A brief history of Uber's insanely fast transformation from an idea to a global powerhouse

Five years ago, a company called UberCab made a splash in San Francisco by letting you hail a car with your smartphone. Since then, the company, now known as Uber, has spread like wildfire through the globe. Uber currently operates in 58 countries and is valued at over $50 billion.

But the road hasn't been easy.

Uber has fought rivals and regulators as it has transformed from a black-car service into a sprawling logistics company gunning for a future of self-driving cars. It has confronted threats from the taxi industry and even its own drivers.

But its valuation has continued to climb, and it has attracted more and more investors.

As Uber bolsters its war chest for a huge push into China, we look back at how the company got to where it is today. See the insane and successful journey of Uber and its CEO, Travis Kalanick, as it has moved from an idea to a worldwide phenomenon. 

June 1998: Scour, a peer-to-peer search-engine startup that Kalanick had dropped out of UCLA to join, snags its first investment from former Disney president Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle of Yucaipa companies.

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October 2000: Scour files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after being sued by several entertainment companies for around $250 billion.

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April 2007: Kalanick sells RedSwoosh, a company he'd founded in 2001, to Akamai for $23 million and becomes a millionaire. He says he started RedSwoosh as a “revenge business” to turn the 33 litigants who sued Scour into customers.

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