Abigail Pierrepont Johnson is an American billionaire businesswoman, and the granddaughter of late Edward C. Johnson II, the founder of Fidelity Investments. Since 2014, Johnson has been president and chief executive officer (CEO) of American investment firm Fidelity Investments (FMR), and chair of its former sister company Fidelity International (FIL). Fidelity was founded by her grandfather Edward C. Johnson II. Her father, Edward C. "Ned" Johnson III, remained chair emeritus of FMR until his death in March 2022. As of March 2013, the Johnson family owned a 49% stake in the privately-held company, with Johnson herself holding an estimated 24.5%. She is a board member of Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly referred to as Uber, is an American multinational transportation company that provides ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and operates in approximately 70 countries and 10,500 cities worldwide. It is the largest ridesharing company worldwide with over 150 million monthly active users and 6 million active drivers and couriers. It facilitates an average of 28 million trips per day and has facilitated 47 billion trips since its inception in 2010. In 2023, the company had a take rate of 28.7% for mobility services and 18.3% for food delivery.
Jeffrey Robert Immelt is an American manufacturing executive working as a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates. He previously was the CEO of General Electric from 2001 to 2017, and the CEO of GE's Medical Systems division from 1997 to 2000. Immelt's tenure saw GE's largest divestments in the company's history, as the company sold almost two-thirds of its subsidiaries and assets.
Edward Scott Lampert is an American billionaire businessman. He is the former chief executive and chairman of Sears Holdings, the founder of Transformco, and the founder, chairman, and chief executive of ESL Investments. Until May 2007, he was a director of AutoNation. He was a director of AutoZone from 1999 to 2006. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$2 billion.
Bernard Marcus is an American billionaire businessman. He co-founded The Home Depot. He was the company's first CEO and first chairman until retiring in 2002.
Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden.
Sky Dylan Dayton is an American entrepreneur and investor, and Scientologist. He is the founder of Internet service provider EarthLink, co-founder of eCompanies, the founder of Boingo, and co-founder of City Storage Systems and CloudKitchens.
Christopher Sacca is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2020, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing. In 2021, Sacca announced that he was back into venture investing with a focus on Climate issues.
Eric Paul Lefkofsky is an American billionaire businessman. He is the founder of Tempus, and the co-founder of Groupon, Echo Global Logistics (ECHO), InnerWorkings (INWK), and Mediaocean. He is also the managing director of Chicago-based venture capital firm Lightbank. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$4.1 billion.
John William Gurley is an American businessman. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in San Francisco, California. He is listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List and is considered one of the top dealmakers in the American technology industry.
Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.
Dara Khosrowshahi is an Iranian-American business executive who is the chief executive officer of Uber. He was previously CEO of Expedia Group, a company that owns several travel fare aggregators. He is on the board of directors of BET.com and Hotels.com, and previously served on the board of The New York Times Company.
Nicholas D. Woodman is an American businessman, and the founder and CEO of GoPro.
Travis Cordell Kalanick is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was the co-founder of Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery network that was sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.
Emil G. Michael is an Egyptian-born American businessman. Michael was the Senior Vice President of Business and Chief Business Officer at Uber, and the Chief Operating Officer of Klout.
Lowercase Capital was an American venture capital firm that provided seed and early stage funding for a number of successful startups including Twitter, Twilio, Kickstarter, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe. It raised over $1 billion in capital and sources claim a return of at least $5 billion to its investors. In 2017 Chris Sacca closed the fund for new start-up investments to focus on climate action and politics. He said however that Lowercase Capital would continue to support the existing portfolio of investments.
Shervin Kordary Pishevar is an Iranian-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, super angel investor, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Hyperloop One and a co-founder and managing director of Sherpa Capital, a venture capital fund which has invested in companies including Airbnb, Uber, GoPuff, Cue Health, Slack, Robinhood, Munchery and Postmates.
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber is a 2019 book by New York Times journalist Mike Isaac. The book covers the events between the founding of Uber and its initial public offering in 2019.
CloudKitchens is a ghost kitchen company started by Diego Berdakin and EarthLink founder Sky Dayton in 2015. Travis Kalanick, cofounder of Uber, bought control of the company in 2018.
Uber, officially Uber Technologies Inc., has been the subject of controversies. Like other ridesharing companies, the company classifies its drivers as gig workers/independent contractors. This has become the subject of legal action in several jurisdictions. The company has disrupted taxicab businesses and allegedly caused an increase in traffic congestion. Ridesharing companies are regulated in many jurisdictions and the Uber platform is not available in several countries where the company is not able or willing to comply with local regulations. Other controversies involving Uber include various unethical practices such as aggressive lobbying and ignoring and evading local regulations. Many of these were revealed by a leak of documents showing controversial activity between 2013 and 2017 under the leadership of Travis Kalanick.
