# Stealth eventually makes a company harder for media to cover

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/stealth-eventually-makes-a-company-harder-for-media-to-cover/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Travis Kalanick](https://realalpha.app/builders/travis-kalanick/) · CEO, Atoms · Built Uber and now leads Atoms, applying industrial AI and specialized robotics to automate food, mining and transport.
- Host: [Erik Torenberg](https://realalpha.app/people/erik-torenberg/) · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz · Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine.
- Show: a16z Podcast
- Episode: [Building a Company in Stealth | Travis Kalanick with a16z](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/), Jul 22, 2026
- Moment: 32:00 to 35:08 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/stealth-eventually-makes-a-company-harder-for-media-to-cover/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/?t=1920

## Quote

> “because it's so hard to discuss a thing that has **a gap a few years before it**.”
> — [Travis Kalanick](https://realalpha.app/builders/travis-kalanick/) at [33:37](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/?t=2017) · a16z Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Stealth let the team build outside the daily negative news cycle.
2. A long break in the story made later leaks harder to explain.
3. Recruiting and customer sales required working around stealth.

## About this segment

Travis Kalanick says years without public reporting left a gap in the company's story. That gap made later leaks harder for media outlets to explain.

From “Building a Company in Stealth | Travis Kalanick with a16z”, Jul 22, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[32:12](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/?t=1932) yeah dude yeah that's just super hard mode yeah and the thing is is like look coming out of 17 things were, it was 150 articles a day of negativity. And so I wanted to be able to build without bringing that negativity into the system. And I wanted the team to be able to build without worrying about what the New York Times was writing tomorrow. Simple as that. And it was the right thing to do. Now we had to do hard mode is we had to recruit Colt. And it was always from a recruiter who has a stealth thing in LinkedIn and on their signature yeah okay um and you had to go get customers with like stealth in LinkedIn like and you're thousands of people big this is hard mode yeah and it was interesting we didn't know how long it was going to go and you have to trust that no one's going to leak um you

[33:12](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/?t=1992) know what happens is here's the cool part about stealth if you go that long and I I don't recommend this for anybody like it's not very special yeah you don't really i don't you know but eventually there's this break in your narrative like there was a story arc and it was going going going and then it's discontinuous it stops and there's this whoops sorry about that guys there's this long period of time now where nothing is filling in and what happens then is the media doesn't want to cover a story because it's so hard to discuss a thing that has a gap a few years before it.

[33:57](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/?t=2037) So it's too hard to do the story and it's too hard to cover it. So you get to this place where it becomes self-fulfilling, where it's easier to be stealth over time because even if somebody tries to leak, nobody even knows what to do with it. they're just like i don't even understand and by the way we did crazy stuff so people know it as cloud kitchens in the u.s but it's casino sequeltas in latin america and we have different names that means like magical kitchens essentially uh we have like kitchen valley in korea we have flash kitchen and three other names in china we have i mean food stars in london like go it goes you know you know i think it's uh kitchen park in middle east we were going to go with yalla kitchens like you know it's like a bunch of things like this so it was very hard to connect the dots yeah

[34:48](https://realalpha.app/v/z6gH_v0buUc/?t=2088) you're extra still yeah anyways and so at some point an even bigger vision for this company