Who is Garrett Camp, Uber Founder and Crypto Inventor?

Garrett Camp (born 1978) is a Canadian national who is famous for his ground-breaking technology ventures. His most popular business initiatives include Uber and StumbleUpon, the two technology businesses he co-founded. He currently serves as chairman of both Uber and StumbleUpon.

Other lesser known initiatives of Camp include Expa and Mix. He has also launched a new initiative in the cryptocurrency space recently, called Eco, which attempts to address the pain points of the existing virtual currency systems like bitcoin and Ethereum. (For more, see Bitcoin Innovations And Obstacles.)

Here’s a look at Camp's career path.

Garrett Camp completed his Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary between 1996 and 2001, which was followed by Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Software Engineering from the same institution between 2001 and 2005.

While at university, Camp launched StumbleUpon in November 2001. StumbleUpon is an online content discovery portal that works like a web search engine, but it is personalized to match the interests of the user by using recommendations from connected peers and social networks. StumbleUpon moved to the San Francisco area in 2006, after it successfully secured funding from investors.

Ebay Inc (EBAY) acquired StumbleUpon in 2007 for $75 million, and the company again became independent after a successful spin-off in 2009. As the CEO of the company, Garrett led the successful run with a five-fold increase in StumbleUpon user base that crossed 25 million users milestone by 2012.

Around mid-2012, Camp stepped down as the CEO to become chairman to focus on other ventures. Camp again bought back the majority stake in the company in August 2015 when StumbleUpon ran into financial debt. The portal continues to remain operational, and is now part of the Expa family.

During early 2009, Camp, along with Travis Kalanick, co-founded the transport networking company called UberCab, which is now popularly known as Uber across the globe.

Travis Kalanick went on to become the CEO later. The service was launched in San Francisco area in mid-2010, and gradually expanded across other U.S. cities and other international locations.

It added different variants of service – namely, UberX, Uber SUV, and UberTAXI - during 2012. Focused on reducing the cost of cab rides, Camp launched a ride-sharing option in early 2013. Camp continues to serve as the chairman of Uber, which is known for being among the leaders that revolutionized the cab-hailing service across the globe. (For more, see The Story of Uber.)

In May 2013, Camp founded Expa. Expa serves as a global network of entrepreneurs who help peer-supported creation of businesses and companies. Since inception, Expa has successfully launched more than a dozen ventures, and raised funding worth $150 million.

In October 2015, Camp made a fresh attempt at content discovery, somewhat similar on the lines of StumbleUpon. He launched Mix.com, a portal “to discover the most compelling content” on the web for the users.

Clubbing the user’s preferences along with the recommendations from friends and subject matter experts, the online content is served to the user’s mobile or computer. Mix was launched under the Expa initiative, and continues to work in parallel to StumbleUpon.

Camp’s most recent and most innovative venture is Eco, a cryptocurrency project designed and conceptualized by him. Another Expa initiative, Eco is designed to fix the problems that exist with presently popular cryptocurrency networks - like regulatory concerns due to anonymous nature of cryptocurrency participants, issues of high power consumption linked to mining activities, and concerns around (un)fair sharing of block reward for miners. (For more, see How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?)

If Eco project emerges as conceptualized, it may completely transform the world of cryptocurrencies. It has the potential to work as the much needed connection that will link the fully regulated and fully unregulated monetary systems. (For more, see Uber Co-Founder Designs New Cryptocurrency.)

Garrett Camp is ranked No. 422 on Forbes magazine's list of global billionaires for 2018, and at No. 8 in Canada. (See also: The 5 Richest People In the World.)