Last night we attended the 8th annual Crunchies, an awards show in San Francisco sponsored by tech blogs TechCrunch and VentureBeat.

It's kind of like the Oscars for tech companies — everybody gets dressed up and tries to get close to local tech celebrities, while startups compete for awards like "Fastest-Rising Startup" and "VC Of The Year."

Like most awards shows, the Crunchies is about seeing and being seen as much as the awards themselves.

The Crunchies was at Davies symphony hall in downtown San Francisco. It's known for amazing acoustics.

There were plenty of protestors outside. These people were dressed up like pigs to make a point about wealth in Silicon Valley.

There were also protestors picketing the event. Most of them were angry about Uber not providing health insurance to its drivers.

Thousands of techies gathered in San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday night for the eighth annual Crunchies Awards, known as the Oscars of Silicon Valley.

Actor TJ Miller served as host, shepherding the venture capitalists, CEOs, and tech reporters through the evening. But many people weren't impressed by his performance and found his attempt at humor insulting.

Miller's show "Silicon Valley" on HBO satirizes everything the audience represents. The series revolves around six young men who launch a company and live together in a startup incubator-house run by a Peter Thiel-inspired entrepreneur, played by Miller.

The ceremony started out strong, with Miller teasing techies about the way they dress and their absurd amounts of wealth, and reading off alternative slogans for the startups nominated for awards. But the night quickly unraveled when Miller made one of many jokes at Uber's expense.

"And the Crunchie for not constantly stepping in s--- goes to Travis Kalanick," Miller said. "So does the Crunchie for constantly stepping in s---."

A woman in the audience, sitting next to divisive billionaire Kalanick and holding a sleeping dog in her lap, heckled Miller with a simple "boooo." Miller responded immediately — his tone quickly escalating.

"Hey, Asians aren't supposed to be this entitled in the United States," Miller said, shortly before calling her a b----.

Here's Kalanick and the woman before the show. Unbeknownst to Miller, she is Gabi Holzwarth, Kalanick's girlfriend.

Don't bring a dog to the #Crunchies, even if you are @travisk's GF + other lessons learned http://t.co/xR63H2fE4Ipic.twitter.com/yO60Im7JUa

— Marlize van Romburgh (@SFBiz_Marlize) February 6, 2015

For 10 painful minutes, he and Holzwarth batted back and forth. He asked why she was here and lambasted her company, delivery startup Shyp. "It's like FedEx but it's spelled wrong," Miller said.

Then the actor annihilated her for daring to bring a small dog to the Crunchies.

"Miss, do you have your dog here? Is that real?" he asked in disbelief, prompting her to hold it up for the audience to see. "Two questions. How did you get that dog in here? Second question: Did you Shyp it?"

Eventually Miller left the stage and the presentation continued. But during every sequential appearance on stage, Miller made a show of apologizing to Holzwarth and Kalanick, whose net worth he says he Google-searched backstage.

The audience didn't seem to enjoy Miller's crude jokes. Katie Jacobs Stanton, who attended The Crunchies on behalf of Twitter, says she'll never go again. "I was so uncomfortable I wanted to leave," Stanton wrote on Medium. She wasn't just appalled by Miller. She says other Crunchie presenters talked about enjoying women's "hoohas."

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington also commented about Miller's trainwreck performance when he took the stage. He refused to read from the award ceremony's script stating, "It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Every time someone comes on stage, it’s like ‘oo, ow.'... One more ‘bitch’ and something’s going to happen.”

At the end of the night, Shyp's official Twitter account sent this message to Miller.

Hey @nottjmiller, we accept your apology :) #Crunchies#thecrunchiespic.twitter.com/qCyMtFDIE4

— Shyp (@shyp) February 6, 2015

You can watch the full ceremony here. To see the initial ruffle between Miller and Holzwarth, skip ahead to one hour and 37 minutes.

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley had its own version of the Oscars last night — here's what it was like

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Last week, Silicon Valley was abuzz over derogatory comments made by a comedian at tech industry event.

During the eighth annual Crunchies Awards last Thursday, actor/comedian TJ Miller kicked off the event by poking fun at some of the attendees and their startups. But he may have crossed the line when he called one audience member, who happened to be the girlfriend of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, a “b---h.”

On Monday, that woman — Gabi Holzwarth, a prominent violinist who also works for the “ship anything” startup Shyp — responded to the night’s events in a Medium post, titled, “Did you just call me a b---h?”

In the post, Holzwarth explains why she engaged in a back-and-forth with Miller after he initially called her a “bitch,” mentioning how she was physically assaulted and called “a little bitch” as a young teen: 

And that horrible transformative experience that I endured as a young girl,followed by a mulititude of other horrible experiences, is the only reason I spoke up to TJ when he called me a bitch. I responded to TJ on behalf of the young woman I was 12 years ago, and on behalf of all the other young women who are undergoing a rough time.

