Travis Kalanick Is Back | Building the Future of Industrial AI

Summary

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The a16z Show: "Travis Kalanick Is Back | Building the Future of Industrial AI"

Date: July 22, 2026
Featuring: Travis Kalanick (Uber/CloudKitchens/Adams), Ben Horowitz (a16z), Podcast Host/Narrator

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Overview / Main Theme

This episode marks the public return of Travis Kalanick, famed founder of Uber, as he teams up with Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz to discuss his latest venture: Adams—a conglomerate at the intersection of real estate, robotics, AI, and logistics. The conversation delves deep into lessons learned from Uber’s rollercoaster journey, the genesis and stealth development of CloudKitchens (now Adams), the dawn of “industrial AI,” and guiding principles for building transformative companies in the physical world (atoms, not just bits).

Kalanick and Horowitz candidly reflect on their near-partnership in Uber, the turbulence of 2017, and why building with the physical world is the next true technology revolution.

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1. Travis, Ben & the Deal That Got Away: Uber, Auctions, and Boardroom Decisions

Key Discussion Points:

• Near-miss partnership: Travis and a16z nearly teamed up during Uber's 2011 Series B. Their versions of events overlap but differ in the details and gripes with VC negotiation habits.

  • Travis: "I have this whole fundraising process that I would do just to perfection. And that means I'd run an auction..." (03:00)
  • Ben: "Normally people, particularly in those days, very rare that entrepreneur would come in with no team members on a deal that size." (07:31)

• Auction drama: Price negotiations escalated ($375M then dropped to $210M), causing a loss of momentum and credibility, ultimately leading a16z to miss out on Uber and board seats.

• Lesson: Both regret not working together, believing a16z could have helped Uber weather its notorious 2017 crisis ("That wouldn't have gone that way if Ben or Mark was on the board." – Travis, 12:53).

Notable Quotes:

• Ben: "It felt like the old Larry Bird, Magic Johnson... wish you were on our team. This sucks." (12:13)
• Travis: "When you fall in love again, you don't think about the ex very much." (15:28)

Timestamps:

• The Series B Auction Story: 02:19–07:31
• Ben’s Regrets and Uber/Lyft Tensions: 07:31–12:13

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2. Uber’s Fall, Navigating Adversity & Building Again: From Darkness to Stealth

Key Discussion Points:

• Uber’s Downfall: Travis reflects on lawsuits, headlines, and the realization of new rules for big companies vs. scrappy startups.

  • "I continue to stand by every decision I made at Uber, but... you don't realize that when you get big, there actually are different rules." (16:09)

• Pirates Become the Navy: Ben and Travis discuss the mentality shift required as startups become incumbents.

  • "When the pirate becomes the Navy." (17:47 – Ben)

• Shoplifting: Anecdote about Uber recruiting Lyft drivers under the codename “Shoplifting”—a cautionary tale about internal culture becoming external liabilities.

  • "That name, you can't use that name." (19:00 – Ben)
  • "David Drummond from Google was on our board: 'Travis, that's not a thing, dude. You've got to change it.'" (19:10)

• Stealth Mode: After Uber, Travis acquired CloudKitchens and built in stealth to shield his team from media negativity.

  • "Coming out of '17 things were, it was 150 articles a day of negativity... I wanted the team to be able to build without worrying about what the New York Times was writing tomorrow." (31:26)

Timestamps:

• Culture Wars and Uber’s Rules: 17:40–19:10
• Stealth Building Rationale: 31:14–33:58

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3. From CloudKitchens to Adams: The Next Industrial Revolution

Key Discussion Points:

• Origins: Travis was drawn to “unsexy” complexity—building efficiency in meal prep and delivery to drive costs down to grocery store levels.

  • "Can you make the preparation and delivery of a meal, a quality meal, so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store? If it does, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car." (26:11)

• Complex Stack: Real estate, construction, SaaS for restaurants, robotics—all woven together.

  • "You have to have manufacturing and logistics infrastructure in the same place. That's real estate. Then you actually have to have automated production... robotic food robots..." (26:46)

• Vision & Frameworks: Treating atoms like bits—the “atoms-based computer” analogy.

  • "CPU manipulates bits, what manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing... Storage stores bits, what stores atoms? That's real estate. Network moves bits, what moves atoms? Logistics." (34:16)

• The Emergence of Industrial AI: Moving beyond digitizing software to digitizing industries. Adams is described as “physical automation to transform industries.”

