Uber CEO Travis Kalanick
Already in seven cities across the United States, Uber — a phone app that will deliver you a private driver with the push of a button — is transforming the car service business one user at a time. Now, with its international debut in Paris and Toronto, CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick has found himself in another role: blogger.
From actor Edward Norton’s foiled attempts to become Uber’s first Los Angeles rider (that honor went to Kalanick’s parents) to Boston’s geeky tech prom, his posts dig into data, city factoids and transportation trends. He explains things like why Toronto’s crushing rush hour starts at 3 p.m. (answer: it has six times fewer subway stops per resident than Paris).
“I feel like I’ve become a professional blogger,” Kalanick recently told us from Uber’s Paris office, one stop on his European expansion tour that will also include launches in London and Amsterdam. He posts and Tweets regularly from each Uber location and says he’s become “a bit of a travel writer” since starting to file launch updates from the road.
He likens each opening to a romantic relationship with a city — he’s getting to know how compatible Uber is with the city and turning the two into the perfect couple. Uber is currently available in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, Seattle, Toronto and Washington, D.C., with plans to branch out even more. Next up is Miami, Las Vegas and Vancouver, and then the European tour begins in London, with plans for future launches in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. We can’t wait to see what Uber and Kalanick come up with — and blog about — next.
Photo courtesy of Uber
