Uber co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick on Wednesday announced his first public venture following his ousting from the San Francisco, California-based startup, having unveiled it in the form of 10100 (ten-one-hundred), an investment fund focused on “large-scale job creation” that’s meant to finance everything from e-commerce to real estate, as well as disruptive technologies in India and China. The fund will manage Mr. Kalanick’s for-profit investments but also be present in a variety of non-profit areas, with the latter involving “the future of cities” and education, two fields that 10100 is presently prioritizing.
In a somewhat unconventional move, Mr. Kalanick also disclosed his 10100 email address “for anyone who wants to get to work,” suggesting that potential partners and innovators seeking backing can contact him directly at [email protected]. The significance of the venture’s name hasn’t been elaborated upon and neither did the multi-billionaire disclose any details on the location of the new fund, having only indicated the project has been in the making for several months now. Mr. Kalanick recently made his first public appearance following his summer ouster from the ride-hailing startup when he testified at the short-lived trade secret theft trial between Waymo and Uber which ended up being settled for $245 million shortly after he was questioned on analogies involving attorneys and toothpaste, among other things.
The 41-year-old isn’t believed to have control of Uber since January when SoftBank agreed to become the company’s largest shareholder as part of the most valuable private stock purchase in the history of trading that also turned Mr. Kalanick into a real billionaire, having marked the first occasion on which he sold any of his shares in the startup founded in 2009. Many of the firm’s controversies that sent its new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on a global apology tour since he took the helm last year have been attributed to Mr. Kalanick’s management style and strategy focused on aggressive growth, though the company has now largely managed to stabilize itself and is targeting an initial public offering in 2019.