  • "Industrial AI is basically this stack of software, sensors, robotics, machinery that automates an industry. And we take it one industry at a time." (85:30)

Timestamps:

• The Food Computer and Industry Digitization: 26:11–30:59, 34:13–36:29, 78:41–79:38
• Atoms as Computer Analogy: 34:13–36:48

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4. Building a Conglomerate: Combining Mining, Transport, and Food

Key Discussion Points:

• Expanding Scope: Adams now combines food, mining, and autonomous transport.

  • "I'm very focused right now because it's only food, mining, and transport. There's so many things I haven't done yet. Like, I'm so constrained right now." (64:34)

• Mining Automation: Acquiring Pronto (Autonomous mining company) led by Anthony Levandowski—automating mining for productivity and massive safety gains.

  • "When you automate certain parts of mining, you dramatically improve safety... when you look at the work that's being done and how it's being done, it’s a little bit heart wrenching." (43:41)

• Conglomerate Structure: Funding and organizational integration inspired by Ben wanting “the whole trench coat”:

  • "He's like, dude, I just want the whole fricking trench coat, dude... I don't want to invest in mining or transport or food. I want the things that you're doing and let's be partners for all the things you do." (47:09)

Timestamps:

• Entering Mining & Autonomy: 41:08–46:13
• Rationale for Combining Businesses: 47:09–48:29

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5. Principles for Company Building & Scaling

Key Discussion Points:

• The Rare Founder: Why category-creating companies are built by rare individuals.

  • "To build a company, a great company, it's always a great entrepreneur... That's why Meta's Meta and Friendster's Friendster..." (50:20 – Ben)

• Management Capacity as the Only Constraint:

  • "The only constraint to your imagination is management capacity." (51:11 – Travis)

• Let Builders Build:

  • "Empowerment starts with alignment..." and "Let builders build." (67:41–67:53)

• Stealth = Internal Correctness:

  • "It starts with internal correctness versus external validation." (57:46)

• Why Start at Food:

  • Food is where digitized manufacturing and real estate ("atoms as computer") first made sense; real estate as "storage," kitchens as "manufacturing," and networks for logistics.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben: "Everybody loves progress. It's change they can't stand." (85:25)
• Travis: "It's not as much about where you start. It's about making sure you're passionate about where you start and then where you go... you have no idea." (62:09)

Timestamps:

• Founder as Difference-Maker: 48:29–54:39
• Management Principles & Stealth: 56:10–59:37

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6. The Future of Industrial AI & Advancing Atoms

Key Discussion Points:

• On 'Industrial AI':

  • It's not about humanoids—it's sector-specific full stack automation, from physical infrastructure to robotics and AI.
  • "We're the non-humanoid guys. I don't have a problem with them, but that's not what we do." (86:18)

• Parallels with Past Industrial Revolutions:

  • Reflects on how Carnegie, Frick, Ford, et al, faced similar public and regulatory resistance.
  • "There's a really, there's a very interesting parallel to what's happening, slash, about to happen now with, like, the coming industrial age. If we're selling our own book, we would call it the Adam's Age." (82:57)

• Regulation and Public Sentiment:

  • Resistance to change is expected; the secret is to bring "big time progress to overwhelm resistance to change." (85:03)

Timestamps:

• Industrial AI & The New Era: 76:41–87:10
• Second Industrial Revolution Parallels: 80:03–84:30

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7. Talent, Culture & The Next Generation

Key Discussion Points:

• Fresh Challenge: Travis is hiring leaders for CorpDev, legal, technical/robotics, and business verticals as Adams scales up post-stealth.

  • "We're in the market for a general counsel... I need a CEO of my mining business. I need to build technical leadership across the board..." (87:43)

• Cultural Focus:

  • Stealth fostered intrinsic motivation—wanting fulfillment from within rather than external accolades.
  • "If you can pull it off, that's a very significant cultural advantage. Because as soon as the company feels like it's doing something for the outside status, it's a dangerous...volatile situation." (57:20 – Ben)

Timestamps:

• Talent Recruitment, Intrinsic Motivation: 87:39–90:59

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• "I love being in the arena fighting it." (55:02 – Travis)
• "He's one of the very rare, rare guys who made as much money as he did and wanted to keep playing." (55:07 – Ben)
• "Management of it becomes an empowerment puzzle." (66:55 – Travis)
• "Everybody loves progress. It's change they can't stand." (85:25 – Ben)
• "The only constraint to your imagination is management capacity." (51:11 – Travis)