People continue to ask me if I am okay after this whole Crunchies fiasco — and I can honestly say “Yes, I am.” I can continue on with my life and have a great weekend with my friends and feel even stronger than before, rather than hurt.

For context, feel free to watch what actually happened in the video below: Miller first mentions Kalanick roughly six and a half minutes into his keynote, and after Holzwarth audibly boos, Miller engages her for a solid five minutes, making fun of her dog, and briefly, her Asian heritage. At around 11:11, Miller asks Holzwarth if Shyp involves pressing a physical or digital button to use the service, then asking the audience as an aside, “Is this b---h from Palo Alto?”

We reached out to her company and asked for comment and will update when we hear back.

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Last week Silicon Valley had yet another incident in which a tech-industry event was insulting to women — and one woman in particular.

It turns out the woman involved, prominent violinistGabi Holzwarth, has an amazing story of overcoming a decade-long battle with an eating disorder that almost killed her. She says her romance with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick helped save her life.

She has now been on the path to recovery for about a year, shortly after she and Kalanick started dating, and has gone three months without a relapse.

"Travis, he's been so helpful in my recovery. He's been such a rock. That's a side that no one really sees about him," she told Business Insider.

To recap: During the eighth annual Crunchies Awards last Thursday, actor/comedian TJ Miller, known for his role on HBO's satire TV show "Silicon Valley," was poking fun at Valley startups when he made a joke about Kalanick, then one about venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar.

The jokes slammed Holzwarth's boyfriend and one of her dear friends. (She had met Kalanick at a party hosted by Pishevar, who had hired her to play, she told us.) Holzwarth, who had been laughing and enjoying the show, shouted a good-natured "boo" at him. Miller heard the boo and went into heckler-management mode, at one point calling her the derogatory "b-word" (yes, the one that rhymes with "hitch").

"Did you just call me a b----?" an incredulous Holzwarth called out.

Miller refused to let it drop. After that uncomfortable moment, he kept "staring at me," she said. He couldn't help but notice she had her dog on her lap ("my therapy dog" as described by Holzwarth, telling us her dog helps keep her calm so she won't relapse). The dog set Miller off on a whole new round of uncomfortable teasing. For her part, Holzwarth kept answering his questions, including a whole spiel about Shyp, the company she joined less than three weeks ago as a product intern.  She was attending the Crunchies with her Shyp coworkers and Kalanick.

Miller's use of the b-word startled Holzwarth. That scene, and a few other derogatory incidents toward women at the show, set the Valley abuzz. Tweets tweeted. Medium posts posted. Twitter's Katie Jacobs Stanton wrote,"I was so uncomfortable I wanted to leave," and that she was "saddened and disappointed to see such a public lack of respect for women." Crunchies host TechCrunch apologized.

The one person who was not mortified was Holzwarth herself.

She was mad.

It turns out, Holzwarth had suffered through serious violence as a child, including one incident at age 13 in which she was dragged by her hair and called that word, she wrote on Medium.

"I struggled with eating disorders that almost killed me and took away 10 years of my life," she told Business Insider. She's better but still suffering the repercussions, she says. She has osteoporosis and is on quite a bit of medication, she said in a TedX Talk she gave in November.

Her eating disorder was the result of her being too ashamed to talk about her trauma, she says.

Over a year ago, Holzwarth was so out of control, she says, that she had no real friends and had to quit her job. "An eating disorder is an addiction," she says. "I go to AA meetings now." 

A Silicon Valley native, she started playing her violin in the streets of Palo Alto for tips, because she knew she wanted to be healthy "and didn't know what else to do." 

She quickly learned the spots that got the most traffic and earned the most cash. Word got out about her. People started hiring her to play at parties and other events. She made friends with the titans of Silicon Valley, and she slowly started telling them about her illness, her story.

When she started dating Kalanick she told him she suffered from eating disorders, but she hadn't been completely honest that it was bulimia and that she was relapsing.

About three months ago, after another relapse, she was playing a gig and was so weak she could barely finish. She knew she had to get help.

"I told him absolutely everything and that I was 30 pounds underweight," she said. "Then I wrote a Facebook post, it got hundreds of likes, it said 'I’m going to have to stop playing gigs for a while, I have to recover.' I was crying when I wrote it, feeling so relieved to have this out in the open."

Kalanick told her, "We're going to do this together," she remembers, and he's been good to his word. She's gained that 30 pounts back and is now a healthy weight. "He checks on me every day. He rushes home — he can be in the middle of ridiculous crazy at the office — and he comes home if I need help."

She started writing about her addiction and recovery. Arianna Huffington saw one of her posts and asked her to write for The Huffington Post.

"You can't recover alone from an addiction," she says. "Now, whenever I have an opportunity, even when someone on stage call me a b---- or whatever, I think if I can help one person, that's why I speak up."

So when Miller called her that word in public, he wasn't just talking back to a heckler. He was insulting someone who will no longer tolerate being insulted.

