How Uber Got Started

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Cab drivers have protested Uber because the company uses non-professional drivers that don’t pay licensing fees

In 2009, UberCab was just another startup with big dreams and a moderate budget. Now, the company has removed Cab from the name and is expected to generate about $10 billion by the end of the year. But how did it all start?

The idea for Uber first originated in Travis Kalanick’s mind when he was trying to find a cab to attend a 2008 LeWeb conference in Paris. Unfortunately (or fortunately for today’s Uber drivers and passengers), he never found one, and Kalanick started to think about ways to make on-demand transportation more accessible. It had been a problem that he and Garrett Camp had been discussing previously in regards to how difficult it can be to get around San Francisco.

Photo: Paul Goddin via Flickr

Less than a year later, Kalanick and Camp founded UberCab and began testing their new idea in New York in January 2010 with just a few black cars and even fewer people, and that’s essentially how Uber got started. It proved a success, leading to the launch of the Uber mobile app for iPhones and Android phones in 2010 in San Francisco. After that, the service exploded.

Since then, Uber has successfully raised enormous amounts of money from numerous investors. By the end of 2014, it was estimated to be worth more than $40 billion. Needless to say, growth has been crazy high: in January 2013, Uber had just under 50,000 drivers and in January 2015, that number had climbed to a whopping 175,000!

Even Jimmy Kimmel has gotten in on the Uber action:

The News Wheel

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