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Selected Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |---|---| | The Uber–a16z Near-Miss & Auction Story | 02:19–07:31 | | Uber’s Transition from Pirate to Incumbent | 17:40–19:10 | | The CloudKitchens/Adams Vision | 26:11–30:59, 34:13–36:29 | | Atoms as Computer / Industry Digitization | 34:13–36:48 | | Mining, Robotics, and Conglomerate Building | 41:08–48:29 | | Principles: Stealth, Culture, and Scaling | 56:10–59:37 | | Defining Industrial AI & Regulatory Parallels | 76:41–84:30 | | New Talent and the Next Phase | 87:39–90:59 |

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Summary: Why Listen

This episode is a candid, often humorous, and deeply detailed dive into what it takes to build category-defining companies at the scale of Uber—and what comes after. The conversation moves nimbly between war stories, frameworks, and the realities of scaling from stealth startup to global multi-industry conglomerate. Kalanick’s shift from bits (Uber) to atoms (Adams) is framed as the playbook for the coming industrial AI age, with clear-eyed lessons for founders, investors, and anyone fascinated by how real change happens—amid resistance, complexity, and wild ambition.

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For anyone interested in the intersection of tech and the real world, building at scale, or what it’s really like to be at the helm of transformation, this episode is a masterclass in vision, grit, and practical wisdom.

Transcript

[Travis Kalanick]

We know what Uber's 2017 was like.

[Ben Horowitz]

Travis Kalanick has stepped down from his role as chief executive.

[Travis Kalanick]

That wouldn't have gone that way if Ben or Mark was on the board.

[Podcast Host]

You're in this hell. You're dealing with the lawsuits.

[Ben Horowitz]

Are you worried about the lawsuit?

[Podcast Host]

And you say, hey, let's build again.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's not as much about where you start. It's about why you start.

[Ben Horowitz]

He's one of the very rare guys who made as much money as he did and wanted to keep mine.

[Travis Kalanick]

Also, remember, I did it stealth.

[Ben Horowitz]

I know some of the techniques they used. Very aggressive. But that name, you can't use that name.

[Travis Kalanick]

And I remember David Drummond from Google was on our board. And he's like, you know, Travis, that's not a thing, dude. You've got to change it. The meaningful thing about Adam's food is can you make the preparation and delivery of a quality meal so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store? If it does, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car

[Ben Horowitz]

or a lot of had that idea to build a company. A great company. It's always a great entrepreneur.

[Podcast Narrator]

Today, I'm joined by Travis Kalanick and Ben Horowitz for a conversation years in the making. We look back at the investment that almost happened, the lessons Travis took from building Uber, and why he believes the next great technology revolution won't be in software, but in the physical world. We discussed the origins of atoms, why Travis spent years building in stealth, the rise of industrial AI, robotics autonomy, and what it takes to build companies that transform entire industries.

[Podcast Host]

Travis, this is the I'm Back podcast. This is the Return of the King

[Travis Kalanick]

episode, Return of the Mac. That's what I'm all about. We can return. I don't know what the right thing is, but we got to come up with a walk on song for sure.

[Ben Horowitz]

Return of the Mac. Return of the Mac.

[Podcast Host]

And it's not just the return of Travis, but it's also return of this partnership or what could have been this relationship with Travis and Ben. So I want to read a quote, Travis, from your launch post. I've known Mark and Ben for a long time, and we got oh, so close to partnering up at Uber in 2011. I, Travis, blame Mark, Ben, blame himself, but let's just say it was all on us. It was on all of us. And in 2017, Uber suffered the consequences of not having Mark on the board. If you know, you know, Travis, tell the story.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay, so this will be interesting because I think Ben and I have maybe discussed this once or twice. Yeah, it's very painful and I think that there could be. Mostly for me, I'm not sure if there's a difference of opinion on what happened, but tell you what I thought happened. So I'm in fundraising mode. This is our Series B. This is 2011. Uber started 2010, June 2010, I'm raising our Series B. Earlier that year, I did Series A with vcl. Remain nameless. And I'm hardcore. It's. I went through such tough times as an entrepreneur pre Uber that once I'm in Uber and things are working, I. I'm still acting like I'm not going to eat tomorrow. So I would do everything right up to the line, be perfect. And so I have this whole fundraising process that I would do just to perfection. And that means I'd run an auction. So met with a 16Z guys, met with lots of folks, and it was a what I would call winner takes all auction, meaning there's one major lead. They're going to set the price and then everybody else will fall in. So I'd go to the one guy, I'd tell him what the story was, and they're like, oh, we're interested. He's leaning forward. They're like, so how much you raising? What's the price? And I would do this thing where I would say, this is going to be one of the hottest deals in Silicon Valley this year. We don't know where the price is going to be, where it's going to go to, but it's at least blank. And I call this the uncapped anchor, meaning I'm never in a place where I'm negotiating with somebody, where I'm here and they're here and we meet in the middle. I'm always saying it's at least this and it can go up, but I