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Lowercase Capital partner Chris Sacca says that when he looks at his portfolio — which includes Uber, Kickstarter, and Medium — he doesn't "have any founders or CEOs who I would consider to be normal people in any way. They're all weird."

In an episode of the popular podcast Startup, which is hosted by Gimlet Media cofounder Alex Blumberg, Sacca explains the type of person he likes to invest in.

Sacca, who has invested in Gimlet, tells Blumberg that he backed him because he's "weird" enough. Specifically, he was obsessive enough about a single idea that he left a comfortable job and put everything on the line to pursue it.

Why is it good to be weird?

Sacca uses an example he's previously written about concerning Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who he's known and been invested in for several years, to illustrate the type of person he looks for:

A few years ago, Uber was barely started, Travis was at my house up in the mountains over the holidays hanging out with me and my family, and he's pal-ing around with my dad. And my dad says, "Hey, let's play a game of Wii Tennis (Nintendo Wii)." My dad had a Wii at home and considered himself a pretty good tennis player. He's like mildly athletic and has played in a few local tennis tournaments. So Travis is like, "Alright."

Travis is barely awake yet. And they sit there and they start playing this Wii Tennis game and my dad is getting abused. He's losing handily to Travis... And Travis is like, in full "Princess Bride" style, he says... "I'm playing with my opposite hand." And so he switches the controller to his other hand.

They start the match again, and my dad doesn't score a single point. He is absolutely swinging away and he gets no points in, and half of Travis' serves are just aces. My dad is completely dejected. So this grin comes over Travis' face, and... he starts thumbing over on the controller to the settings page on the Wii and to where they have the global high score. And he says, "I'm actually tied for second in the global rankings in Wii Tennis." He was the second best player in the world in Wii Tennis.

I don't know when the day was when Travis decided he wanted to be one of the best Wii Tennis players in the world while founding what's gone on to become the biggest transportation company in history. But it was in that moment that I saw his true obsession with obtaining a goal. Once he sets something out as a goal for himself, he will absolutely accomplish it — at probably any cost.

He also mentions Kalanick's habit of going to the cheapest hotels or even hostels he can find when he's on the road, despite being a billionaire. It's a habit he's kept since his cash-strapped startup days. "He's a man on a mission," Sacca says, citing this quirk as another example of Kalanick's singular focus on Uber.

It's that unusual love of competition that some can find so abrasive that has allowed Kalanick to grow Uber into a company valued at $40 billion and growing, according to Sacca. After all, isn't it "weird" to feel the need to master a video game and then embarrass your host by playing it as if your life depended on victory?

"There's something very different" about all of Sacca's favorite entrepreneurs that results in unique worldviews. "All of them have seen a problem that needed solving that most people probably didn't notice or took for granted," he says. "And all of them had the confidence to take the harder path, to eschew all the easy stuff they could have had otherwise, and take the hard way to fixing it."

You can listen to the full Startup podcast episode below, via Gimlet:

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The long-suffering plight of Uber drivers: not making enough money, facing allegations of homophobia, the fear of slipping below a 4.6-star rating and being cast aside by the multibillion-pound company. 

And then there are the passengers. There are drunken ones who ask their driver to take them to see a prostitute. Or passengers who think it's OK to pretend to be disabled, give the wrong address, and try to force their driver to take them and their giant rat to the beach. That's what happened to one San Diego-based UberX driver named Richard.

I spoke to Richard about his experiences driving for the car-hailing company. He didn't want me to publish his surname but was happy to talk about his sentiments working for Uber. Richard said that since starting in July, he has completed more than 1,500 trips in his Hyundai Elantra and earns about $40,000 a year. That's close to the average for a driver for the company who works about 35 to 50 hours each week. He said he had a 4.8 rating.

Richard told me that 99% of his passengers were "friendly, nice people" but that some were nevertheless deserving of the dreaded one-star rating. They are the customers who "leave trash, slam doors," Richard said. "The late 2 a.m. crowd urinating on your seats and throwing up in cars. Mean people and bad perfume." 

"The late 2 a.m. crowd urinating on your seats and throwing up in cars. Mean people and bad perfume." 

Richard added that he rarely gives bad ratings but that sometimes it is unavoidable. What he describes as his worst experience certainly sounds as if one star was fair. 

Here's what Richard said happened on the worst Uber drive of his life:

"I was called to an Uber Assist (a car request by someone who is disabled) and went to an address on the app. I called the passengers and sat there waiting. After about 10 minutes found out they were actually at a different address 15 minutes away.

"As I believed he was a disabled person and his phone was dying I told him I was on my way. When I arrived 15 minutes later there was no disabled person but two guys that were drunk. One of them had a giant rat cage (and rat). He tried to put it into my car and said he wants 'to go to Pacific Beach.' Luckily the cage didn't fit and I explained that he'd have to put the rat in a box. It was a very big rat.

