Travis Kalanick

Travis Kalanick was born August 6, 1976, in Northridge, in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley, to Donald Kalanick, a civil engineer, and Bonnie Kalanick, who sold advertising for the Los Angeles Daily News. He studied computer engineering and business economics at UCLA before dropping out in 1998 to join Scour, an early peer-to-peer file-sharing startup that collapsed into bankruptcy in 2000 after the entertainment industry sued it for 250 billion dollars in damages. He co-founded a second startup, Red Swoosh, in 2001, and nearly lost that one too, at one point reportedly rationing meals to two slices of bread and a single piece of meat. He sold the company to Akamai Technologies in 2007 for 19 million dollars, his first real payday after nearly a decade of failing forward.

Kalanick co-founded Uber with Garrett Camp in 2009, took over as chief executive within a year, and pushed the company from a black-car app called UberCab into a global ride-hailing and delivery giant valued near 70 billion dollars by 2017, expanding into city after city ahead of, and often in defiance of, local taxi regulation. The growth came through relentless pressure and open combativeness: a February 2017 video showed him berating an Uber driver over falling pay, the company deployed software called Greyball to evade regulators and law-enforcement stings, and a blog post that same month by a former engineer, Susan Fowler, detailed sexual harassment claims that executives had ignored. Kalanick quit Donald Trump's business advisory council days after that post, amid a public DeleteUber backlash, and Uber separately faced a lawsuit from Google's self-driving unit, Waymo, accusing it of stealing trade secrets.

An investigation led by former attorney general Eric Holder, commissioned after the Fowler post, delivered its findings on June 11, 2017, and six days later Kalanick announced an indefinite leave, citing both the company's need to change and his own grief: his mother, Bonnie, had died on May 27, 2017, in a boating accident that also injured his father. On June 20, five major investors, led by the venture firm Benchmark, sent a letter demanding his resignation outright, and he stepped down that day. Kalanick framed the exit as his own choice, made for Uber's sake at a hard personal moment — the investors' letter and the board's own language, calling the move a sign of his devotion to the company, sat uneasily beside news accounts describing a forced removal after months of scandal. Both versions are on the record, and they do not agree.

Kalanick sold roughly 90 percent of his Uber stock and left its board at the end of 2019, walking away with about 2.5 billion dollars, and has since built a new company, Atoms, formerly called CloudKitchens, which rents kitchen space to delivery-only restaurants, alongside an investment vehicle called the 10100 Fund. Uber itself, under his successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, went public in 2019 and has since rebuilt much of the reputation Kalanick's tenure cost it. Whether he is remembered chiefly as the founder who built a company that reshaped how cities move, or as the executive whose management style made that company a case study in founder culture gone wrong, is not something either side of that argument has conceded, and Kalanick, back running a company again, has mostly declined to relitigate it in public.

Travis Kalanick's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Scour company
  Early peer-to-peer file-sharing startup — collapsed into bankruptcy amid a 250-billion-dollar copyright suit 1998
• Red Swoosh company
  Peer-to-peer content delivery startup sold to Akamai for 19 million dollars 2001
• Uber company
  Co-founded with Garrett Camp — grew into a global ride-hailing and delivery giant 2009
• CloudKitchens (Atoms) company
  Ghost-kitchen real estate company for delivery-only restaurants 2018

• August 6, 1976 aged 0 Born in Northridge, Los Angeles
• 1998 aged ~22 Drops out of UCLA to join the startup Scour
• 2007 aged ~31 Sells Red Swoosh to Akamai Technologies For 19 million dollars.
• 2009 aged ~33 Co-founds Uber with Garrett Camp
• February 2, 2017 aged 40 Quits Trump's business advisory council amid #DeleteUber backlash
• May 27, 2017 aged 40 His mother dies in a boating accident His father is also injured.
• June 20, 2017 aged 40 Resigns as Uber CEO under investor pressure
• 2018 aged ~42 Founds CloudKitchens, later renamed Atoms
• December 2019 aged 43 Sells roughly 90 percent of his Uber stock and leaves the board For about 2.5 billion dollars.

• Donald Trump b. 1946
  Businessman, media personality, and 45th and 47th president whose populist movement transformed American politics. resigned the advisory council of
• Larry Page b. 1973
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• Elon Musk b. 1971
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