Background
Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976 in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Bonnie, worked in retail advertising for the Los Angeles Daily News, and his father, Donald, was a civil engineer for the city of Los Los Angeles His father Donald E. Kalanick"s family is Catholic with Czechoslovakian and Austrian roots.
Travis C. Kalanick was born to a Jewish mother (her maiden name is Horwitz) in Los Los Angeles
Education
He lived in Northridge, California, where he graduated from Granada Hills High School and later enrolled in college at the University of California, Los Angeles, to study computer engineering.
Career
In 2014, he entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 290, with an estimated Netto worth of $6 billion. While at the University of California, Los Angeles he joined the Theta Xi Fraternity. Scour
In 2000, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) brought a lawsuit against Scour, alleging copyright infringement.
In September of that year Scour filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from the lawsuit.
Red Swoosh
In 2001, with Scour"s engineering team, Kalanick started a new company called Red Swoosh, another peer-to-peer file-sharing company. Red Swoosh software took advantage of increased bandwidth efficiency on the Internet to allow users to transfer and trade large media files, including music files and videos.
In 2007, Akamai Technologies acquired the company for $19 million. Uber
In 2009, along with Garrett Camp, Kalanick founded Uber, a mobile application that connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services.
Uber operates in 58 countries and in more than 300 cities around the world.
Uber faced some controversy in some cities in North America, like Washington District of Columbia, Chicago, Toronto, and New York City. The company faces fierce competition from similar services and "clone companies" in cities like London. Public relations problems the firm faced included Kalanick"s comments to Gentlemen’s Quarterly about how easy it is for him to attract women now, concern about his blasé attitude regarding safety issues for female customers, and his toleration of executive Emil Michael, who recommended creating a large budget to smear critics.
While Kalanick apologized for Michael"s remarks, he did not censure him severely enough to appease some critics.
Other
He speaks at conferences and business events, including TechCrunch Disrupt, Technical Cocktail, DLD, and LeWeb. As of 2015, Kalanick is dating Gabi Holzwarth, whom he met at a party hosted by Shervin Pishevar.
Holzwarth is a violinist, Huffington Post writer, and has worked as a product intern at Shyp. Holzwarth was discovered by Pishevar while she was playing the violin outside a Trader Joe"son
Holzwarth credits her relationship with Kalanick, and his very supportive nature, with saving her life as she battled with anxiety and eating disorders.
Holzwarth rose into the limelight when comedian T. J. Miller made disparaging jokes about her (including calling her a bitch) at the Crunchies Award ceremony in February 2015.