[Ben Horowitz]

start low, so it'll only go up

[Travis Kalanick]

so that everybody's pumped. Leaning forward, he's like, okay. You could see body language. You can read. It's good. The next guy literally comes to your office, an hour later, same thing happens. He's fired up. I'm showing all the analytics. It's great. Okay, so we're interested. What are you thinking about? Price? Whatever. I'm like, if the last one was at least 2x our previous round, it just became 3x. I'll say. We don't know. One of the best deals in Silicon Valley. It's going to be one of the top deals in Silicon Valley this year, but it will be at least 3x our last round. And he's like, okay, you then go call the guy before. And you're like, hey, just, hey, look, dude, it's went from 2x to 3x. You know, we'll see where it goes. I don't know. They start getting nervous anyways. You get all the way to the top and then you go going once, going twice. And it's kind of funny in this particular case, Yuri was almost coming over the top. So we got to 375, 375 million predictions with a 16Z. Yuri almost came in at 400, but he was like, nah, I can't do it. And so I'm like, okay, going once, going twice, sold. And it's funny because that's a high momentum deal and that's how you do it. And at the time, you almost should feel a little shy about doing something like that. And it's a little bit crass, let's just say. But that's how I was wired back in the day. Like, just go all the fricking way, all the way. Score the touchdown. Even when you're gonna, you know, it's a little much. So we're starting to work. We're going to get a term sheet going, the whole thing. And I get an email from Mark and it was like, hey, Travis, let's go to dinner. I think it was like, tomorrow night or something like that. Let's go to dinner. And I said, send me the term sheet. And then, yeah, we can go to dinner. And he responded. He said, let's go to dinner. And I'm like, oh, I didn't like that. So came down south, this neck of the woods, because I was in San Francisco and this little sushi place, I don't remember the name of it. And he said, look, I know we talked about 375, but went to the partnership. They don't agree or they just didn't think it was the right number. The best we're going to be able to do is 210. See that. So that I'm just telling you how it went down for me.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Wow. Well.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so then I'm like, definitely different

[Ben Horowitz]

on the other side.

[Travis Kalanick]

So. But I want. It'd be interesting to hear it. I've got more than the hour we have scheduled here if we want to take time. But anyways, I had a high momentum deal. It went all the way to the top. I auctioned it, cleared the market, and the bottom came out from it. And so I had to go back to everybody else and say 210 is the new number. Like, hey, guys, the guy who won backed out. I'm now back at 2:10. We're starting the auction over. It was super awkward and weird because people lose credibility in that moment. And I built it back up and basically it ended up being Menlo Park. This is how Shervin got involved in Uber. And at some point, I told Shervin to stop negotiating against himself because he just kept driving it up without anybody else. I'm like, dude, you won, dude. It's fine. I didn't want the same thing to happen again, you know what I'm saying? So I'm very clear about the 375 and the 210 and the experience I had. But there may be another side to that story.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, well, okay, let me just tell you what I actually remember, and then what I kind of remember. So I remember you came in for the pitch and I think it was just you, which is, by the way, unusual. So normally people, particularly in those days, very rare that entrepreneur would come in with no team members on a deal that size. That was a big deal, by the way. That wasn't. That was a high price deal. Now it's like a fucking 375.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. You'd be like, dudes, pre.

[Podcast Narrator]

Seed.

[Travis Kalanick]

Pre seed. Pre pre. Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. The pitch was super impressive. And then the other thing I recall pretty closely was Travis had definitely read some of my blogs. I felt like, oh, we can win this. This is a deal. And we had the discussion and it was clear, like, no, we want to do the deal. And at the time I was like, I should really do this one. But I wasn't the consumer guy. And then I had a lot of board seats and a lot of boards.

