Uber was officially co-founded in March 2009 by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. The original idea for the service, then called "UberCab," came from Garrett Camp, who was frustrated by the high cost of private drivers and the difficulty of finding a taxi in San Francisco (and famously during a snowy night in Paris). While Camp was the creative force and the primary financier in the early days, Travis Kalanick joined as a "mega-advisor" and eventually became the CEO, leading the company through its period of explosive global growth and controversy. It is also important to mention Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, who were early team members instrumental in building the initial prototype of the mobile application. Ryan Graves is also often mentioned as the company's first official employee and original CEO, but the core "founding" credit remains with the duo of Camp and Kalanick, whose collaboration changed the landscape of the modern gig economy.
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous city in California, with 808,437 residents, and the 17th most populous city in the United States as of 2022.