Strategy question
Should Lyft enter the food delivery business?
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Tests market-entry strategy reasoning, assessing whether an adjacent market fits a company's existing assets.
How to approach it
- Assess Lyft's assets: driver network, dispatch and routing tech, brand trust, but a weaker balance sheet than Uber.
- Assess the market: food delivery is low-margin and capital-intensive, already entrenched with DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub.
- Weigh the case against direct entry: Lyft lacks the capital to subsidize losses at scale, and shared drivers would be pulled from rides during peak hours.
- Recommend a partnership or API integration to monetize the driver network's off-peak capacity without owning the low-margin delivery business.
- Define success, if partnering, as incremental driver utilization and revenue per driver-hour during off-peak rideshare hours.
What a strong answer includes
- Gives a reasoned no-but-partner recommendation grounded in Lyft's real weaker capital position versus Uber.
- Explicitly flags the driver-hour cannibalization risk between rides and delivery.
- Avoids the generic Uber-does-it-too logic and instead assesses Lyft's specific competitive position.
Common mistakes
- Saying yes just because Uber does it, without assessing Lyft's specific capital constraints.
- Ignoring the driver-hour cannibalization risk between rides and delivery.
Likely follow-up questions
- What would change your recommendation if Lyft had DoorDash-level capital?
- How would you structure a delivery partnership instead of building in-house?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop