Travis Kalanick: Uber’s $6 Billion Dollar Man

ByAmy Lamareon January 18, 2016inArticles›Billionaire News

Travis Kalanick launched a little startup called UberCab in San Francisco in 2010. Fast forward six years and the company, now just called “Uber,” operates in more than 300 cities in 58 countries and has made Kalanick a very wealthy man. The 39-year-old UCLA dropout has a net worth of $6 billion. Oh, and by the way, Uber is the most lucrative startup in Silicon Valley, with a valuation of $60-65 billion.

Travis Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976 in Los Angeles. He grew up in the suburb of Northridge and wanted to be a spy when he grew up. As a teenager, Kalanick worked as a door-to-door salesman for Cutco knives. He started his first business, an SAT prep course called New Way Academy, when he was 18. He graduated from Granada Hills High School and enrolled at UCLA to study computer engineering.

In, 1998, Kalanick dropped out of UCLA during his senior year and founded Scour, a peer-to-peer search engine. In 2000, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the National Music Publishers Association sued Scour for more than $250 million for copyright infringement. Scour filed for bankruptcy in September 2000.

Kalanick did not let that setback keep him down for long. He took the engineers from Scour and founded Red Swoosh, another peer-to-peer file sharing company. However, Kalanick clashed with his co-founder Michael Todd. Red Swoosh also encountered issues when it failed to withhold taxes from its employees’ paychecks. The stock market crash post 9/11 also threatened to do the company in. All of this seemed to spell impending doom for Red Swoosh. However, Kalanick and the company held on and in 2007, Akami Technologies bought Red Swoosh for $19 million.

GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images

Kalanick then spent a year traveling around the world. The new millionaire went to Greece, Iceland, Hawaii, Spain, Greenland, France, Portugal, Australia, Cape Verde, and Senegal.

It was late 2008 when Kalanick was introduced to Garrett Camp and heard the idea for Uber. Garrett Camp, Oscar Salazar, and Conrad Whelan built the first version of Uber, a town car service called UberCab. Kalanick served as an advisor to the company. UberCab cost 1.5 times as much as a cab, but less than calling a town car or limo. Plus, it made ordering a car in San Francisco as easy as pressing a button.

UberCab launched in San Francisco in June 2010. It was a huge hit with customers, but investors were not exactly beating down Uber’s doors to invest in the fledgling startup.

In late summer 2010, Uber raised a $1.25 million seed round from First Round Capital, investor Chris Sacca , and Napster cofounder Shawn Fanning .

Friends of Kalanick describe him as reckless and at times arrogant. His personality and drive are big reasons why Uber has been so successful. Kalanick simply does not give up.

Uber began expanding to other U.S. cities rapidly. The company launched in New York City in May 2011. New York is now one of Uber’s biggest markets. The company has given more than 30 million rides in New York City since 2011. That’s more than 82,000 Uber rides each and every day. In December 2011, Uber went international when the company launched in Paris, France.

Uber has been relentlessly conquering the world ever since. The company is aiming for world dominance while its competitors struggle to add more U.S. cities to their services. Lyft, Uber’s closest competitor, operates only in the U.S. On the other hand, Uber operates in 58 countries, including China. That’s pretty convenient. You can use the same Uber account to get a ride in Denver, Beijing, Melbourne, Moscow, or Abu Dhabi.

In 2012, Uber introduced its low-cost Uber-X product worldwide. Uber X offers rides 35% cheaper than the original Uber Black service and drivers pick Uber customers up in cars like the Prius, Jetta, and Sonata.

Today, four out of Uber’s 10 best performing cities are in China, setting the stage for China to become Uber’s biggest market.

In 2015, Uber announced that it was seeking a $1 billion round of funding, which would value the company as high as $65 billion. This could also signal that Uber is preparing to go public in the near future.

Uber’s funding makes it the most valuable privately held tech company in the world and its CEO Travis Kalanick is the $6 billion dollar man.

• Travis Kalanick Net Worth
• Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Is Selling 29% Of His Stake In The Company…How Much Is That Worth?
• Travis Kalanick Sells $547 Million Of Uber Stock To Fund His Next Venture
• Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Has Officially Gone From Paper Billionaire To Actual Billionaire
• Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Has Never Sold A Single Uber Share!
• Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Just Purchased A Penthouse In New York City For $36.4 Million

Travis Kalanick Sells $547 Million Of Uber Stock To Fund His Next Venture

ByAmy Lamareon November 19, 2019inArticles›Billionaire News

Well, that didn’t take long. It’s been just about two years since Travis Kalanick was forced out of the company he helped co-found: Uber. Now he’s sold an enormous chunk of Uber stock just as the ride-sharing company’s post-IPO lockup period ended. Kalanick sold 20.3 million shares for about $547 million on Friday, November 8, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lockup period is a 180-day restriction designed to reduce the volatility of shares in newly public companies.

Last week, Uber saw heavy selling that sent its share price spiraling downward for a 9% loss. The company is currently less valuable than it was in 2015 and some private investors are underwater on their investments. Share prices are down 36% since the IPO.

With the sale, Kalanick now has a 4.6% stake in Uber. That’s worth about $2.5 billion. He’s also still a member of the board of directors.

Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Back in 2017, the proverbial ‘Ishtar hit the fan for Kalanick and Uber. First, he was lambasted by the public for joining Donald Trump’s team of advisers. He dropped out of that committee a few weeks later. Then, a video surfaced of Kalanick viciously berating an Uber driver while he was a passenger in the car. The driver was frustrated over how the company pays its drivers. Kalanick unleashed on his driver saying, among other things:

“Some people don’t want to take responsibility for their ‘sh-t.’”

At the time, Kalanick’s outburst seemed to be the lowest point he and the company he ran could sink to. And then, a former Uber engineer named Susan Fowler published an impassioned blog post in which she accused the company over overt sexism. She was propositioned by her boss time and time again. She took it to H.R. and they told her that her boss was too important to discipline. #DeleteUber became a trending topic on social media. Uber hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the growing number of allegations of sexual harassment.

After numerous scandals, the board of directors had enough and asked for his resignation. This marked the end of this chapter of Kalanick’s high-flying career. But now, with the infusion of $547 million into his bank accounts, it’s left people wondering just what Kalanick is up to next.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported an investment by Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund into CloudKitchens. Guess who runs that company? Travis Kalanick. It is a delivery-only restaurant startup. This is a relatively new space for apps – these so-called kitchens are known as virtual restaurants or dark kitchens. Dark kitchens/virtual restaurants are kitchen-only concepts that process and produce orders for delivery. There are no tables, chairs, servers, hosts, or storefront. The food can only be ordered online or through a mobile app and is delivered to the customer.

What’s fascinating is that with this new venture, Kalanick is competing directly with his former company. UberEats has been scaling its business rapidly and getting into the dark kitchen space.

For a long time, Uber was the most valuable startup in the world. It has lost that title to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

• The Rise And Fall Of Travis Kalanick
• When Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Sold His Stake In The Company Last Year, He Missed Out On Some $1.2 Billion
• Travis Kalanick Net Worth
• Travis Kalanick Dumped His Entire Uber Stake A Year Ago. That Turned Out To Be A TERRIBLE Move.
• Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Is Selling 29% Of His Stake In The Company…How Much Is That Worth?
• Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Has Officially Gone From Paper Billionaire To Actual Billionaire