History
Uber was founded by Garrett Camp, Travis Kalanick and Oscar Salazar in 2009. The original idea occurred to them at the 2008 LeWeb conference in Paris. The Uber product was officially launched in San Francisco in 2010 with Ryan Graves as CEO. Ryan Graves would later step down from his role and Travis Kalanick would be made the CEO.
The domain name "uber.com" had been owned by a social networking and blogging company which had shut down its services in September 2008. In 2009, the domain name was transferred to the Uber cab service.
Uber originally worked exclusively by text messaging. Uber's mobile app launched in 2010 in San Francisco, on iPhones and Android phones.
The company has gradually expanded its service to cover more cities. Travis Kalanick said in December 2011 that in response to growing demand, Uber is also planning to target 25 more cities outside the United States in the coming months.
The company received venture funding in late 2010 from a group of super angel investors in Silicon Valley, California, including Chris Sacca. In early 2011, Uber raised more than $11.5M in Series A funding led by Benchmark Capital. In late 2011, Uber further raised $32 million in funding from several investors that include Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures and Bezos Expeditions bringing their total funding amount to $49.5M.
In April 2012, Uber tested reservations for conventional taxis, at lower rates, in Chicago.
In July 2012, the company entered the London market with an initial staff of about 90 drivers of Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar. On July 13 in honor of National Ice Cream Month, Uber launched Uber Ice Cream, which added the ability in 7 cities to summon an ice cream truck for on-demand delivery, and bill the purchase to a user's account.
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—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
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