Garrett Camp: the quiet techie who dreamt up Uber

The taxi app is always associated with its former boss Travis Kalanick. But it was actually his co-founder, Garrett Camp, who came up with the idea. He’s now sitting on billions. Jane Lewis reports.

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Garrett Camp: the brains behind Uber
(Image credit: Credit: Aflo Co. Ltd. / Alamy Stock Photo)

So much is made of Travis Kalanick's association with Uber it was his "intuition and drive", notes the Financial Times, that propelled the taxi app into the valuationstratosphere that it's often forgotten who originally came up with the big idea.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.