Uber Technologies, Inc.

The idea for Uber came to Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick on a snowy Paris night in 2008 when they couldn't get a cab. Camp had sold his previous startup StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million. Kalanick had sold his startup Red Swoosh for $19 million. Both had money, both had time, and both were annoyed. UberCab launched in San Francisco in June 2010 with three cars.

Within months of launch, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the California Public Utilities Commission sent Uber a cease and desist letter, arguing it was operating an unlicensed taxi service. Kalanick's response was to keep operating and fight in court simultaneously — a strategy that would define Uber's relationship with regulators for the next decade.

Uber introduced surge pricing — automatically multiplying fares during high demand periods. During a 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, Uber activated surge pricing as people fled the area. The backlash was severe. Uber initially defended the policy, then reversed it and refunded fares. The episode became a case study in corporate tone-deafness that business schools still teach.

2017 was catastrophic for Uber. A former engineer published a blog post detailing systematic sexual harassment. A video emerged of Kalanick berating an Uber driver. The company was found to have used software to evade law enforcement. The board forced Kalanick to resign in June 2017. Over 200,000 users deleted the app in a single weekend following the hashtag #DeleteUber.

Uber went public in May 2019 at $45 per share — below its expected range — in what became one of the most disappointing major tech IPOs in years. The stock fell on its first day of trading. SoftBank, which had invested $7.7 billion, watched its investment immediately decline in value. Uber would not become consistently profitable until 2023, fourteen years after its founding.