[Travis Kalanick]

I think it was like 16 board seats. It was something crazy.

[Ben Horowitz]

It was just. So I was like, ah. And so I gave it to Mark and John o' Farrell to do. And then all I remember. So I remember something different at this point, but I got it all from them, so it wasn't there. There was something about the employee option pool or some shit. It was one of these things where it's like, okay, okay. But, like, I just assumed we were doing the deal. And then the next thing I knew, Shervin had the deal. And I was like, geez. And I regret I can't tell you how long. So that was the beginning of my torture on this thing. So I was like, fuck, I know we should do that deal. We lost the deal. And then meanwhile, Scott Weissen did a deal for the other company in the space, Lyft. And by the way, that kind of got off to a very, very difficult start, largely because of Uber. And, you know, in order to Dave and Catch, I ended up having to go on the board. Like, I took over that board seat to kind of help them through that.

[Travis Kalanick]

And just so you understand my experience on the lift thing, it happened, I believe, a year later.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Almost to the day, something like this. And the deal on Lyft was 2. 10.

[Ben Horowitz]

Was it really? I don't.

[Travis Kalanick]

I know. I'm just saying this is what the entrepreneur is going to remember, dude. You know what I'm saying?

[Ben Horowitz]

Holy cow. But anyways, because if a company is in a lot of trouble, that's generally when I get called, given my history with that.

[Travis Kalanick]

Oh, man, I was working so hard on that, and so I was working hard on that trouble.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, my God, it was a lot of trouble. It was a lot of trouble. But anyway, so. So I'm living with that. And then, by the way, and then I would see Travis, you know, now and again. Like, we had. I had him over to my house, see a barbecue, like, all kinds of shit. Right? Like, just because, like, I knew who he was. Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

We were kind of friends, and it

[Ben Horowitz]

was always, like, a lot of. Like, there was a. There was a respect there because we knew who each other were. But, like, he was winning, and it was just like, he wasn't gonna let me fucking not hear it. And it was just horrible, you know, I had to listen. I was like, God damn it. All the time. Like, for a decade.

[Travis Kalanick]

There was also this other thing would happen. So this is like 2000. I think this really started 2014, 15, et cetera. Is. Emile and I would meet up with Mark and Ben at this super undercover restaurant.

[Ben Horowitz]

Ah, yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

Right next to our office, which was in the same building at the time as Twitter. Or, sorry, same building as Square.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

By the way, Emil, also, like, a remarkably amazing and currently the CTO of the Department of War, but super talented.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, the best. We would do these session.

[Podcast Host]

We just.

[Travis Kalanick]

We'd have dinner, break some bread, talk shop, and we're like, yeah, Emil. And I'd always walk out going, damn, it would be so great to have these guys involved. Of course, it didn't, because they were at Lyft, and sometimes even we might even talk about, hey, is there a thing that comes together? But, like, I was just so. The way I was. There's no way.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, there was no way across a deal with him. Other than if we gave him the company and he could just fire everybody.

[Travis Kalanick]

So it was. You know, but it was like. That is. It was. It was. There was mute. There was mutual respect with this really kind of cool tension at the same time.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

That made it. That kind of just was the extra texture on the Uber experience, at least for me.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. It was kind of like. It felt like, well, you're a basketball guy. It felt like the old Larry Bird, like Magic Johnson. We're like, okay, we'll meet each other. We hate you, but, like, wish you were on our team. This sucks.

[Podcast Host]

So it's the one that got away, but fast forward and now there's a. There's a new chance at a.

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, what I would say is there's one middle piece to this.

[Podcast Host]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Which is those who are obviously in the tech industry, like, we know what Uber's 2017 was like.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

That wouldn't have gone that way if Ben or Mark was on the board.

[Ben Horowitz]

Nope.

[Podcast Host]

So.

[Travis Kalanick]

So when Ben and I talk about this, we're like, it was our fault.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

We. We screwed it up.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

I mean, it would have been, by the way, Uber would be, I'll just say, considerably larger and more important and more central company today. There's no question. I mean, first of all, I would have won food. No, Uber was dominating food. Dominating food at the time. And it would have also been. Doordash was sure a leader in Autonomous.

