Travis Kalanick

Co-founder of Uber[43]

What is Travis Kalanick known for?

Travis Cordell Kalanick, born on August 6, 1976, in Los Angeles, California, is a well-known American entrepreneur, co-founder and former CEO of Uber. Being an alumnus of Granada Hills High School, Kalanick demonstrated competitive spirit from his early years. His entrepreneurial journey started with selling knives door-to-door for Cutco, and at 18, he initiated a test preparation company named "New Way Academy."

His educational pursuit took him to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he studied computer engineering and business economics. However, he chose to drop out to work full-time at Scour, a multimedia search engine and a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Alongside Scour, he also co-founded Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery network, which was sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.

The major milestone of Kalanick's career came with Uber. Being a co-founder and CEO of Uber, he revolutionized the transportation industry. However, his tenure at Uber until 2017 was stained with allegations of unethical corporate culture and reports of sexual harassment at the company. Despite these issues, he sold off approximately 90% of his shares in Uber, earning a profit of about $2.5 billion.

Post-Uber, Kalanick began a venture fund named 10100 in 2018, focusing on e-commerce, innovation, and real estate in emerging markets like China and India. The same year, he made a hefty investment in real estate redevelopment company City Storage Systems, becoming its CEO. Under this firm, he operates a ghost kitchen startup named CloudKitchens, which had a significant valuation of $15 billion as of 2021.

Beyond his entrepreneurial ventures, Travis Kalanick is known for his affiliations with the Libertarian Party, and he is related to Allisyn Ashley Arm, an actress, through one of his half-sisters.

You can learn more about Travis Kalanick on his Forbes Profile or explore his journey visually through his Bloomberg Profile.