Founding and growth (2009–2014) Disrupt, 2012 In 2009, Kalanick co-founded
ridesharing company Uber with Canadian entrepreneur
Garrett Camp, co-founder of
StumbleUpon. Camp, a frequent guest at Kalanick's home, had become frustrated with
taxi services in San Francisco, and had found hiring drivers with upscale black car services inconvenient and expensive. Eventually he developed the concept of a
smartphone app that could hail luxury vehicles directly from the user's
smartphone. He discussed the concept with Kalanick, who agreed to act as a "mega advisor" to the company, originally called UberCab. Kalanick believed that in addition to efficiency, Uber offered elegance because all drivers had fancy black cars. He did not feel that regular cars would be attractive. When
Wingz, Inc. launched in 2011 with the first ridesharing website in the world using regular drivers, he felt that Wingz was illegal and contacted authorities to stop regular drivers from giving rides. In February 2011, Kalanick met with
Bill Gurley, an investor from venture capital firm
Benchmark, and secured an $11 million investment for 20% of Uber (then valued at $50 million) for its
Series A round of funding. The company embarked on its
Series B round in late 2011, raising an additional $32 million. Kalanick's experiences with investors at Scour and Red Swoosh had made him wary of investors who might interfere with his control of Uber, so he ensured that the terms for these and future investments strongly favored himself and Uber. He strictly limited the amount of financial information investors could access, and the shares for new investors had a tenth of the voting power of the shares held by Kalanick, Camp, and Graves. In April 2013, after
Wingz,
Lyft, and
Sidecar obtained licenses to legally operate as rideshare companies, Uber announced that it was going to adopt this model and add regular drivers with personal vehicles to the UberX platform instead of only commercially-licensed vehicles, subject to a background check, insurance, registration, and vehicle standards. By December 2013, the service operated in 65 cities. That same year, Kalanick obtained a $250 million investment from
Google Ventures, with a valuation of $3.5 billion. Kalanick also made a point of undermining potential investments into competitor
Lyft, poaching them for Uber.
Growing difficulties and exit from Uber (2014–2017) By 2014, Kalanick's reputation was beginning to suffer as a result of his ruthless attitude towards competitors, regulators, customers, employees, and Uber's drivers. By this time, Gurley, once a supporter of Kalanick's, had become frustrated with his reckless corporate spending and overriding of the
chief financial officer and
chief legal officer.
Corporate culture at Uber under Kalanick was grueling. Employees were expected to work nights and weekends regularly without additional compensation, and
conference calls were often scheduled at all times of the night. Kalanick favored employees who were willing to do anything to advance in the company, even if it resulted in chronic infighting. Throughout his tenure as CEO, Kalanick had tight control over the company's
board of directors, once telling
Tim Cook from
Apple that he had intentionally structured the board and hand-picked its members to allow him to "do what I want". In 2016, he negotiated an option to appoint another three board members at his discretion. Journalists and the public alike criticized Kalanick regularly for setting Uber up with a "
bro culture" awash in
toxic masculinity,
bullying, and
misogyny, which in turn influenced attitudes in
Silicon Valley generally. In a 2014 interview with men's magazine
GQ, he joked that the company should be called "Boob-er" for all the female attention it was bringing him; the remark was frequently criticized in the press as an example of his toxic masculinity. Executives were known to expense
strip club visits to corporate accounts, a practice jokingly referred to as "Tits on Travis". Surveys commissioned by Uber
public relations personnel in late 2016 showed that customers appreciated Uber as a service, but had a strongly negative perception of Kalanick. Shortly after the survey results were first discussed at Uber in February 2017,
Eric Newcomer at
Bloomberg Businessweek published a video of Kalanick berating an Uber driver at the end of a ride, following a disagreement about falling driver income. Kalanick apologized for the incident to company employees in an email that was later posted to the company blog, stating that he felt he needed to "grow up". Later that year,
Reuters reported that Kalanick had developed "a reputation as an abrasive leader".
Sexual harassment and other forms of
discrimination were rife at Uber corporate headquarters during Kalanick's tenure as CEO. The issues went unaddressed by the
human resources department (HR), and Kalanick in particular was known to protect his favored employees from consequences for this type of behavior. Much of this behavior became public in early 2017. That February, it was reported that Kalanick had full knowledge of
sexual harassment allegations at Uber and did nothing. After these reports emerged, Kalanick announced that Uber would "conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations". In the same week, Kalanick asked his newly hired
direct report, SVP of Engineering
Amit Singhal, to resign; Singhal had failed to disclose that he had resigned from Google following sexual harassment claims. In March 2017, it was reported that in 2014, Kalanick had been part of a group of Uber executives who visited a
karaoke bar in
Seoul that featured
escorts. A female employee who was present made a complaint to HR, but little came of it. Kalanick's refusal to allow for in-app tipping "contributed to the perception of Uber as the unfeeling, win-at-all-costs player in ride-hailing, particularly compared to Lyft", which did allow tipping. In December 2016, it was announced that Kalanick would join several other high-profile CEOs as an
economic advisor on for the
Strategic and Policy Forum of President
Donald Trump, organized by
Stephen Schwarzman, a businessman with
The Blackstone Group. Kalanick publicly opposed President Trump's
executive order banning travel from select countries, but wrote in a news post on the Uber website that, as a member of the advisory council, he believed he would be able to directly address his concerns with the President and advocate for immigrants. After continued pressure, Kalanick announced in an email to Uber employees that he would step down from the council.
Resignation from Uber and Benchmark lawsuit (2017–2019) At the end of May 2017, Kalanick's parents were involved in a boating accident that seriously injured his father and resulted in the death of his mother. On June 11, the final report of the independent investigation into Uber's sexual harassment issues was presented to Uber's top management. The scathing report was "hundreds of pages" long and included a dozen pages of recommendations, most prominently that Kalanick needed to take a
leave of absence and reduce his level of control over Uber's operations. On June 13, 2017, it was announced that Kalanick would take an indefinite leave of absence from Uber, although he continued to work without the approval of the company's board. On June 20, 2017, Kalanick resigned as CEO after five major investors, including Benchmark Capital, demanded his resignation in a letter. Uber added an in-app tipping option a short time later. Following his resignation, Kalanick retained his seat on Uber's
board of directors. He continued to attempt to interfere with company operations by contacting employees and board members asking for internal company information and attempting to sway their voting regarding his replacement. The executive leadership threatened to quit
en masse; Kalanick's access to company servers was stripped. On August 10, 2017,
Axios reported that Benchmark was suing Kalanick for "fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty", in an attempt to remove Kalanick's residual right to name two further board members. Benchmark argued the agreement was invalid due to withholding of material information prior to the vote to allow him to do so. The lawsuit was controversial in Silicon Valley; it is unusual for an investor to sue a founder directly. The court ruled in the favor of Kalanick to move the case to
arbitration on August 30. In a public statement responding to the ruling, Kalanick said that "Benchmark's false allegations are wholly without merit and have unnecessarily harmed Uber and its shareholders." In January 2018, Benchmark dropped its lawsuit against Kalanick to allow the deal to proceed. The share purchase valued Uber at $48 billion. On December 24, 2019, Kalanick announced his resignation from the board effective December 31, 2019. In the weeks leading up to this announcement, Kalanick sold more than $2.5 billion of Uber stock holding, which amounted to about 90% of his shares. ==10100 venture fund==