[Travis Kalanick]

DoorDash was 5% market share when I left.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And. And if we lost a tenth of a percent and in a week.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

We're not going home this weekend.

[Ben Horowitz]

And by the way, Tony, God bless him, had a hell of a time getting his round done at the time. Like. Like right at that period, he was doing around at Doordash, and he had to really struggle to get it done. And, you know, congratulations to him for building and he's. You know what?

[Travis Kalanick]

He built and he's done it. Yeah, you got it. You got it. You know what? It's really easy to do the what ifs and this and the that. The thing that matters most is tale of the tape.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And he. He got some stuff done.

[Ben Horowitz]

He did. He did. He did.

[Travis Kalanick]

You know, respect.

[Ben Horowitz]

No, amazing. He survived it. Which is, by the way, you know, in entrepreneurship, surviving is a big part of it.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's not that easy.

[Travis Kalanick]

Our Tommy program was like, second to Waymo, but catching up at the time.

[Ben Horowitz]

And you had the network.

[Travis Kalanick]

We had the network, too. And we just. We had the ferocity sort of the fierceness that it takes to catch up.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

In a certain technology space while building all these other things that we were doing. I mean, it was a lot. It was. It was good times. It was a lot of fun.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. I mean, even though 17 was super tough for me and maybe that you could say, even for the company at large. Certainly for the company at large. You know, I loved every minute. And honestly, even when you come out of it, you're like, yeah, it got a little weird at the end. It was tough. I still, I still. I still. It was still great.

[Ben Horowitz]

Some of that you love in retrospect.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, no, I get you. I. Trust me, trust me. You don't have to remind me of that.

[Ben Horowitz]

I'm just saying, like, there's that feeling that's so fucking horrible at the time, you know? Know.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, it was. There was a love affair there, and that's almost the way I would put it. And a lot of people talk about, well, you know, are you mad about this or that you upset that that happened. And I'm like, when you. When you fall in love again, you don't think about the ex very much. Yeah, that's it. So then you can just be like, it was a good time. Yeah, she got a little crazy at the end.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's true. That's true. Like that. Yeah, the crazy. Crazy.

[Travis Kalanick]

Exact. So there we go.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And how did you fall in love again? Or did it take you? How did you handle this? The interim period between sort of the.

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, yeah, I mean, you had a really interesting situation, I think headlines and the neg. The negativity in the headlines from that period of time. And. And you could really say the extreme wokeness that was sort of coming in on Uber and trying to constrain it, if that makes sense. There's this interim period. It was like seven, eight months between when I left and when I started what's now called Adams. And I had to sort of fight for my life because there are just a number of lawsuits, a number of investigations, all these things where it was just like, I. I continue to stand by every decision I made at Uber, but, you know, there are a lot of times where you could just make the argument, I just got way too close to the line. And then, yeah, I could show that there's no chalk on. On the shoe. I could show, but you would need a electromagnetic scanning microscope to see that there was no chalk on the shoe. You reverse angle. Slow mo. And it's just like, that's the problem is the edge of being a. What's the word? A hard scrabble, small startup kid brought to something that's working and going super big. You don't realize that when you get big, there actually are different rules.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And they're not just the rules, there's the vibes.

[Ben Horowitz]

When the pirate becomes the Navy. We talk about this at the firm a lot. When you're the upstart and you're battling the man, you can go hard in ways that if you do it when you're the big.

[Travis Kalanick]

The big dog, it's not okay.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, it's very. That you're viewed entirely differently.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And I didn't, I hadn't consumed that information.

[Ben Horowitz]

It actually helped me because, you know, when we started the firm, we were the upstart and I, I talked just crazy about the other VCs and this and that and being a call them bitches. But like, at some point, like I could feel it turning and I remembered what happened to him and I was like. And we actually had a whole thing like, we're not the Pirates anymore. Don't say that type of stuff. Like, be chill.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

We had this thing where we would against lift. We would, we would recruit the drivers on Lyft to bring them over to Uber so that it was hard for Lyft to build supply and we would aggressively do it. And we had a program for it internally which we called Shoplifting.

