Travis Kalanick

Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976, and grew up in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles. Kalanick's parents are Bonnie Renée Horowitz Kalanick (née Bloom) and Donald Edward Kalanick. Bonnie, whose family were Viennese Jews who immigrated to the U.S. in the early 20th century, worked in retail advertising for the Los Angeles Daily News. Donald, from a Slovak–Austrian Catholic family whose grandparents immigrated to the United States from the Austrian city of Graz, was a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles. Kalanick has two half-sisters, one of whom is the mother of actress Allisyn Ashley Arm, and a brother who is a firefighter.

In middle and high school, Kalanick was known to be competitive and driven to win. As a teenager, Kalanick sold knives door-to-door for direct sales company Cutco. At 18, he started a test preparation company called "New Way Academy" with the father of a classmate. After graduating from Granada Hills Charter High School, Kalanick studied computer engineering and business economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While studying at UCLA, Kalanick was a member of Theta Xi fraternity. In 1998, he dropped out to work at the start-up Scour full-time.

Early ventures

Scour (1998–2000)

In 1998, Kalanick, along with Michael Todd and Vince Busam, dropped out of UCLA to work for Dan Rodrigues, founder of Scour Inc., a multimedia search engine, and Scour Exchange, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Kalanick handled sales and marketing for Scour. He has referred to himself as a co-founder of the company, but the other co-founders have disputed this.

After months of growth, Scour needed cash and sought funding from venture capital investors Ronald Burkle and Michael Ovitz. Negotiations were contentious and Ovitz eventually sued Scour for breach of contract. Scour was forced to accept unfavorable terms for the investment, and Ovitz acquired majority control over the company. The situation soured Kalanick's view of investor-founder relations.

In 2000, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) brought a $250 billion lawsuit against Scour, alleging copyright infringement. In September 2000, Scour filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect itself from the lawsuit.

Kalanick owns a townhouse in the upper hills of San Francisco's Castro District, which was nicknamed "the Jam Pad" and had its own Twitter account. In 2019, Kalanick purchased a penthouse in 565 Broome Street, New York City for $36.4 million. In April 2020, he bought a home in Los Angeles for $43.3 million.

Kalanick dated Gabi Holzwarth, a violist and business development manager, from 2014 to late 2016. In 2017, Holzwarth told HuffPost she was "glad to be out of Uber's orbit", which she described as a deeply misogynistic environment and an "unhealthy world of impossible standards" that was damaging to her psyche, as she had dealt with eating disorders for years. Holzwarth did, however, praise Kalanick for helping her recover from her eating disorders.

Kalanick has been described as a passionate libertarian and a fan of author Ayn Rand. However, Kalanick supported Obamacare because it allows Uber drivers, as independent contractors, to maintain health insurance as they transition between jobs.

Resignation from Uber and Benchmark lawsuit (2017–2019)

At the end of May 2017, Kalanick's parents were involved in a boating accident that seriously injured his father and resulted in the death of his mother. On June 11, the final report of the independent investigation into Uber's sexual harassment issues was presented to Uber's top management. The scathing report was "hundreds of pages" long and included a dozen pages of recommendations, most prominently that Kalanick needed to take a leave of absence and reduce his level of control over Uber's operations. On June 13, 2017, it was announced that Kalanick would take an indefinite leave of absence from Uber, although he continued to work without the approval of the company's board. On June 20, 2017, Kalanick resigned as CEO after five major investors, including Benchmark Capital, demanded his resignation in a letter. Uber added an in-app tipping option a short time later.

Following his resignation, Kalanick retained his seat on Uber's board of directors. He continued to attempt to interfere with company operations by contacting employees and board members asking for internal company information and attempting to sway their voting regarding his replacement. The executive leadership threatened to quit en masse; Kalanick's access to company servers was stripped.

On August 10, 2017, Axios reported that Benchmark was suing Kalanick for "fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty", in an attempt to remove Kalanick's residual right to name two further board members. Benchmark argued the agreement was invalid due to withholding of material information prior to the vote to allow him to do so. The lawsuit was controversial in Silicon Valley; it is unusual for an investor to sue a founder directly. The court ruled in favor of Kalanick to move the case to arbitration on August 30. In a public statement responding to the ruling, Kalanick said "Benchmark's false allegations are wholly without merit and have unnecessarily harmed Uber and its shareholders."

Kalanick initially supported former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as his successor. Immelt was open to allowing Kalanick to retain some role in Uber's operations, while the other major candidate, Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, intended to shut Kalanick out of any operational role. However, Kalanick soured on Immelt after Immelt's presentation went badly. Immelt pulled out of the running after one director privately told him he had no chance at getting the job. Kalanick unexpectedly threw his support behind a "dark horse" candidate, Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, even though Khosrowshahi had strongly opposed any further operational role for Kalanick. During his presentation, Khosrowshahi included a slide entitled, "There cannot be two CEOs."

Uber began to negotiate a tender offer with Japanese software conglomerate SoftBank in September 2017. The offer included an agreement to add six new seats to Uber's board, which would dilute Kalanick's influence over it. On September 29, Kalanick unilaterally appointed Ursula Burns and John Thain to the board. In January 2018, Benchmark dropped its lawsuit against Kalanick to allow the deal to proceed. The share purchase valued Uber at $48 billion.

On December 24, 2019, Kalanick announced his resignation from the board effective December 31, 2019. In the weeks leading up to this announcement, Kalanick sold more than $2.5 billion of Uber stock holding, which amounted to about 90% of his shares.