Known as the founder of Uber, he left the CEO position due to harassment allegations: Who is Travis Kalanick?

Travis Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976, in Los Angeles. He is an American businessman known as the co-founder and former CEO of Uber.

Kalanick grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles. He was interested in computers from an early age and learned to write computer code when he was in middle school. While studying computer engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he dropped out. Because in 1998, they founded Scour, Inc. with a few UCLA classmates.

Scour, an Internet search engine and file-sharing service, was one of the first dot-com companies to allow users to share movies and music online. Although its services quickly became popular, the company was sued for copyright infringement by both the recording and motion picture industries. Scour eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and later sold all of his assets.

According to Uber archives, the company's founding came entirely from a "simple idea." The famous blizzard event occurred in Paris in December 2009. Experiencing the common urban grief of not being able to take a taxi during a storm, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp soon began brainstorming a new company called UberCab.

Travis Cordell Kalanick (born August 6, 1976) is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file-sharing application company, and was the co-founder of Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery network that was sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.

The name Uber is derived from the German word meaning “above all else,” which was the core principle that Kalanick and Camp wanted for their startup. Within months, Uber dropped the “Cub” part of its company name, opting to simply become Uber.

The usage area of the application reached 58 countries and 300 cities around the world as of 2015. The company also offers electric bicycle and motor scooter rental services, in partnership with the Lime company. Following Uber's success, many companies have implemented other versions of the initiative known as "Uberification". Today, Uber is among the largest companies in the world. At the same time, the company; has also acquired companies such as Careem, Jump, Otto, and Postmates.

Uber, one of the leading companies in the international arena, was founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. The company, which was first established under the name UberCab, went on the market in June of the same year. When the calendar shows 2011, it is recorded that the company's venture capital was 49 million dollars in total.

The American-based company quickly spread all over the world in 2012. In 2015, the company's current capital reached 2.8 billion dollars. Later, the company started transporting passengers with autonomous vehicles.

Life of Travis Kalanick

Travis Kalanick died on August 6, 1976. He spent his childhood in Northridge, California. His mother is Bonnie Renée Horowitz Kalanick and his father is Donald Edward Kalanick. Anne Kalanick was a woman who worked in the advertising industry. Baba Kalanick was working as a civil engineer in Los Angeles. As it turned out, Kalnick was from an educated family. Moreover, Kalanick is not the only child the family has. Travis has two siblings, one an actress and the other a firefighter.

One of the important details about Kalanick is that he had a competitive nature at a very young age. Besides this, he was also a child whose desire to win was dominant. His innate competitiveness and desire to win resulted in him entering business life at a young age.

In his youth, Kalanick sold knives for a company called Cutco. The interesting point about this is that he started a joint venture with his classmate's father when he was only 18 years old. It is known that Kalanick and his friend's father founded a company known as New Way Academy.

As can be seen, Kalanick begins to breathe the atmosphere of business life while he is still a high school student. After these small breakthroughs, he graduates from Granada Hills Charter High School. Then, Kalanick enrolls in the Computer Engineering and Business Economics program at the University of California. But in 1998, Travis dropped out of college to join Scour Inc.

In 1998, Kalanick joined Scour Inc., a multimedia search engine. He initially worked in the sales and marketing unit at Scour. Among the company's first products was a search engine called SMB. In addition, the product called Scour Media Agent is among the products developed. SMA provides an additional service for those who want to download files from SMB shares.

However, during this period, there were also moves from Scour's rival, Napster. In an effort to keep up with Napster, Scour released a peer-to-peer software called Exchange. Kalananick had a large share in the development of this software. For this reason, he considered himself one of the main actors of the company. Part of the reason why his relations with Scour soured was due to this assumption of his own.

A second reason was investors who started to have a say in the company. Namely, Scour needed financial support in this process. For this reason, the company called Yucaipa invested a large amount in Scour. Michael Owitz, one of the investors, had a say in the company during the process. Kalanick was disturbed by this development. Because he thought that his position was shaken, this was exactly why he decided to leave Scour.

After parting ways with Scour, Kalanick decided to open his own company. He and his friend M Todd founded the file-sharing company Red Swoosh in 2001.

But this journey ended in an unpleasant way. Because when the company was just opening, Kalanick and his friend were experiencing financial problems. On top of these, problems such as not being able to pay the staff were added. Finally, it was alleged that the two were engaged in tax evasion. There is information in the records that one of his former employees confirmed this information. Following these events, Kalanick's partner decided to leave the company.