[Ben Horowitz]

Just that, that name, by the way, like, forget about all the. I know some of the techniques I used. Very aggressive. But that name, you can't use that name.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's just not a thing. And I remember, you know, David Drummond from Google was on our board and he's like, you know, Travis, that's not a thing, dude, you've got to change it. And then I had of course like antitrust training which like at the time, again, I'm like this small startup kid, I'm like, antitrust? What the hell Is that legal? People telling me whatever. They're like, look, I'm like, I can't wait to have that problem, you know? And they're, they're like, they're like, look, here's the thing. And the way you call projects, it has to be appropriate for like a, a 10 year old basketball team. So it went from shoplift to the national. Sorry, the North American Championship Series. We call it the nacs. And we had a whole very heavy duty initiative called the NACS to like make sure that the North American Championship Series was won by us.

[Ben Horowitz]

That is hilarious. I didn't know about the North American championship.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Okay. So you go through this eight month period, you're in this hell, you're dealing with the lawsuits, you're sort of reflecting back, you're thinking about what's next and you say, hey, let's, let's build again.

[Travis Kalanick]

So what happened was, it's super interesting. So I had a buddy who started a thing right near the end of my Uber tenure and it was called Cloud Kitchens. And what happened was, is he. He's a real estate savant. Yeah, that's just the thing. And he was looking like real estate, like there's gotta be an angle in tech and real estate. How do we do this? And he got a property up actually, maybe. You know what, let me start. Even before this, we got Uber. We got Uber eats up. In 2015, we saw the first dark kitchens. I don't know, it was like late 15, early 16. We saw pictures of commercial kitchens in Melbourne that were not restaurants that were on Ubereats. So the first dark kitchens were emerging. We're like, this is crazy, that's so interesting. And a buddy of mine who is this real estate savant sort of like caught wind of like what's going on and he had this idea which was, why don't we have a multi tenant approach to this? So 30 kitchens on a single property and basically lease these kitchens, which are 200 square feet, as delivery only locations. Anyways, he. I didn't really, I mean, I sort of knew what was going on, but not really. And then in the fall, like, like three months after I had left Uber, we meet up and he's telling me about it. He's like, yeah, you know, we got a few tenants, it's kind of working. He's like, I'm going to do like a few more of these. I think, I think I'm going to try to figure out how to do a few more. I'm like, you mean like a few thousand, Right. And so then we partnered up. I acquired it. I think they've done like their. They'd just done their Series A and so I acquired it and then we just went to town.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so it's really interesting because sometimes you start a thing and sometimes you're involved in a thing and then you come in. Like, I think there's an interesting story about like Elon was involved, like obviously involved in Tesla from the beginning, was an investor at first, but then went all the way in. And it's interesting how these ideas come. So I like to say that sometimes I.

[Podcast Host]

You.

[Travis Kalanick]

You have ideas. Sometimes ideas come to you.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

But if it's an idea that's meant to be, if it's your. It's meant to be your soulmate, you know it when you see it.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

And. And you just.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And sometimes you just. It's like a love affair. You just go for it. Some people have these long lists.

[Ben Horowitz]

Important distinction. Because there's a real difference between that and like what's known as the professional CEO. Right. Where nobody would ever consider. Nobody smart other than like a few, like, weird political people would ever consider Elon a professional CEO. It's like, oh, that's an idea. That's. I didn't start the company, but it's mine. That's mine. Like, it is me. And I know how to do it. And these guys did a great job in starting it, but there's no way they can do it. And that's. That. That's a different. A very different animal.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. So, you know, you fall in love with something and it's meant to be for you at that time, and you just go for it. And for me it was like, man, complexity is interesting to me. Things that are naturally not. They're not sexy on the surface is also weirdly interesting. And then like, especially if you can see that it's sexy, but people don't understand yet. That's where the sparkle in your eye, you kind of go, ah. You don't see what I see. And I'm pretty sure I'm right. And that's the fun part. Yeah. But this was a very complex thing because we're buying property, we're doing construction. We are then have a sales team that's selling to restaurants. A delivery only location. So they're expanding the restaurant chain. This isn't like I'm just getting into a vendor flow. I'm actually strict. We are str. We're making a strategic sell, which is you should expand. You should expand your business and you should expand it in a new way, which is two strategic moves at the same time.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

And by the way, you like complexity.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Which makes it.

[Travis Kalanick]

Exactly. Yeah. So then you're like, you're also. Okay. So we've woven technology through this whole real estate thing. We have a software stack that of course will work in this facility, but we'll also sell it to all your brick and mortars everywhere and shit. Let's just get some robotics going at the same time because, like, labor's your biggest problem if you're a restaurateur. If you solve that, it's really big. I can get into the strategy of why that is the whole thing. But just the brass tacks of the complexity of the project was interesting to me.

