Ten years ago, a company called UberCab made a splash in San Francisco by letting you hail a car with your smartphone. Since then, the company, now known just as Uber, has spread like wildfire through the globe.
But the road hasn’t been easy.
While its valuation continued to climb over the years, Uber has also fought rivals and regulators as it has transformed from a black-car service into a sprawling logistics company gunning for a future of self-driving cars. It has confronted threats from the taxi industry and even its own drivers; it has weathered internal strife and scandal, and the ousting of controversial cofounder and former CEO Travis Kalanick.
Now, as Uber goes public in what could be the biggest IPO in years, we look back at how the company got to where it is today as a worldwide phenomenon.
