On a snowy night in Paris, Garrett Camp could not find a taxi. He and Travis Kalanick had already spent $800 on a private driver on New Year's Eve, and he could not stop thinking about it. That is the origin story Wikipedia gives for Uber. The details of the date are not recorded, but the itch was clear: why can't I just push a button for a car?
Camp grew up in Calgary and studied electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, graduating in 2001. In 2002 he co-founded StumbleUpon, a discovery engine that eBay bought in 2007. He was already a technology founder when the idea arrived, and wealthy enough to indulge it.
He was already a technology founder when the idea arrived, and wealthy enough to indulge it.
Kalanick's background was far rougher. Born in Los Angeles in 1976, he grew up in Northridge and sold knives door-to-door as a teenager. He dropped out of UCLA in 1998 to work at Scour, a file-sharing service. In 2000, the movie, music and publishing trade groups sued Scour for $250 billion, and the company filed for bankruptcy that September.
His next company, Red Swoosh, was what he called a revenge business. It nearly died in 2001, when the company used roughly $110,000 in withheld payroll taxes to keep going; later financing repaid the IRS and no one was prosecuted. By 2002 only Kalanick and one engineer were left. Akamai bought it in 2007 for about $19 million, and he reportedly cleared around $2 million after tax.
Camp built the first app prototype himself with friends Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, with Kalanick in the role of 'mega advisor'. Ubercab was founded in March 2009. Ryan Graves became the first employee in February 2010 and CEO that May, when the beta launched; in December 2010 Kalanick took over and Graves became chief operating officer. San Francisco taxi operators complained about the name and it became Uber in 2011.
The culture Kalanick built came with a price. On 19 February 2017 a former engineer, Susan Fowler, published an account of being propositioned by a manager and threatened when she reported it. Uber fired more than 20 employees after investigations. Investors led by Benchmark demanded his exit, and he resigned as CEO on 20 June 2017. Dara Khosrowshahi, formerly of Expedia, replaced him that August. Kalanick later sold about 90 percent of his shares, worth around $2.5 billion.
Uber went public in May 2019. In 2025 it reported $52 billion in revenue and $10.1 billion in net income, and its market value was about $140 billion when read on 6 November 2026.
The lesson for a founder is uncomfortable: the same appetite that rescued Kalanick from two near-failures also produced the culture that ended his tenure.