Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick unveiled a robotics company for the food, mining and transport industries after being in stealth mode for eight years.
The new company is called Atoms and sprang from his real estate company, City Storage Systems, which owns ghost-kitchen operator CloudKitchens.
Kalanick was ousted as Uber CEO in 2017 via a shareholder revolt amid allegations that he ignored reports of sexual harassment at the company.
During his interview on TBPN, Kalanick acknowledged the challenge of running Uber during intense public scrutiny and “dealing with 100 headlines every day.”
“So I was just like, I gotta wake up every day and sort of just get to work and build,” he recalled. “So I went under the radar.”
Instead, he decided to go “full underground, full stealth” which created some obstacles when recruiting talent to the startup.
“You have a name like City Storage Systems, and it’s like, ‘so do you guys just have like these these boxes sitting in parking lots?’” Kalanick said.
But there are advantages to being in stealth for so long, he added. For one, he said he has the best recruiters in the world.
Flying under the radar also attracts a certain type of employee and contributes to a more progress-oriented, unselfish environment.
“What you get when you create a culture around that is you have you then build a culture of builders,” Kalanick explained. “You build a culture of people that want to build and do not need to be famous when they do it, which basically means emotional intelligence.”
