Hey! Justin here, and welcome to another 🔒 premium subscriber-only edition 🔒 of Just Go Grind. Free subscribers have complete access to 1-2 editions per month. I spend 20+ hours researching and writing about one world-class founder each week, sharing their story and best insights with you. Thank you to the 1,127 of you who joined since the last edition and all 16,693 subscribers!

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Quick Updates

• Shoutout to premium subscriber, Samantha Patil, Founder of Well Traveled. Well Traveled is a club for travel lovers — they curate the world’s best restaurants, hotels, and activities, so you don’t have to. Plus they’ve partnered with 1000s of hotels to bring you exclusive perks on every booking. I’m a paying member and a huge fan of what they’re doing. Check them out!

• My next LA Coffee Meetup is this week Tuesday!

• I opened a few more slots in my calendar for serendipity calls (15-minute calls for us to talk about anything)

• Applications for the next cohort of VITALIZE Angels are due July 20th (The only angel investing group open to non-accredited investors)

On to today’s piece!

Travis Kalanick

Travis Kalanick is most well-known for being the Co-founder of Uber, one of the most innovative and disruptive startups since its founding in 2009, and a company that was worth tens of billions of dollars by the time of his departure.

I remember the early days of using Uber and it felt like magic being able to tap on your phone and have a car show up in 5 minutes.

As of this writing, I haven’t owned a car in more than 5 years, even while living in Los Angeles, largely due to the availability of Uber.

But it’s also a company with a past that many would like to forget, riddled with scandals, PR nightmares, and a history of a toxic culture that’s been written about publicly ad nauseam.

The story of the company was even made into a book and a SHOWTIME series called Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.

Today’s deep dive focuses on Travis himself while telling the broader story of Uber until his departure, with many of the details and insights most people haven’t heard about.

Travis, in many ways, has had to pay for his sins at Uber, many people would say not enough, and yet, I don’t think Uber could’ve existed without him. Furthermore, few people could’ve accomplished what he did. This is what I find most fascinating.

So, who is Travis Kalanick, what shaped him, and how did he build a company that disrupted an entire industry, one with highly entrenched incumbents who were incentivized mightily against change?

Let’s get to it.

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