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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - FEBRUARY 05: Winner Travis Kalanick of Uber collects the award for Best Overall Startup of 2014 at the TechCrunch 8th Annual Crunchies Awards at the Davies Symphony Hall on February 5, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Fast forward a few years, and Uber is now one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley.
As of today, Uber operates in 311 cities in 58 countries, and it's a global company that could be worth as much as $50 billion.
But that wasn't always the case. Uber was the third in a series of startups Kalanick had helped get off the ground and the first that has been truly successful.
This is the story of how Travis Kalanick built Uber's empire and took the world by storm in five years.