Uber: the original pitch to investors
Uber Technologies Inc’s explosive growth and constant controversy make it one of the most fascinating companies to emerge over the past decade.
Uber’s story began in Paris in 2008. Two friends, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, were attending LeWeb, an annual tech conference The Economist describes as “where revolutionaries gather to plot the future.”
In 2007, both men had sold startups they co-founded for large sums. Kalanick sold Red Swoosh to Akamai Technologies for $19 million while Camp sold StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million.
The concept for Uber was born one winter night during the conference when the pair was unable to get a cab. Uber was founded on a single idea: “What if you could request a ride from your phone?” Initially, the idea was for a timeshare limo service that could be ordered via an app. After the conference, the entrepreneurs went their separate ways. However, when Camp returned to San Francisco, he continued to be fixated on the idea and bought the domain name UberCab.com.
In 2009, Camp was still CEO of StumbleUpon, but he began working on a prototype for UberCab as a side project. By summer of that year, Camp had persuaded Kalanick to join as UberCab’s “chief incubator.” The service was tested in New York in early 2010 using only three cars, and the official launch took place in San Francisco in May.
The ease and simplicity of ordering a car fueled the app’s rising popularity. With the tap of a button, a ride could be ordered, a GPS identified the location, and the cost was automatically charged to the card on the user account. The San Francisco-based startup quickly became one of the hottest companies and grew quickly. The first Uber ride was requested in 2010 and less than two years later, in 2011, Uber had already launched internationally in Paris, where the idea for it first took root.