I explained that he'd have to put the rat in a box. It was a very big rat.

"(When we set off) He was very combative with me, arguing with me over the names of streets. I actually felt a couple of times that he smelled like alcohol — and we had to stop at a liquor store. When we got to his destination he left a bottle of booze in my car and slammed the door. That's why he got one star."

Despite Richard's occasional rat/alcohol-based dramas, he mentioned he thought the company, at least as a model, was "amazing," and he praised CEO Travis Kalanick for modernising taxi services. Richard enjoys the "free enterprise" and said it created a new wave of transportation that America (and elsewhere) had needed since the 1970s. 

He did tell me about a couple of other gripes, though — namely the reduction in fares the drivers take home and the fact so few passengers tip. "In September 2014 Uber lowered my commission by 20%, and in January 2015 commissions were lowered by another 20%," he said. "Uber says 'more rides, more fares,' but they don't take into the fact that with more journeys there's more wear and tear on vehicles."

Still, overall Richard said he was optimistic for the future. 

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and nearly 30 other Uber employees have been charged on suspicion of operating illegal taxi services in South Korea, the country's Yonhap News Agency reports.

Korean police announced the move on Tuesday, and say that if Uber continues doing business in the same way, officials will seek an arrest warrant against Kalanick. 

Korean authorities yesterday charged Kalanick, as well as the head of Uber Korea, which Yonhap names only by his last name, Kang, and 27 others associated with the car booking app. They are suspected of connecting passengers with drivers through the Uber app without a license, according to Korean media. Employees and drivers are believed to be among those charged. 

Uber Korea works in the same way as it does in other countries: It takes 20% of passenger fares as commission, and drivers earn the remaining 80%. Police say the money earned, without complying with the country's transport laws, is illegal — and add that the app poses a risk to the public. They also say that cars are uninsured and believe mobile phone numbers and credit card details could be stolen.

A police officer in Korea said in a statement to Yonhap: "We plan to summon Kalanick soon and check the transaction details of overseas bank accounts to conduct further investigation into those involved in the case. If Kalanick continues to disobey the summons, we plan to seek an arrest warrant against him." 

Here's Uber's coverage in Korea. It's in the capital, Seoul, and some surrounding areas: 

It's not the first time Kalanick has been charged by Korean police. In December 2014 he was indicted for violating the country's public transport law, according to Reuters. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said the firm operates without the appropriate licenses. 

Reuters explains that in Korea, some Uber drivers are registered taxi drivers, while others are not. It looks like it's the drivers not registered who cause problems. The government believes that there's a lack of regulation. Seoul city officials have even passed legislation that means Uber drivers can be fined if they're not registered. 

Uber told us in an email: "Uber has fully cooperated with the police during the course of their investigation and we will continue to do so as the matter is referred to the prosecution for review. Uber does not believe the employees in Korea have engaged in any misconduct or illegal behaviour. We believe the prosecutors will come to a similar conclusion."

No arrests have been made right now, but if the charges listed were brought to court and a conviction was made, Reuters said in December that the penalty for the law in question is a two-year prison sentence and a fine of 20 million won (about £12,000). 

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Famed investor Chris Sacca and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick used to be close friends who would hot tub together at Sacca's house.

Sacca's firm, Lowercase Capital, invested $300,000 in Uber's angel round and Sacca helped the fledgling company buy the name "Uber" from Universal Music Group. Lowercase Capital currently owns 4% of the $41 billion company. But now Sacca and Kalanick "barely speak."

"What’s frustrating is I honestly don’t know what’s wrong,"Sacca told Forbes reporter Alex Konrad in an interesting new profile. 

Although Kalanick declined to comment for the Forbes' piece, sources told Konrad that Kalanick became upset when Sacca tried to buy more secondary Uber shares from initial investors. He had done the same thing before Twitter's IPO, leading him to own more of the company than any other outside investor. 

Here's an explanation for the rift, via Forbes:

Through a spokesperson, Kalanick declined to comment, but conversations with those with knowledge of the pair and the startup’s early days indicate that the Uber CEO got upset with Sacca for trying to repeat his Twitter move of buying up secondary shares in Uber from other initial investors. "Travis was 110% about the company, and with Chris it became a ‘What about Chris?’ issue,” says one of these sources. Kalanick told Sacca to stop coming to board meetings, which Sacca monitored as an advisor. They barely speak today.

“What’s frustrating is I honestly don’t know what’s wrong,” Sacca says. “I’ve apologized multiple times.” When pushed, he concedes that his efforts to buy shares might have created a rift. Kalanick kept telling him it was impractical to do, Sacca says, yet Sacca kept coming up with workarounds. “I guess I wasn’t hearing what he was really saying, which was ‘Don’t f–king do it.’ ”

Sacca seems to miss the friendship. He recently sang Kalanick's praises in a blog post about why he wouldn't want to compete with him (Sacca wrote his post after Bloomberg reported that Google was plotting an Uber competitor). 