In 2002, there were only two people working in the company. One of them was Kalanick, the other was Evan Tsang. In 2007, the company was acquired by rival firm Akamai Technologies. Thus, Kalanick's Red Swoosh journey ended.

Despite all the misfortunes, the ambitious man had no intention of retiring from business life. He returned to the business world in a short time with a new project. The calendars showed 2009. Travis Kalanick has stepped into a new venture called Uber with Garrett Camp. It is known that the starting point of the company is based on the following story:

Garrett Camp was very complaining about the taxi services in Francisco. Renting a luxury car and hiring a driver was expensive. Looking for a solution to this situation, Camp finally came up with an idea. This was the Uber Mobile idea. The application would allow users to easily find a vehicle via the application they downloaded to their smartphones.

The concept was first called UberCab. Camp mentioned his idea to Kalanick. It is known that the duo held meetings for days on this idea. We can also say that Camp completely trusted Kalanick in the first place.

The news about Kalanick and his unfortunate attempts must have made him think. This is confirmed by the fact that he offered Kalanick only a role as a "mega consultant" in the company. The company's CEO was initially Ryan Graves. But after a while, the name that took the CEO seat was Travis Kalanick.

Everyone was unaware of the problems Uber would experience under Kalanick's management. It was impossible for the company to foresee this at that time anyway. Because the company had more important problems to deal with. In October 2010, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency warned the company that they were violating city regulations. At the same time, the agency gave the company an ultimatum that they could face significant fines if they did not obtain the necessary permits.

Even though this was the case, Kalanick did not pay much heed to these warnings. His sticking point was that Uber was seen as a taxi company. Therefore, instead of heeding the warnings, he changed the name of the company. The company would no longer be known as UberCab but as Uber.

After a while, Kalanick officially declared his dominance in the company, relying on the comfort of the position. But this attitude did not work in his favor at all. Kalanick, who seemed like a dictator in the company, attracted attention with the policies he followed.

Allegations about Kalanick being a misogynist within the company and in his private life hit the agenda like a bombshell. Although many Uber users were happy with the application, they did not like Kalanick very much. This conclusion was based on the results of a survey conducted by Uber Human Resources. The fact that allegations that Kalanikc was a racist and sexist were frequently on the public agenda made him a target for everyone.

As if these were not enough, a lawsuit was filed against Kalanick on the grounds that he sexually harassed some people working at Uber. As a result of the investigation, a page-long report was published. One of the striking details in the report was the recommendation that Kalanick should take leave. It was implicitly said that he should step down from his position in the company.

Following the publication of this report, news came in June 2017 that Kalanick was on an indefinite leave of absence. But this was not enough. That's why five major investors wrote a letter to Kalanick, saying he should resign immediately. Following this letter, Kalanick resigned from his position as CEO in 2017.

Kalanick didn't seem to heed those warnings at first. Later, Kalainck first left the position of CEO. However, the ambitious man did not completely cut off his ties with the company. Because Kalanick did not give up his seat on the board of directors. However, the company's investors wanted him to completely sever ties with the company. Although aware of the gravity of the situation, Kalanick continued to try to hold his ground.

It is even known that he tried to maintain his position by somehow manipulating those who had a say in the company. However, these efforts did not yield positive results. Therefore, Kalanick was denied access to company information. Ultimately, Kalanick could not stand the pressure on him after a while. As a result, the businessman announced that he resigned from the board of directors in December 2019. But the ambitious man turned this situation to his advantage.

It is known that he sold almost ninety percent of his shares in the company just before this announcement. It is said that his earnings in exchange for his shares are worth more than 2.5 billion dollars. As a result of this sale, Kalanick entered the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list at number 238.

Kalanick After Uber

Kalanick, who went through a difficult process, made an announcement before resigning. The businessman made this announcement via his Twitter account in March 2018. In his announcement, Kalanick informed his followers of his new breakthrough.

Travis announced that he will establish a venture fund focused on job growth in emerging markets such as China and India. This venture fund appeared as “10100”. Following this announcement, it is known that approximately 150 million dollars were invested in his initiative by a company called City Storage Systems (CSS). Following this investment, Kalanick announced that he would become the CEO of the company.

It is also known that he continued to make personal investments during this period. Kalanick has recently been talking about wanting to build a megacity in Arabia.