Five years ago, a company called UberCab made a splash in San Francisco by letting you hail a car with your smartphone. Since then, the company, now known as Uber, has spread like wildfire through the globe. Uber currently operates in 58 countries and is valued at over $60 billion.
But the road hasn’t been easy.
While its valuation has continued to climb and it has attracted more and more investors, Uber has also fought rivals and regulators as it has transformed from a black-car service into a sprawling logistics company gunning for a future of self-driving cars. It has confronted threats from the taxi industry and even its own drivers.
It has also waged war against Didi Chuxing, its rival in gaining ride-hailing dominance in China. After a prolonged and exorbitantly costly battle, however, Uber China is now surrendering to Didi in a $35 billion megamerger.
In 2017, Uber has weathered controversy after controversy: A #DeleteUber campaign that cost the company 200,000 customers in a single weekend. Allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination by multiple former employees. A bombshell report of drug use and groping at a company event. Uber's own investors speaking out, a lawsuit from Google, and Travis Kalanick himself caught on camera in a heated argument with an Uber driver.
After a stunning, two-week string of blows that has upended the world's most valuable startup, we look back at how the company got to where it is today. See the insane and successful journey of Uber and its CEO, Travis Kalanick, as it has moved from an idea to a worldwide phenomenon.
June 1998: Scour, a peer-to-peer search-engine startup that Kalanick had dropped out of UCLA to join, snags its first investment from former Disney president Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle from the VC and private equity firm The Yucaipa Companies.
Source: Business Insider
October 2000: Scour files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after being sued by several entertainment companies for around $250 billion.
Source: The New York Times
April 2007: Kalanick sells RedSwoosh, a networking-software company he'd founded in 2001, to Akamai for $23 million and becomes a millionaire. He says he started RedSwoosh as a “revenge business” to turn the 33 litigants who sued Scour into customers.
Source: Business Insider
December 2008: Kalanick first hears the idea for Uber at the LeWeb technology conference. He thinks of it as a way to lower the cost of a black-car service using your phone.
Source: Business Insider
March 2009: Uber is founded as UberCab, a black-car service. Garrett Camp, Oscar Salazar, and Conrad Whelan build the first version, with Kalanick serving as a "mega adviser." Kalanick has said his title back then was "chief incubator."
Source: Business Insider
January 2010: Kalanick tweets, “Looking 4 entrepreneurial product mgr/biz-dev killer 4 a location based service.. pre-launch, BIG equity, big peeps involved--ANY TIPS??” Ryan Graves, who would later be named CEO, responds.
@KonaTbone heres a tip. email me 🙂 graves.ryan[at]gmail.com
— =ryan graves= (@ryangraves) January 6, 2010
Source: Business Insider
June 2010: Uber launches in San Francisco. At the time, it cost about 1.5 times as much as a cab, but you could request a car in San Francisco by sending a text or pressing a button. It quickly became a hit.
Source: Business Insider
October 2010: Uber closes a $1.25 million seed funding round from First Round Capital, Kalanick's friend Chris Sacca, and Napster cofounder Shawn Fanning.
Source: TechCrunch
December 2010: Ryan Graves, who had become CEO, steps down in favor of Kalanick. Graves became Uber’s general manager again, and both say the reshuffle was a friendly one.
Source: TechCrunch
February 2011: Uber closes an $11 million Series A funding round that values the company at $60 million. Benchmark leads the round, and its partner Bill Gurley joins Uber’s board of directors.
Source: TechCrunch
May 2011: Uber launches in New York City, which is today one of its biggest and most controversial markets. Uber provided nearly 170,000 trips per day between April 2015 and April 2016.
Source: Business Insider
December 2011: Uber begins to expand internationally, starting with Paris, France. It also closes a $32 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Goldman Sachs.
Source: TechCrunch
July 2012: Uber unveils its secret, low-cost “Uber X” project to the world. The service debuts at 35% less expensive than the original black cars, and features cars like the Prius and the Cadillac Escalade. Kalanick declares, “Uber is ultimately a cross between lifestyle and logistics.”
Source: TechCrunch
August 2012: Lyft, which is considered by many to be Uber’s main competitor, launches in San Francisco. The stage is set for the San Francisco price war that will follow.
Source: TechCrunch
August 2013: Uber moves into India and Africa, and it closes a Series C funding round that sees an enormous $258 million investment from Google Ventures. This round values Uber at $3.76 billion.
