Travis Cordell Kalanick (born August 6, 1976, in Los Angeles, California) is an American entrepreneur and businessperson renowned as the co-founder and former CEO of Uber Technologies, Inc., which revolutionized the transportation industry and grew into a global transportation giant. Growing up in the Los Angeles area, Kalanick developed an early interest in technology and computers. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied computer engineering, but dropped out in 1998 to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. His first significant endeavor was co-founding Scour, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service in 1997, which faced legal challenges from the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America over copyright infringement, leading to its shutdown in 2000 amid bankruptcy. Following Scour, Kalanick co-founded Red Swoosh in 2001, a peer-to-peer content delivery network that addressed bandwidth inefficiencies for file transfers. The company gained traction and was acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2007 for approximately $15 million, providing Kalanick with his first major financial success and experience in scaling tech startups. In 2009, while working on side projects in San Francisco, Kalanick teamed up with Garrett Camp to launch UberCab (later rebranded as Uber), initially as a luxury black-car service. Under his leadership as CEO, Uber expanded aggressively into ride-sharing, disrupting traditional taxi industries worldwide and achieving unicorn status by 2012. Kalanick's tenure at Uber was marked by rapid growth but also intense controversies, including allegations of a toxic corporate culture, regulatory battles, and personal scandals that culminated in his resignation as CEO in June 2017 amid pressure from investors and board members. Post-Uber, he retained a significant board seat until 2019 and founded 10100, a venture capital firm, while launching CloudKitchens (formerly Kitchit), a ghost kitchen startup aimed at the food delivery market. Known for his aggressive business style and libertarian-leaning views, Kalanick has been both praised for innovation and criticized for labor practices and ethical lapses in Uber's early years.