Ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has a new gig
Forms venture fund that will help redevelop distressed real estate
SAN FRANCISCO – Former Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick accelerated his return to the business landscape Tuesday with a tweet announcing he would become the chief executive of a real estate-focused company.
Kalanick’s newly formed venture fund, 10100 (pronounced “ten-one-hundred”), has invested $150 million in City Storage Systems, a controlling interest that will find Uber’s controversial former boss take over as CEO.
City Storage Systems is a holding company focused on redevelopment of distressed real estate assets such as parking lots as well as retail and industrial spaces.
“There are over $10 trillion of these real estate assets that will need to be repurposed for the digital era,” Kalanick tweeted.
Should the era of self-driving cars take hold — a future championed by Uber and Kalanick — city centers will be radically redesigned, urban planning experts note.
Autonomous ride-hailing fleets will virtually eliminate the need for parking lots and other facilities related to car ownership.
Kalanick added that he was particularly interested in the company’s focus on repurposing real estate for food and retail opportunities.
In announcing 10100 this month, Kalanick said the investment fund — no doubt seeded by the $1.4 billion in his recently sold Uber shares — was for his “passions, ideas, investments and big bets.”
Kalanick’s tweet drew a quick pat on the back from none other than Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who said “the serial entrepreneur goes serial fast” and noted that one of CSS’ ventures overlapped with Ube- rEATS.
Kalanick tweeted back: “Thx dara! Excited to be partners :)”
That’s an interesting twist. Kalanick’s return to the spotlight is in fact remarkably swift given the range of Uber missteps under his watch that led to his forced resignation and continue to roil Khosrowshahi’s time at the helm, including a data breach that was swept under the carpet with a payoff to the hackers.
Kalanick was a voluble and even aggressive presence on the tech scene for many years but fell from grace after Uber was blasted last year for everything from harboring a toxic environment for female employees to business tactics that skirted the law.
He largely disappeared from view after investors pushed for his dismissal last June, not long after a freak boating accident killed his mother and injured his father. He resurfaced for the first time last month, when he was a witness in the contentious trade secrets battle between Uber and Google-owned Waymo.
The suit settled after a week, with Waymo granted $245 million in Uber stock and without Uber accepting any guilt.
This week, Uber is again in the spotlight after one of its self-driving cars killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., on Sunday. The accident is still under investigation, but the safety driver of the Uber car was revealed to have a criminal record.
Uber was fined $8.9 million last year by Colorado regulators that found that dozens of Uber’s drivers in the state had felony convictions.