"I [had seen] years and years of how scrappy, ingenious, and resourceful Travis can be when building his business," Sacca wrote. "It was a mutual admiration of these characteristics in charting our careers that led to us being friends in the first place."

Kalanick isn't the only one who can apparently hold a grudge, though.

"I get close to people easily," Sacca told Konrad. "But do something to me, I will light that bridge on fire."

Read the rest of the Forbes' profile here. 

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As Uber campaigns for control of the global ride-hailing market, a unique skirmish is playing out in San Antonio.

On Tuesday, Uber announced on its blog that it would mark its first anniversary in San Antonio by suspending operations there after April 1.

"City officials have created a regulatory climate that makes it impossible for us to meet the high standard of service that riders from over 170 cities across the U.S. have come to expect," Uber's blog post stated. "By adopting these rules, San Antonio officials have eliminated thousands of jobs and a safe transportation alternative from their city."

That Uber is facing regulatory scrutiny from local officials is nothing new. But the way it's responding in this case is notable.

Typically, Uber deals with unfriendly regulations by ignoring them and brashly continuing to operate. In this case it's taking the opposite tactic.

Essentially, Uber is abandoning San Antonio in protest until the city adopts regulations that it finds more palatable. And the company is betting that with the right amount of politicking plus some good ol' fear of missing out, it can get the people of San Antonio to succeed in changing local policies where its own representatives failed.

To state the obvious, the rules San Antonio's City Council passed to regulate so-called transportation network companies are much stricter than Uber would like. Under San Antonio's ordinance, Uber drivers must supplement Uber's background check by submitting their fingerprints and comply with random drug testing; Uber has estimated that complying with all of the city's regulations would cost drivers about $300 apiece.

The company must also meet stringent insurance requirements and pay a nonrefundable annual fee of up to $25,000 to the city for its drivers to operate. Back in December, a few days before San Antonio's city council voted on the proposed rules, Uber threatened that adopting the regulations would "likely result in Uber closing their operations" in the area. Now it's making good on that.

Uber has tried a strategy along these lines in three other U.S. cities: Boise, Idaho; Las Vegas; and Portland, Oregon. The situation in Boise is perhaps most comparable—in late February, Uber general manager Bryce Bennett announced the company would suspend operations in Boise as the city "is headed down a long path that would lead to unworkable and outdated regulations."

Boise's proposed regulations were "unworkable and onerous" he wrote on Uber's blog. "To be clear," he added, "we are not opposed to regulations, nor are we closing the door on future conversations."

So if Uber isn't closing the door but is also refusing to operate under existing regulations, what is it doing? Turning the conversation over to the voters.

At the bottom of its Boise and San Antonio blog posts, Uber encourages its supporters to sign petitions and turn out for city elections to vote. The Boise petition has garnered 2,178 signatures; the San Antonio one more than 13,000.

As BuzzFeed's Johana Bhuiyan observed in February, Uber's millions of riders in the U.S. have "given it some of its best leverage." For evidence, she cites Uber's stunning coup in Illinois, where the company rallied 90,000 customers to petition the governor to veto ride-hailing rules from the Illinois House and Senate (he did) and then publicly released contact information for legislators who might attempt to override that veto.

This past January, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation that Uber dubbed "the most progressive" in the U.S. "Uber didn't just win," Bhuiyan writes, "it ran the field."

When Uber was first getting started, it routinely fought cease-and-desists to get off the ground. But now that Uber is everywhere, it has much more clout. So when regulators try to get in the way, Uber plays its trump card—halting service and letting thousands of irate locals do the rest.

In San Antonio, we probably won't know the outcome of that strategy until the city's elections come around in May. If Uber's march across the rest of the U.S. is any example, though, chances are it will win.

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Bill Maris, a managing partner and the president of Google's investment fund Google Ventures, has backed a number of companies, ranging from science and oncology startups like Flatiron Health to more consumer-facing services like Nest and Uber.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he seems to think Uber CEO Travis Kalanick gets a bad rep in the press. 

"How we judge startups should be how they respond to challenges," Maris said. "It's impossible not to have issues in growth." 

Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday, Maris also told his favorite story about Travis Kalanick. 

When Google Ventures was thinking about investing in Uber's first round of funding, Maris went to go meet with Kalanick to kick the tires and see if it would be a good fit for Google Ventures to invest in his company. 

"I said, we really think we can help and want to be part of this," Maris recalled onstage. "We asked, what does it take to take it off the table? We don’t want to get into an auction."

Kalanick told Maris and his colleagues: Here’s the price we're looking for. Here’s what I want this round to look like.

"We shook on it. Travis was good for his word and that's what we look for in entrepreneurs," Maris said. "He did not come back to the table and say, 'we have an offer for 15% more, 20% more,' and he absolutely could have. It really speaks to the way he runs the company."

