Travis Kalanick - Ceo Of Uber

Travis Cordell Kalanick (born August 6, 1976) is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of the peer-to-peer file sharing company Red Swoosh and the transportation network company Uber.

In 2014, he entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 290, with an estimated net worth of $6 billion.

Early life and education

Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976, in Los Angeles, California. He lived in Northridge, California, where he graduated from Granada Hills High School and later enrolled in college at the University of California, Los Angeles, to study computer engineering. His mother, Bonnie, worked in retail advertising for the Los Angeles Daily News, and his father, Donald E. Kalanick, was a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles. His father's family is Catholic with Czech and Austrian roots. He has two half-sisters and his brother Cory is a firefighter.

Career

Scour

In 1998, Travis Kalanick, along with other classmates, dropped out of UCLA to help found Scour Inc. with Dan Rodrigues, a multimedia search engine, and Scour Exchange, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. In 2000, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) brought a lawsuit against Scour, alleging copyright infringement. In September of that year, Scour filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from the lawsuit.

Red Swoosh

In 2001, with Scour's engineering team, Kalanick started a new company called Red Swoosh, another peer-to-peer file-sharing company. Red Swoosh software took advantage of increased bandwidth efficiency on the Internet to allow users to transfer and trade large media files, including music files and videos. In 2007, Akamai Technologies acquired the company for $19 million.

Uber

In 2009, along with Garrett Camp, Kalanick founded Uber, a mobile application program that connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services. Uber operates in 66 countries and in more than 507 cities around the world. Uber faced some controversy in some cities in North America, like Washington D.C., Chicago, Toronto, and New York City. The company faces fierce competition from similar services and "clone companies" in cities like London. In November 2014, Kalanick faced criticism for creating a "win at all costs" culture in his Uber organization. Public relations problems the firm faced included Kalanick's comments to GQ about how easy it is for him to attract women now, concern about his blasé attitude regarding safety issues for female customers, and his tolerance of executive Emil Michael, who recommended creating a large budget to smear critics. Although Kalanick apologized for Michael's remarks, he did not censure him severely enough to ap pease some critics.

Other

He speaks at conferences and business events, including TechCrunch Disrupt, Tech Cocktail, DLD, and LeWeb.

In December 2016, it was announced that Kalanick will join President elect Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, as a corporate adviser.

Personal life

Kalanick dated Gabi Holzwarth for two years. They broke up in 2015. Holzwarth is a professional violinist, Huffington Post writer, and public speaker. She is also known for her work helping young women battle anorexia, and gave a TEDx talk in 2014 about this.

References

External links

• AngelList
• CrunchBase
• Travis Kalanick on Twitter
• Resistance Is Futile, by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin