Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac

Pham, who was responsible for dealing with the fraud, wasn’t a stranger to tough situations. Born in Vietnam in 1967, Pham was thrown into conflict as young as twelve years old, as his mother piled him and his brother into a rickety wooden fishing boat, sailing out amid the rough waters of the South China Sea to escape the violence of the ’79 Sino-Vietnamese War. Pham weathered deadly storms, was robbed by Thai pirates, and felt lucky to land at a refugee camp in Indonesia, even though he was soon shuttled off to an island for other Southeast Asian immigrants that lacked basic sanitation. After finally making it to the United States, Pham shared a small, roach-infested apartment in Maryland with another family while his mother worked multiple jobs to support them. Pham studied hard in school and grew to love IBM PCs, which he discovered at a young age. An entry-level computing job at Hewlett-Packard led to the startup world and, eventually, a big break with a high-paying, high-level job at Uber as CTO. Like Kalanick, Pham worked hard, and never flinched from the pressure, intensity, or long hours as the company exploded.