From ‘professional dads’ to billionaires, these 5 early Uber employees have come a long way from their origins
Seven short years ago, a company that went by the name UberCab made its debut in San Francisco. It allowed you to hail a car by means of your smartphone. The story of Uber started when Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were attending a LeWeb conference in Paris. While trying to hail a cab – with luggage – on the streets of Paris, they found it extremely difficult to find one in the heavy rain. That’s when the brilliant idea of solving the global issue of finding cars struck them, and they haven’t looked back ever since. What started as a tiny startup has now grown into a company with more than 12,000 employees worldwide.
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Many of these employees continue to work with Uber even today, while some have moved on to other opportunities, and in a few cases, great sums of money too:.
Ryan Graves
One of the company’s first employees, Ryan Graves came across a tweet about a job that promised “BIG equity” and replied “hire me :)” to the individual who had posted it. Five years later, that stake made him a billionaire. The first full-time CEO at Uber, Ryan joined Uber in 2010 and stepped down in August 2016. Today, he stays on at Uber as the company’s “Resident Entrepreneur and Builder”. This role helps him focus on people operations and Uber’s delivery services like UberEats.
Oscar Salazar
Oscar Salazar, Uber’s third co-founder, was with the company for two years, from 2009 to 2011. He, along with Camp, built Uber’s first prototype and held the position of Chief Technical Officer (CTO) while he was at the company. Oscar left the company amicably soon after it was launched. Today, he is the Chief Product and Technical Officer at Ride, a logistics startup that focuses mainly on carpooling.
Garrett Camp
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Curtis Chambers
After working with Uber for seven years, Curtis Chambers left the company in early October 2017. Currently, he’s catching up on quality time with his family. At the peak of his career, he was the Director of Engineering at Uber and was the company’s seventh employee when Uber was but a tiny startup. Back in 2013, Curtis had his name on a patent application as one of the five inventors of Uber’s controversial surge pricing.
Austin Geidt
Austin Geidt started off as an intern at Uber in the year 2010. Today, she holds the prestigious title of Head of Global Expansion and Head of Process at this tech giant. Uber’s fourth employee, little did Austin know that she’d be leading the charge for Uber in the near future. Now that Uber is present in more than 330 cities, Austin’s focus has expanded from launches to overall business operations.
Uber has been embroiled in several scandals and rumours in the past few months. However, most of the company’s initial employees have remained with it through the company’s ups and downs, an admirable display of loyalty during testing times.
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