company down like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, destroying what made the site worth reading and posting to.”

“I came here specifically to read William Shatner’s tweets,” wrote @Pat_Kc. Without Shatner, Twitter has no value.

Twitter is worth only 20 Billion.

Elon Musk admitted in an email about employee stock grants that Twitter is worth less than half of what he paid.

On Saturday, the managing editor of Platformer, Zo Schiffer, tweeted that Twitter had undergone a radical but necessary change because it was “about four months away from running out of money. Now, he says, employees’ financial incentives should be aligned with the company.”

She tweeted that the value of the stock grants was “$20 billion.” In late October, Musk paid $44 billion to acquire control of Twitter.

Schiffer tweeted that Musk told staff he saw a “clear but difficult path” to a valuation of $250 billion.

The Information also reported on the email in which Musk instructed employees that they could sell their stock holdings for cash “every six months based on a third-party valuation” during “liquidity events.”

This process would be comparable to the one used by SpaceX, in which Musk stated: “achieves the public company advantage of having a liquid stock but without the stock price chaos and lawsuit burdens of a public company.”

According to The Information, he also wants employees to view Twitter as an “inverse startup” of the thousands of jobs eliminated since he took over. According to CNBC, Twitter has as few as 1,300 employees, down from about 7,500.

According to The Verge, following the last round of layoffs in February, Musk sent a memo with the subject line “Performance Awards” to the remaining employees, stating that they would receive “very significant” performance-based stock awards.

In the memo, he added, “Last week, we completed a difficult organizational overhaul aimed at improving future execution, using as much feedback as possible from the entire company.” Those who remain are held in high regard by those in their vicinity.

Musk reportedly emailed Twitter employees early Wednesday morning to remind them of the company’s remote working policy.

Albany, New York – Under legislation by Governor Kathy Hochul on Wednesday, New York police would have more authority to close down illicit marijuana businesses and impose fines of up to $200,000. Hochul is trying to protect the state’s nascent legal recreational marijuana sector.

Although only three stores have opened thus far in New York City and two in upstate New York, the state is working hard to kickstart its potentially enormous adult legal industry. A profusion of unauthorized stores is undermining legal city enterprises.

City officials have already pursued landlords who permitted illegal businesses to run. The new law being considered by the legislature would grant the state Office of Cannabis Management and state tax officials more authority to crack down on illegal operations.

The law would set processes for the government to close down unlicensed enterprises and grant the cannabis office increased ability to seize illegal goods. According to the Hochul administration, violations could result in fines of $200,000 for illegal cannabis plants or goods, and businesses might be punished with $10,000 per day for selling cannabis without a license.

In a prepared statement, Hochul said: “The continuous presence of illegal dispensaries is intolerable, and we need additional enforcement measures to safeguard New Yorkers from harmful goods and promote our equitable objectives.

We need additional enforcement measures to safeguard New York.

Since the recreational use of marijuana was legalized in New York in March 2021, progress has been modest.

New York has reserved its initial retail licenses for charitable organizations, applicants with prior marijuana convictions, and their relatives, in contrast to many other states. The measures are intended to remedy injustices brought on by the nation’s drug war.

However, while a legal challenge to the state’s selection procedure is being examined, a federal judge has temporarily barred the state from issuing recreational marijuana dispensary licenses in Brooklyn and specific regions of upstate New York. The business Variscite NY One claims that the state’s selection procedure disfavors out-of-state residents in violation of the constitutional provisions governing interstate trade.

Veteran cannabis investor Emily Paxhia praises New York for having solid intentions about social fairness but claims the city was blind to the necessity of establishing action against unlawful shops at an early stage. The legalization rollout thus far, according to Paxhia, a co-founder and managing partner of Poseidon Investment Management, is “a disaster” but not a total failure.

Paxhia, a Buffalo native, said: “I’m still hopeful that the New York market turns around.

SOURCE – (AP)