Garrett Camp is one of the most influential—yet relatively low-profile—entrepreneurs of the technology era. While his name is often overshadowed by Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick, Camp was the person who originally conceived the idea that became Uber. Before Uber, he had already built and sold another successful technology company, StumbleUpon.

Today, Camp is a billionaire entrepreneur, investor and startup builder whose career has been defined by identifying seemingly simple problems and turning them into technology companies with global reach. Forbes’ latest 2026 profile lists Camp’s real-time net worth at approximately $5.1 billion, while noting that he owns roughly 4% of Uber.

Early Life and Family

Garrett Camp was born on October 4, 1978, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He grew up in a family that combined economics, art and entrepreneurship.

His father was an economist, while his mother was an artist. Both eventually became involved in home building. This unusual combination of analytical thinking and creativity appears to have influenced Camp’s approach to technology and entrepreneurship.

Camp’s childhood was not defined by Silicon Valley glamour. He grew up in Calgary, where he spent his time playing sports, learning electric guitar and developing a fascination with computers.

His interest in technology began relatively early. According to an account of his childhood, an uncle introduced his family to an early Macintosh computer. Camp became fascinated with computers and spent hours experimenting with programming and computer graphics. That curiosity eventually became the foundation of his career.

Garrett Camp’s Education

Camp attended the University of Calgary, where he initially studied electrical engineering.

He completed his bachelor’s degree in 2001 and continued at the same university for graduate studies, earning a master’s degree in software engineering. His graduate work focused on areas including collaborative systems, evolutionary algorithms and information retrieval.

His university years proved particularly important because they weren’t simply an academic period—they were also the beginning of his entrepreneurial career. While pursuing his master’s degree, Camp began working on what would eventually become StumbleUpon.

The Birth of StumbleUpon

In 2001, Camp and several collaborators began developing StumbleUpon, a platform designed to help people discover interesting websites without having to manually search for them.The idea was deceptively simple:

Instead of searching the internet for something interesting, why not let the internet surprise you?

StumbleUpon used personalization and recommendations to send users to websites that matched their interests. The company was bootstrapped in its early days, and Camp eventually moved to San Francisco with co-founder Geoff Smith after attracting investors. The platform grew rapidly. In 2007, eBay acquired StumbleUpon for approximately $75 million. The deal transformed Camp from a young technology entrepreneur into a successful startup founder with significant capital and experience. But StumbleUpon was only the beginning.

How Garrett Camp Came Up With Uber

The idea for Uber emerged from a problem that many people have experienced: finding a reliable ride when you need one. Camp’s thinking about transportation reportedly developed while he was spending time in San Francisco and traveling internationally. One particularly important moment came in Paris, where he and Travis Kalanick experienced difficulty finding a taxi.

Camp began imagining a system where people could summon a car through their phones. The concept was radically different from the traditional taxi experience.

Instead of:

Find a taxi → flag it down → pay the driver

Camp imagined:

Open an app → request a car → watch it approach on a map → pay digitally.

His interest was reinforced by technology he saw in the 2006 James Bond movie Casino Royale, where a phone displayed a car moving on a digital map. The idea of combining smartphones, GPS, mapping and transportation stuck with him.

In 2009, Camp co-founded Uber, initially known as UberCab, alongside Travis Kalanick and others. Camp’s contribution was particularly important in shaping the original product concept and service. Kalanick subsequently became the company’s dominant operating leader as Uber expanded aggressively.

From Startup Experiment to Global Giant

Uber began as a relatively small experiment involving luxury cars in San Francisco. But the concept proved enormously scalable. The company gradually expanded beyond black-car services and introduced different transportation options. Its smartphone-based model eventually spread across cities and countries around the world. Camp remained a major shareholder and board member as Uber grew.

When Uber went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2019, Camp still owned roughly 4% of the company, according to Forbes. That stake became the foundation of his multibillion-dollar fortune. The remarkable part of Camp’s story is that his biggest financial success came not from operating a company as CEO for decades, but from conceiving an idea, helping build it and retaining a significant ownership stake.

Expa: Garrett Camp’s Next Chapter

After StumbleUpon and Uber, Camp moved increasingly toward helping other entrepreneurs build companies. In 2013, he founded Expa, a startup studio designed to help entrepreneurs develop and launch new businesses. Unlike a conventional venture-capital firm that primarily invests money into existing startups, Expa works more closely with founders to develop companies and products.

Camp’s own website says Expa has raised $350 million and created more than 20 companies since 2013. Through Expa, Camp has backed numerous startups, extending his influence beyond his own companies. His career therefore evolved through three distinct stages:

StumbleUpon → Uber → Expa

First, he learned how to build a consumer internet product. Then, he helped create one of the world’s most consequential technology companies. Finally, he began applying those lessons to help other entrepreneurs build companies.

Garrett Camp’s Net Worth

Garrett Camp’s wealth is closely tied to his ownership of Uber and his investments in technology companies. As of August 2026, Forbes estimates his real-time net worth at approximately $5.1 billion, placing him among the world’s billionaires. Forbes’ 2026 profile identifies Uber as his primary source of wealth and says he owns approximately 4% of Uber.

His wealth has fluctuated considerably with the value of Uber’s publicly traded shares and his other investments. That makes any billionaire net-worth figure a snapshot rather than a fixed amount.

Personal Life

Despite his enormous wealth and involvement in two major technology companies, Camp has maintained a relatively private public profile. Forbes currently lists his marital status as “in relationship.”

Compared with many Silicon Valley billionaires, Camp rarely seeks the spotlight. His public identity is much more closely associated with product design, entrepreneurship, investing and technology than celebrity culture. He is also interested in art and music and describes himself as a musician and collector on his personal website.

Camp has also demonstrated an interest in philanthropy. He joined The Giving Pledge, committing to give away a substantial portion of his wealth to charitable causes.

What Made Garrett Camp Successful?

Camp’s career offers an interesting lesson in entrepreneurship. He didn’t become successful simply by creating complicated technology. Instead, he repeatedly focused on ordinary problems that could be redesigned  through technology.StumbleUpon asked:

How can people discover things they didn’t know they wanted?

Uber asked:

How can getting a ride become as easy as tapping a button?

Expa asks:

How can experienced entrepreneurs build successful companies more efficiently?

The common thread is systems thinking. Camp’s background in engineering and software appears to have influenced this mindset. Rather than simply building products, he has often looked at entire systems and asked how they could be redesigned.

Garrett Camp’s Legacy

Garrett Camp’s greatest achievement may not simply be becoming a billionaire. His bigger contribution is his role in changing how people interact with technology. StumbleUpon changed how millions of people discovered content online. Uber transformed how people think about transportation and on-demand services. Expa represents his attempt to reproduce that entrepreneurial process by helping other founders create technology companies.

Camp’s story is therefore different from the stereotypical billionaire narrative. He wasn’t a household name, didn’t build his career around personal branding and rarely occupied the center of attention. Instead, his career was built around ideas, product design, ownership and systems.

From a curious child experimenting with computers in Calgary to the co-founder of Uber and a multibillionaire technology investor, Garrett Camp’s journey demonstrates how a seemingly simple question can sometimes become the foundation of a global business. The most important idea in Camp’s career wasn’t “How do I build a billion-dollar company?” It was much simpler: “Is there a better way to do this?” And twice, that question produced companies worth billions of dollars.