Uber turns five today - here's how it took over the world in just a few years
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick grew up in Northridge, California, a suburb outside Los Angeles. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a spy.
However, Kalanick would eventually follow in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his mom, a retail advertiser. He went door-to-door, selling knives for Cutco as a youngster. He started his first business at age 18, an SAT-prep course called New Way Academy.
Kalanick dropped out of college to work on Scour, a peer-to-peer search engine, with classmates Michael Todd and Vince Busam. He collected unemployment while working full time for Scour, which was run on angel funding obtained by one Scour cofounder's friends and family.
After being sued by several entertainment companies to the tune of $250 billion, Scour filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Kalanick rebounded with RedSwoosh, a networking software company. But he clashed with his new cofounder, Scour cofounder Michael Todd. Between the post-9/11 stock market crash, pushing legal boundaries by not withholding their employees' income taxes, and a final falling-out between the cofounders, RedSwoosh almost never made it to exit. But in 2007, Kalanick sold RedSwoosh to Akamai for $23 million.
Kalanick spent his first year as a millionaire traveling around the world. He went to Spain, Japan, Greece, Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii (twice), France (twice), Australia, Portugal, Cape Verde, and Senegal.
Late in 2008, at the LeWeb technology conference, he first heard the idea for Uber. He envisioned it as a way to lower the cost of black car service at the touch of a button.
Garrett Camp, Oscar Salazar, and Conrad Whelan built the first version of Uber, a black car service called UberCab. Kalanick served as a "mega advisor," though he's previously said his title then was "chief incubator." With UberCab, which cost about 1.5 times as much as a cab, you could request a car in San Francisco by sending a text or pressing a button.
Early in 2010, Ryan Graves was brought onboard as UberCab's general manager. Soon, he'd be named CEO. UberCab launched in June 2010 in San Francisco. It was a huge hit in San Francisco, though investors weren't initially knocking down Uber's door to invest.
In summer 2010, Uber raised money from investors: a $1.25 million seed round from First Round Capital, Kalanick's friend Chris Sacca, and Napster cofounder Shawn Fanning.
In December of that year, Kalanick became CEO, and Graves became Uber's general manager again. According to both, the re-arrangement was friendly.
Kalanick's personality — described by those who know him as reckless and arrogant, at times — has been the reason Uber has found so much success.
After San Francisco, Uber rapidly expanded its services to other US cities. In May 2011, Uber launched in New York City — and now, NYC is one of Uber's biggest markets.
Uber announced last month that the company has delivered 30 million rides in New York City since 2011. To put that number in perspective, that's over 82,000 Uber rides per day.
To help its expansion, Uber has hired on lobbyists like David Plouffe, who spearheaded Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
It seems Uber is constantly raising money from venture capital firms and other investment groups. In December 2014, Chinese search engine Baidu invested in Uber, a partnership that would theoretically allow Uber to expand throughout mainland Asia.
Uber has experimented with services besides point-A-to-point-B driving, too. In Santa Monica, Uber allowed customers to order meals through its UberFRESH service, which is now called UberEATS. In spring 2014, Manhattan Uber customers could use Uber's courier system, Uber Rush.
The company has had its share of obstacles and bad press, too. In November at a dinner for "influencers," an Uber executive named Emil Michael suggested the company could theoretically dig up personal information on reporters who are critical of the company.
At the end of 2014, Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, voiced privacy concerns about Uber in an open letter to CEO Travis Kalanick.
And some drivers have protested the company, too, disputing Uber's claims that they can make $90,000 a year driving for the company. Lawsuits have even been filed against Uber, alleging that drivers are misclassified as independent contractors when they should be employees.
In May, Uber poached a number of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's vehicle autonomy department to work at its Pittsburgh center. Rumor has it this would let Uber experiment with self-driving cars.
Uber is aiming for world dominance while its rivals struggle to roll out in US markets. Lyft, one of Uber's closest competitors, operates in only the United States — Uber operates in 58 countries.
Uber has raised $5.9 billion at a $41 billion valuation. Its recent valuation would make Kalanick a multi-billionaire. A rumored new $1.5 billion to $2 billion round of funding would value the company at $50 billion, making it the most valuable privately held tech company in the world.
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