Google Ventures invested in Uber's $258 million Series C round of funding in August 2013 and its $1.2 billion Series D round of funding in June 2014.

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In 2006, entrepreneur Kevin Halpern was secretly working on an idea for a mobile taxi-hailing service called Celluride. While he did so, he shared office space in San Francisco with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. 

Halpern is now suing Kalanick, co-founder Garret Camp, and several early investors, accusing them of stealing his idea to form the basis of Uber, Buzzfeed reports. Uber denies the claims made in the lawsuit.

Halpern claims that only a few people were aware of his plans for Celluride, and one of them was Kalanick. At the time, Halpern says that both he and Kalanick were renting office space from mutual friend and Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams. 

“Kalanick was brilliant at gaining my trust,” Halpern said in a video statement.“I thought I could form a business relationship with Kalanick as an advisor or team member and shared Celluride’s presentation, architecture, brochure, and cell phone demo."

"Most importantly we discussed the massive business opportunity of the private transportation market, which he knew nothing about at the time,” he added. 

Halpern claims that Kalanick “created an exact replica of Celluride and called it Uber,” and is suing Kalanick, Camp, and two early investors Bill Trenchard and Bill Gurley for misappropriation of trade secrets, conversion – illegally using someone else's idea – and breach of contract.

Halpern is asking for “compensatory damages," claiming in the lawsuit that his injuries are in excess of $1 billion. 

Uber denies that such a relationship existed.

“These claims are completely baseless. We will vigorously defend against them,” Uber spokeswoman Kristin Carvell said in a statement.

Business Insider reached out to Uber, but the company has not responded. 

Halpern also claims First Round Capital's Bill Trenchard played a big part in stealing his idea. Halpern apparently reached out to Trenchard for advice on how to launch Celluride. Shortly afterwards, Trenchard joined First Round, which was one of Uber's early investors, and Halpern claims that Trenchard took Halpern's plans to First Round and Uber's founders. 

Court documents do include several emails between the two men. 

The lawsuit doesn't contain much evidence that Halpern and Kalanick actually discussed Celluride. But Halpern's lawyer Chris Dolan told Buzzfeed that there were witnesses to the conversations, and that more documents and evidence will be revealed at a later date. Dolan announced the lawsuit at a taped press conference.

When asked why he had waited so long to file the suit, Halpern said that he wasn't aware how large a role Kalanick played in Uber, and how big the company itself was going to be, until the company took off. 

Halpern's company Celluride does not appear to be in operation, Fortune reports. He previously lost a similar case against another startup, OfferPal Media – now called Tapjoy. He sued the company's founder Anu Shukla, claiming that Shukla had cut him out of the company shortly before it was founded. Halpern says he had a role in helping to create OfferPal. 

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Uber launched in San Francisco five years ago this month.

At the time, it was a small startup called UberCab. Today, Uber is a global company that could be worth as much as $50 billion.

At the helm of the company is Travis Kalanick, Uber's controversial CEO and cofounder. Kalanick can credit his successes to his relentlessness, his competitive spirit, and his unwillingness to negotiate.

Some of his more memorable quotes illustrate Kalanick's thinking, which have ultimately led him to build one of the most valuable privately held tech companies in the world.

On digging in your heels: "Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation."

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On politics: "My politics are: I'm a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I'm pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It's good for everybody, it's not red or blue."

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On his controversial reputation: "Look, I'm a passionate entrepreneur. I'm like fire and brimstone sometimes. And so there are times when I'll go—I'll get too into the weeds and too into the debate, because I'm so passionate about it."

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Five years ago today, a startup called UberCab launched in San Francisco.

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.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick grew up in Northridge, California, a suburb outside Los Angeles. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a spy.

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However, Kalanick would eventually follow in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his mom, a retail advertiser. He went door-to-door, selling knives for Cutco as a youngster. He started his first business at age 18, an SAT-prep course called New Way Academy.

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He went to UCLA to study computer engineering. He'd drop out in 1998 but with good reason.

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There's a lot of Google blood at Uber.

At least that's one of the first things that former Google Express founder Tom Fallows noticed when he joined as the startup's director of global expansion products last November. 

"One out of three people is a former Google colleague," Fallows said on stage at a recent StrictlyVC event. 

That stat is likely an exaggeration (for an imperfect fact-check, there's roughly 3,000 employees at Uber according to a recent company announcement compared to 184 people who came from Google, according to LinkedIn's search feature), but even more interesting than the crossover between the two companies is what Fallows highlighted as the biggest difference.  

Via Fallows:

"In my first couple of weeks, we’d be talking about a new feature and inevitably in that conversation, the question would arise: 'How long would this take to get out?' And someone would say, 'I think it’ll be two to three . . .' And in my head, I’d just default, think weeks. And they’d finish, '…days.' And I think, what?"

