Christopher David
For Christopher David, a 2,000-mile move from his hometown in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Austin, Texas, this week was the opportunity of a lifetime. As the founder of Arcade City, a ride-sharing platform that connects drivers and passengers via Facebook groups, David saw Austin as a ridesharing gold mine left vacant when Uber and Lyft, the two biggest rideshare companies in the United States, departed town.
On May 9, two days after losing a public referendum that would have overturned a City Council ordinance requiring fingerprint checks on rideshare drivers, Uber and Lyft left the Texan capital. The two companies lobbied hard against fingerprinting, spending more than $8 million in the fight. Their departure left a vacuum for the booming ridesharing sector, and it is now being filled quickly by startups like David’s Arcade City and others.
“Austin is the only large developed city in the world that doesn’t have Uber and Lyft,” says Joshua Baer, who runs an Austin-based entrepr
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