Garrett Camp

Garrett Camp
Camp in 2009
Born	Garrett M. Camp (1978-10-04) October 4, 1978 Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Residence	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	University of Calgary
Occupation	Founder at Expa Founder & Chairman at Uber Founder & Chairman at StumbleUpon Entrepreneur Investor/Advisor
Known for	Innovation, entrepreneurship
Website
garrettcamp.com

Garrett M. Camp (born October 4, 1978) is a Canadian entrepreneur.^[1][2] He co-founded StumbleUpon,^[3] a web-discovery platform that grew to over 25 million registered users while in graduate school in 2002 and co-founded Uber, an on-demand car service available via a mobile application in 2009.^[4] Garrett serves as Chairman for both StumbleUpon and Uber. Uber operates in over 250 cities around the world, and in December 2014 was valued at $40 billion.

In April 2013, Garrett created Expa as a new platform for his future companies, applying the lessons he learned toward a couple new projects at a time.

Early life

Garrett completed his undergrad in Electrical Engineering and Masters in Software Engineering at the University of Calgary where he researched collaborative systems, evolutionary algorithms and information retrieval.

Ventures

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is the first web-discovery platform^[5][6][7][8] and personalized recommendation engine,^[9][10] co-founded by Garrett in 2002. In 2006 StumbleUpon relocated to San Francisco upon receiving its first round of funding from Silicon Valley angels. In 2007 StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay for $75M^[11][12] and later spun-out in 2009,^{[13][14][15][16]} becoming an independent company again.^[17][18] Garrett grew the company to over one hundred employees and over 25 million registered users^[19] as its founding CEO before stepping down in mid 2012 to work on other ventures.^[20]

StumbleUpon has been listed in TIME's 50 Best Websites^[21] and most recently in TIME’s 50 Must-Have iPad Apps.^[22]

StumbleUpon Business/Revenue Model

The accessibility of the site helps it generate users because great deals of people spend time on the Internet, especially college students. Thus, using the site online or even on our smartphones using the StumbleUpon app, which was created in 2010. Camp states, “We went from zero to over 300,000 stumbles in 3 days — mostly from first-time users of StumbleUpon — which we think speaks to both the compelling use case for “Stumbling on the go”, and the user growth potential from mobile stumbling.” ^[23] Both online and mobile add tremendous amounts traffic through the site. The revenue source for the company is primarily advertisement, however, in order to initially get the site up and running the need for investors was high. Yet, upon its official start up investors consisted of angel investors. The second time, after buying back the company investors included people who had worked for Camp under EBay and previous angel investors.^[24] The site is free to users and the websites that users “stumble upon” are actually provided by advertisers, or in this case other online sites that wish to increase traffic. As of 2010 StumbleUpon has 50,000 advertisers and since revamping their advertising platform have gained 8,000 new advertisers in just months. StumbleUpon guarantees site traffic to its advertisers. Camp states, “Our business model ensures that if users are happy, our advertisers are happy, so we figure that advertiser growth will follow user growth quickly”.^[25] As part of boosting StumbleUpon’s advertising platform, in 2011 they introduced a new service for their advertisers called Paid Discovery. The service supplies advertisers with detailed analytics such as sharing behavior on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter and ratings of the sponsored sites. In addition, advertisers who obtain these extra services also receive priority ad servicing, and the ability to display ads on mobile devices. The cost for these services is 10 cents and 25 cents per page visitor, compared to 5 cents for the standard advertising option. StumbleUpon finds that using this method of advertising is much more beneficial than just banners and search ads.^[26]

Uber

Uber is an on-demand car service available via a mobile application. Garrett initially founded Uber as UberCab^[27][28] in early 2009 while he was CEO of StumbleUpon, and self funded the seed round of $250K. In mid-2009 Garrett designed and developed the first prototype with his founding team including Travis Kalanick^[29] (now CEO), Ryan Graves (now Head of Operations), Oscar Salazar (now Advisor), and Conrad Whelan (now Engineering Manager). Uber launched in San Francisco in mid 2010 with just a few cars on the road and in late 2010 raised $1.25M in angel funding.^[30] Uber’s motto is “Everyone’s Private Driver”^[31] and in mid-2012 launched UberX^[32][33] and Uber SUV^[34] to offer customers low cost options and more vehicle choices. In late 2012 Uber launched UberTAXI,^[35][36] allowing taxi drivers to use the application with taxi like fares for customers, and in early 2013 CEO Travis Kalanick announced that Uber will begin offering a ride sharing service,^[37][38][39] allowing community drivers to use the application.

Uber was listed in Forbes Top 10 Companies of 2012,^[40] and was ranked #6 in Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2013.^[41] Uber is based in San Francisco and rapidly expanding in the US and internationally, offering service in over 35 cities worldwide. Travis Kalanick reported to The Wall Street Journal in January 2013 that he expects the company to grow to eight hundred employees by the end of 2013.^[42]

Expa

Garrett formed Expa in 2013,^[43][44] integrating his ten years of start-up experience into a system for building new companies. Expa is a startup studio that works with founders to develop and launch new products. After 10 years of designing and building consumer services, Garrett and the Expa team have identified many techniques that help create successful companies. This experience has been integrated into a platform to help founders increase their startup’s chance of success. Expa plans to focus on just a few active companies at any one time, initially around mobile applications, platforms.

In March 2014, Expa raised its first $50M from investors^[45][46] to fund the design and development of new companies. Investors include Garrett Camp, Google board member Ram Shriram, Manjinder Singh, TPG founder David Bonderman, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, HP CEO Meg Whitman, Li Ka-Shing & Solina Chau, First Round Capital, Sherpa Ventures, Booking.com Chairman Kees Koolen, SVAngel, Lerer Ventures, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, Behance founder Scott Belsky, Undercurrent co-founder Josh Spear & author Tim Ferriss.

Investments

Garrett occasionally invests in and advises new start-ups. His portfolio companies include: Prism Skylabs,^[47] a video analytics platform founded by Stephen Russell; SoundTracking,^[48] a music sharing application co-founded by Steve Jang of Schematic Labs; WillCall a live music ticket-buying application; and PSDept, a personal shopping application. Garrett was also a Series-A investor in Behance,^[49] a network for creative professionals founded by Scott Belsky, prior to its acquisition by Adobe in 2012.^[50]

Awards and honors

Garrett was named to the TR35 List of Top Innovators^[51] under the age of 35 at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT in 2007.^[52] In 2008 Garrett was named by Bloomberg Businessweek as one of Tech’s Best Young Entrepreneurs.^[53] Most recently Garrett was honored at the 2013 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards for his accomplishments at both StumbleUpon and Uber.^[54]

Speaking engagements and interviews

Garrett has been a speaker at conferences such as Wireless Influencers and SXSW, and was a judge and panel member at DEMO Mobile 2013 in San Francisco. Garrett participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, the PARC Forum Going Beyond Web 2.0 Series, and the Young Leaders of Silicon Valley hosted by VLAB, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum.

Garrett has been interviewed by notable trade magazines, newspapers and publications including Forbes, the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, BBC News, Inc. Magazine, PRWeek, and AllThingsD. Most recently Garrett was featured on Monocle’s Entrepreneurs live radio show.

Wealth

As of 2015, he is the 283rd richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of US$5.3 billion according to Forbes.^[55]

Quotes

"Stay self-funded as long as possible"

"It all starts with a great idea and teamwork"

"You have to be ready for hard work and frugal spending to get the idea off the ground" ^[56]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Garrett Camp.

• Official website