Source: TechCrunch
April 2014: Uber begins its UberRUSH service, which brings bicycle delivery to Manhattan. The service starts at $7 — a $3 base fare and $4 per mile.
Source: The Next Web
July 2014: Uber enters China after raising a $1.2 billion funding round at a $17 billion valuation in June. China looks like it will eventually become Uber’s biggest market, and today five out of Uber's 10 largest cities are in China.
Source: TechCrunch
August 2014: Uber starts its UberPOOL service, which lets you split the ride and cost with another person who is riding a similar route. It’s the Uber version of carpooling.
Source: Uber
December 2014: Uber raises $600 million from Chinese search powerhouse Baidu. Baidu’s mobile-search and maps apps begin to integrate with Uber, and it seems that Uber is gearing up for a fight with other prominent Chinese tech companies.
Source: TechCrunch
January 2015: Uber rolls out UberCARGO in Hong Kong, which expands Uber’s service to include all moving and delivery needs. Uber calls it a way for your goods to “travel like a VIP.” This new feature continues Uber's move in the direction of a logistics company.
Source: Uber
March 2015: Uber begins the process of buying mapping startup deCarta, its first acquisition — perhaps to decrease its reliance on Google Maps.
Source: Business Insider
April 2015: Uber launches UberEATS, an on-demand food-delivery service that brings meals to your location in minutes. The service starts in four pilot cities: LA, Barcelona, Chicago, and New York City. Now, it's available in 23 markets in the U.S.
Source: Uber
May 2015: Uber poaches over 40 employees from Carnegie Mellon University to staff its robotics-research facility, which it opened in February to build self-driving cars. Kalanick has previously mused, "The reason Uber could be expensive is because you're not just paying for the car — you're paying for the other dude in the car.”
Source: Business Insider
June 2015: Violent protests erupt up across France as taxi drivers and their supporters block roads, burn tires, and attack suspected Uber drivers.
Source: The New York Times
June 2015: The California Labor Commission rules that an Uber driver is an employee, not a contractor. This calls Uber’s underlying business model into question. The decision comes after a San Francisco driver, Barbara Ann Berwick, files a claim against Uber.
Source: Business Insider
September 2015: Uber's China arm raises $1.2 billion to aid in its fight in the China market. Uber’s biggest competitor, Didi Kuaidi, responds by raising about $3 billion.
Source: Business Insider
October 2015: Uber officially launches its UberRUSH program, which had previously been in pilot mode since April 2014.
Source: The Verge
January 2016: Uber raises another $2 billion in private equity funding to continue to help fund its international expansion plans.
Source: Reuters
February 2016: Uber gets a $200 million investment from Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman.
Source: Reuters
February 2016: Uber agreed to pay $28.5 million to 25 million riders to settle a class-action lawsuit surrounding its advertisements. After the settlement, Uber is no longer allowed to use the terms "industry-leading" or "best in class" in reference to its background checks.
Source: Business Insider
May 2016: Uber and ride-hailing competitor Lyft both exit Austin, Texas, after the city's voters back a measure that would require fingerprint background checks for drivers.
Both Uber and Lyft had spent millions working to repeal the city's ordinance, so it was an embarrassing loss for both companies.
Source: Reuters
May 2016: Uber and Toyota sign a "memorandum of understanding" to explore how the two companies could work together.
Source: Business Insider
June 2016: Uber raises $3.5 billion from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, Uber's largest investment from a single investor. Yasir Al Rumayyan, managing director of the Public Investment Fund, joins Uber's board.
Source: Business Insider
June 2016: Kalanick proclaims that Uber is profitable in hundreds of cities globally, but that that money is being reinvested in its war against Chinese rival Didi. At the time, the company said it was losing $1 billion each year in its fight against Didi.
Source: Business Insider
July 2016: The company gets another $1.15 billion cash infusion, this time in the form of a leveraged loan. The company took advantage of low interest rates and secured a loan that was said to "support Uber's global expansion and operations and invest in research and development and engineering."
Source: Business Insider
July 2016: Uber runs into trouble in Hungary. The company is forced to pull out of the country after government legislation makes it impossible for it to operate. The move followed months of protests by taxi drivers.
Source: Reuters
July 2016: Uber announces in mid-July that it had completed its two-billionth trip, just six months after reaching one billion rides.
