Uber History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones

Garrett Camp had a specific frustration in San Francisco in 2008: getting a cab on New Year's Eve was nearly impossible, and the existing dispatch system had no way to know where available vehicles were or to match them to passengers efficiently. He and Travis Kalanick launched UberCab in San Francisco in 2010, initially as a black car service with licensed drivers. The app showed available cars on a map, let passengers request rides with a single tap, and handled payment automatically. The friction reduction was large. UberX launched in 2012, extending the service to drivers using their own personal vehicles rather than licensed black cars. The pricing was lower, the supply was larger, and the growth rate accelerated. The 2016 exit from China through the Didi deal, trading Uber's Chinese operations for a stake in Didi, removed a geography where Uber was spending heavily without a clear path to leadership, and freed capital for other markets. The Kalanick era was defined by growth at any cost, regulatory confrontation as a business strategy, and a workplace culture that multiple employees described publicly as dysfunctional. When the 2017 harassment scandal became public and the board lost confidence in Kalanick's ability to manage the consequences, Khosrowshahi moved from Expedia to Uber. He inherited a company with large market share and large losses. The Postmates acquisition in 2020 was completed for $2.65 billion during the COVID-19 period when Delivery demand was surging and the strategic value of additional restaurant supply and geographic coverage was high. Careem, acquired for $3.1 billion in 2020, gave Uber a dominant position in the Middle East and North Africa, a geography with growing urban populations and rising smartphone penetration. The Drizly shutdown in 2023 demonstrated the willingness to exit a category that did not scale to the economics required.