Google, despite its many startup sensibilities, is a huge company with upwards of 50,000 people. It can't be as nimble as it used to be. With Google Express, Fallows dealt with "multi-week review cycles," meaning that product iterations just couldn't launch in a few days, like they can at Uber. The car-on-demand startup is just celebrating its fifth birthday, while Google's search engine has been spitting out results for about 17 years. 

"You get the feeling that nearly everything trickles up to Larry Page at Google," Fallows interviewer said. 

At Uber, however, Travis Kalanick doesn't have to sign off on product launches. Every product manager launches their project when they think they're ready and accepts all the consequences themselves. 

"It’s a very intentional, constructive environment, and it’s a bet, and you get mostly great outcomes in terms of speed," Fallows says. "And sometimes you stumble because, well, safety checks are put in place for good reasons at good companies."

Read the rest of the StrictlyVC interview with Fallows here. 

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Uber just turned five, and it's grown from four employees to more than 3,000, said Ryan Graves, head of Uber's global operations.

The company trotted out some of its earliest employees for a scripted look back at its first five years as a company. 

Before the event started, slides showed some of the companies milestones, including the first cease and desist letter Graves received in 2010, Uber delivering 400 piñatas in Mexico City, and the first baby born in an Uber. 

"It’s been 5 years, and we went from four people around the desk to something that is around the world,"CEO Travis Kalanick said during the company's celebration event at Uber's headquarters.

The crowd included Kalanick's mother, who was tearing up as he took the stage, and some of the companies earliest investors. San Francisco Supervisor Scott Weiner also earned a shoutout during the comments for attending the party.

Kalanick also acknowledged his somewhat controversial image as a CEO.

"I realize that I can come off as a somewhat fierce advocate for Uber," Kalanick said. "I also realize that some have used a different 'a' word to describe me."

Here's how it's grown:

• The company reached 3,000 employees around the globe, which doesn't include its driver partners. Its 1 millionth driver just gave his or her first ride. (Note that this counts every person who's ever worked as an Uber driver, not the current number of available drivers.)
• Uber is now in 58 countries and 311 cities.
• Growth in China has been huge. There are 46,000 drivers in Chengdu alone. In comparison, Uber has 26,000 drivers in New York City, 22,000 in San Francisco, 15,000 in London, and 10,000 in Paris — its first international city.
• The company now has more than 1 million square feet of office space globally. (That's not including its just-announced Mission Bay campus).
• In San Francisco, almost half of all rides in the city are Uber Pool, its carpooling option, Kalanick said.
• All Uber trips in the last five years have covered a total distance of 1.5 billion miles (2.4 billion kilometers).

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This week, Uber turned five.

The ride-hailing company has experienced hockey-stick growth over the past few years: What started as a company called UberCab in San Francisco has become a transportation behemoth.

Uber operates in more than 300 cities and 58 countries around the world, and it's rumored to be worth as much as $50 billion, making it the most valuable private tech company in the world. 

At a celebration of Uber's fifth anniversary, CEO Travis Kalanick shared his vision for the company.

"If we were able to achieve this much in five years, just imagine what we could achieve in the next five years, or the five years after that. Just imagine a city where traffic speeds along smoothly and quietly, even at rush hour — this is my dream," he said.

"Imagine a city that reclaims the space once wasted on garages and lots and meters to build new parks and schools and housing. Imagine a city where you can choose to live or start a business anywhere you want, because transportation to and from will always be one tap away."

Kalanick eventually wants Uber to be so cheap that it becomes the cheap and efficient alternative to both owning a vehicle and taking public transportation. He said almost half of San Francisco's Uber rides are UberPool rides — a carpooling option that pairs you up with another rider going the same direction as you, and lowers your fare. "This is our ultimate vision of the future," Kalanick said. "Smarter transportation with fewer cars and greater access."

Interestingly, his vision for Uber centered primarily on the transportation aspect of the company. He didn't address the possibility of an IPO or self-driving cars — in fact, Kalanick spoke extensively about the importance of Uber's driver partners.

He did, however, touch briefly on the potential for Uber to expand into delivery and logistics.

He said: "In a world where technology can deliver the ride you need within five minutes wherever you are in the world, just imagine all the other goods and services that you could one day get delivered quickly, safely, with just the single touch of a button."

SEE ALSO: More than 1 million people have now worked as an Uber driver

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has earned a reputation as a relentless businessman who refuses to negotiate.

He's made a name for himself by building a company with an estimated $50 billion valuation.

He's also said some things that have gotten him into hot water. In the past, he's referred to the competition as "an as—hole named Taxi."

It doesn't help that Uber reportedly launched a campaign called Operation SLOG, an aggressive plan to poach Lyft drivers, last year. 

Kalanick addressed his reputation at an event celebrating Uber's five-year anniversary since its launch: "I realize that I can come off as a somewhat fierce advocate for Uber," he said. "I also realize that some have used a different 'a'-word to describe me."