Source: Business Insider
July 2016: A federal judge rules that Uber "engaged in fraudulent and arguably criminal conduct" when it used an investigative firm to conduct a background check on a plaintiff in a lawsuit.
The plaintiff accused Kalanick of violating anti-trust laws by coordinating surge pricing.
Source: Business Insider
July 2016: The Chinese government legalizes ride-hailing, paving the way for Uber and Didi to continue their battle for ride-hailing dominance. Didi is already operating in more than 400 cities throughout China, while Uber's goal is to reach 100 cities by the end of the year.
Source: Business Insider
July 2016: Uber's costly battle in China comes to a close as Didi and Uber China merge in a $35 billion deal. The merger basically means that Uber has thrown in the towel in China, likely to the relief of both Didi's and Uber's investors.
Source: Business Insider
August 2016: Leaked financials show that Uber lost at least $1.27 billion in the first half of 2016.
In the first quarter of 2016, Uber lost $520 million ("before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization"). In the second quarter, the situation worsened, and Uber's losses topped $750 million.
But the lion's share of Uber's losses stemmed from the company's expensive and protracted battle with Didi Chuxing in China, where the company was losing$1 billion a yeartrying to beat its local rival.
Source: Bloomberg, Business Insider
October 2016: Uber decides to get into the long-haul business with a new division called Uber Freight. The plan built on Uber's acquisition of Otto, a self-driving trucking company that Uber bought in July 2016.
Source: Business Insider
October 2016: Uber launches a new project to bring flying cars to commuters by 2026.
The company published a white paper outlining its plans for Uber Elevate, a network of on-demand electric aircraft. Known as VTOL aircraft - short for Vertical Take-Off and Landing - the aircraft would be used to shorten commute times in busy cities, turning a two-hour drive into a 15-minute trip.
Source: Business Insider
December 2016: Uber launches a new self-driving car pilot similar to the program it was already running in Pittsburgh...
Source: Business Insider
...but after a week-long feud with California regulators, the self-driving car program left the state for Arizona after regulators delivered a death-blow to its self-driving car plans.
Source: Business Insider
January 2017: More than 200,000 furious Uber riders delete the Uber app after the company continued operating its service at John F. Kennedy International Airport during a protest of President Trump's executive order on immigration. Since the taxi companies went on strike to join the protesters, Uber's continued service created the perception that it was undermining the protest.
Source: Business Insider
January 2017: Uber agrees to pay $20 million and alter various business practices in order to settle claims brought by the FTC that said Uber misled drivers on how much they would make driving for the company.
Source: Business Insider
February 2017: After protests at Uber's San Francisco headquarters and public outcry, Kalanick quits President Trump's business advisory council, the Strategic and Policy Forum.
"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that," Kalanick wrote in a memo to employees.
Source: Recode
February 2017: A former Uber engineer named Susan Fowler alleges in a blog post that she was sexually harassed at Uber and experienced gender bias during her time at the company.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick immediately pledged to look into Fowler's investigations, and hired former US Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the investigation.
Source: Business Insider
February 2017: The New York Times publishes a bombshell report that suggests Fowler's claims were part of a larger cultural problem at Uber. According to the report, employees did cocaine during a company retreat and a manager had to be fired after groping several women.
Source: The New York Times
February 2017: Uber investors Freada and Mitch Kapor, in a letter to other Uber investors and the company board, blast the company for failing to change.
Source: Business Insider
February 2017: Another Uber investor — Google — files suit against the company, accusing Uber of using stolen technology to advance its own autonomous-car development.
Source: Business Insider
February 2017: An Uber driver's dashcam video catches Kalanick in a heated argument over prices.
Kalanick quickly issued an apology saying he plans to seek leadership help.
"My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud," he wrote in the apology. "That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away. This is the first time I've been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it."
Source: Bloomberg, Business Insider
March 2017: Uber changes its mind on testing its self-driving cars in San Francisco, applying for and receiving a permit to test its vehicles.
Source: Business Insider, TechCrunch
March 2017: The New York Times revealed that Uber has been secretively deceiving authorities for years with a tool called "Greyball."
Uber reportedly used the tool to evade authorities, particularly at times when city regulators were trying to block the ride-hailing service.
Source: The New York Times
March 2017: After admitting he needs leadership help, Kalanick says he is now looking to hire a COO to be a peer and partner in Uber's future.
Source: Business Insider