Well, that was quick… Not long after getting ousted from his post as CEO of Uber, polarizing corporate bad boy Travis Kalanick has a new job as the CEO of real estate flipping startup City Storage Systems.
Kalanick announced he has invested $150m in City Storage through his brand new personal investment fund — an amount that will allow him to buy out most other outside investors as he takes the throne as CEO.
Digital boy in a digital world
City Storage buys floundering real estate assets (like parking lots and strip malls) and turns them into spaces for business of the “digital era,” (like ecommerce companies).
It’s the first big investment through Kalanick’s personal investment fund 10100 (pronounced ten-one-hundred, FYI), which he announced just a few weeks ago.
According to the T-Man, the firm will focus on his “passions, investments, ideas, and big bets,” with the theme of the fund centered around “large-scale job creation.”
Staying close to the family
Another large area of focus for City Storage will be food delivery (an industry near and dear to Kalanick’s heart).
One of the company’s pre-existing assets is CloudKitchens — a company that provides infrastructure to food-delivery startups, and that just so happens to be a partner of UberEats; using its vehicle fleet to deliver meals from restaurants. It aaall comes full circle…
Since T-Bone stepped down from Uber last year, he’s maintained a large amount of influence in the ride-hailing giant’s day-to-day. Even as the company continues to weather the onslaught of controversies he created.
And with this new investment, he appears to be keeping his friends close, and his frenemies closer.