Uber has seen crazy growth in the past year — now, the company operates in more than 300 cities in 58 countries. But Uber also had some public relations blunders in the past year. At a dinner for influencers, an Uber executive threatened a smear campaign against a journalist and later used its "God View" tool to track another.

At Uber's fifth anniversary event, Kalanick went on to say: "Well, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect, and neither is this company. Like everyone else, we make mistakes, but at Uber we are passionate about learning from them. And the reason I’m so proud of what we’ve already done – the reason I believe so strongly in what we’re trying to do – is because in city after city, we’ve seen it work." 

And then there was more troubling privacy news: An Uber interview candidate in Washington, D.C. was reportedly given access to Uber's rider database, which is full of sensitive information, for hours after his interview was over, The Washington Post reported. While researching a story about the company, San Francisco magazine editor Ellen Cushing was allegedly warned by Uber employees that Uber might look at her rider logs, too.

Concerns about privacy don't seem to be hurting the company, however. The company has 3,000 employees around the world, and its millionth driver just gave his or her first Uber ride, Kalanick announced. Uber now has more than 1 million square feet of office space globally. 

You can watch Kalanick's whole speech here:

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Billionaire Uber CEO Travis Kalanick really likes hot tubs.

He likes them so much, in fact, that he stays in them for hours at a time, according to venture capitalist and early Uber investor Chris Sacca.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV's Emily Chang, Sacca talked about the hot tub at his California home near Lake Tahoe, which he calls the "Jam Tub."

Sacca says Travis Kalanick used to spend "eight to ten hours" there at a time. "I've never seen a human with that kind of staying power in a hot tub," he said.

Sacca and Kalanick aren't as close as they once were, however.  "If I'm involved in your business, I'm gonna share my opinions with you about how certain aspects of the business are going," Sacca said on the rift between himself and Kalanick.

"They're gonna be really strong opinions, likely in your face. I think I can rub people the wrong way. In particular, I wanted to own more Uber stock.  And so I was, at the time, trying to buy it from more people.  Travis didn't like that."

Sacca's VC firm, Lowercase Capital, invested $300,000 in Uber's angel round. Sacca also helped the company buy the name "Uber" from Universal Music Group. Now, Lowercase Capital owns 4% of Uber, which is valued at $41 billion. But now Sacca and Kalanick "barely speak," Sacca told Forbes earlier this year. 

Sacca also talked about how he and his wife make founders dinner and take them hot-tubbing in an attempt to evaluate potential founders for his firm's portfolio.

He assesses founders based on whether they clean up after themselves after dinner.

According to Bloomberg, Sacca “would see people who wouldn’t actually get up to put their dishes in the sink, and immediately be like, ‘No way. Like, there’s no way we’re getting in and doing business with them.’”

Watch the full video below:

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The leaders of the most successful tech companies need a lot of skills. One of them is leadership. They must inspire teams of employees to carry out their daring visions against incredible odds.

That means they offer some great advice.

We've compiled quotes from 19 of the biggest names in tech. Some are investors; others are founders, CEOs, or executives at the most renowned tech companies in the world. Their words will inspire you to achieve more in work and in life.

IBM Chairwoman and CEO Ginni Rometty: "Be first and be lonely."

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick: "Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation."

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough."

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China's top taxi app company, Didi Kuaidi, is raising $1.5 billion to fight Uber’s expansion in China, Bloomberg reports.

The news come only days after a leaked memo from Uber showed it is raising $1 billion dollars to crack the Chinese market.

Didi Kuaidi was created in February, when competing apps Didi and Kuaidi merged to cut the costs of competing with each other — and more importantly, Uber. Only months later, the new taxi app company is now raising a $1.5 billion investment at twice the valuation it had at the time of the merger.

Didi Kuaidi previously said it would give away about $161 million in free rides to battle Uber, and the fight looks to be a difficult one, with Uber eyeing the same market. “Simply stated, China is the #1 priority for Uber’s global team,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote in an email.

Uber’s top three most popular cities — Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Chengdu — are all in China. And Uber’s service is taking off in China much faster than it did in the United States. Nine months after launching in Chengdu, Uber has 479 times the trips it had in New York after the same amount of time.

Even so, Didi Kuaidi currently dominates the Chinese market. Though it still runs separate apps (Didi and Kuaidi), they share the same core technology and data. Together these apps account for 78% of ride bookings, according to industry researcher Analysys International, while Uber accounts for only 11%.  

This funding raise hasn’t been the only pushback Uber has experienced in China. In May, police raided its Guangzhou offices to investigate issues stemming from how the company was registered and operating. Uber drivers have also seen fines as well as confiscation of their vehicles and phones. But many argue this is simply the price Uber has pay to try to gain a foothold in what Kalanick calls one of the “the largest untapped opportunities for Uber, potentially larger than the US."

Fortunately for Uber, it has its own supporters in China, including Baidu, which previously invested $600 million dollars in the company.

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