[Podcast Host]

So it was more kind of emergent or iterative than, hey, I've got this master vision for what it's all going to turn into.

[Travis Kalanick]

No, I think at that time, I like, if I don't see how it's big and meaningful, then the complexity, for complexity's sake is not a thing. There has to be, maybe somebody would say a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It has to be something meaningful. The meaningful thing about Adam's food, or what folks know as cloud kitchens, is can you make the preparation and delivery of a meal, a quality meal, so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store? If it does, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car and you go, okay, that's kind of a big deal. But then you say, what do you need to do to get there? Okay, well, you need to do e commerce for online food delivery, which means I need warehouses like Amazon style, except they're not just for logistics. It's not just picking, packing, sorting and then putting in a car. You also have to have manufacturing there too. Manufacturing, also known as a restaurant. People don't think of that, but you go to the labor statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Restaurants are manufacturers. Okay, so you have to have manufacturing and logistics infrastructure in the same place. That's real estate. Then you actually have to have automated production. That's the manufacturing. So robotic food robots, essentially, food robotics. And then you need to have robotic couriers. And you do those three things and then all of a sudden you are getting super high quality meals. Everything you could ever imagine. We call it the Internet food court. And it gets to you at the price of going to the grocery store. So you go, okay, nice. That's a nice story. Then you go, well, in 20 years, will robotics. I start with a really easy question. In 20 years, will people be cooking food regularly? And there will be a suite of robotics that basically will make higher quality meals. Like, there's just. It will be doing a better job than any of us could do. And I think most people, especially those in the robotics space, be like, of course, that's obvious that that's going to happen. And you're like, in 20 years, are we going to have, I call them autonomous burritos, like boxes on wheels that hold food at temperature, that come to your house? Yes. Everybody will say, yes, Absolutely. We see waymos cruising around all the. Already we just need a very cheap, a much cheaper version of that. So 20 years is like the easy one. Then you go, well, what about, what about 10, what about seven? What about five? And so that's when you're bending, you're bending reality, you're, you're bending it towards now. So everybody would agree that this is going to happen. And now it's about when and who. And then you say lfg. Now sometimes you're a little bit early and I would say on the, we were a bit early on cloud kitchens, but you build those bricks, all those things I talked about. We have hundreds of facilities in 30 countries. Many hundreds of facilities in 30 countries. Restaurants. Because the online delivery market keeps growing. The restaurants are doing better and better. So success is happening. Yeah, right. Well, restaurant world has high churn. Your churn starts coming down because volume's going up. We have applications that guarantee volume into these restaurants so that we can have successful tenants. Which means I'm a successful real estate guy. From a, from a business model perspective, the robotics start to work. You know, you were getting a manufacturing line for our robots up this in Q4. So like the pieces start to come together. You're like, production is now 50% cheaper. Once we get the couriers, the robotic couriers, you go from $12 a drop for each meal to 50 cents a dollar of distribution cost per meal. And now you're taking, now you're taking, okay, $6 out in labor. You're taking, let's call it $10 or $11 out on the courier, on the real estate, because you're going to get higher value volume because you're driving the prices down. You probably save a few bucks, maybe let's call it two or three bucks on occupancy per meal. And all of a sudden you've got like a 8 or $10 meal that's delivered to you all in.

[Ben Horowitz]

Plus you don't have to recruit drivers, you know, and get shoplifted.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's true. So that's right. You can't shoplift a ro. A robotic career.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

So we should need to stop using this term.

[Podcast Host]

So.

[Travis Kalanick]

You're so wrong.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, 100 facilities in 30 countries, thousands of employees, you know, over eight year period. And you're in stealth.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, dude, yeah. That's just super hard mode.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And the thing is, look, coming out of 17 things were, it was 150 articles a day of negative 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. You know, simple as that. And it was the right thing to do. Now we had to do hard mode is we had to recruit cold and it was always from a recruiter who has a stealth thing in LinkedIn and on their signature. Yeah, okay. And you had to go get customers with like stealth in LinkedIn. Like, and you're thousands of people. Big, this is hard mode. And it was interesting. We didn't know how long it was going to go.

[Podcast Host]

And you have to trust that no one's going to leak.

[Travis Kalanick]

You know, what happens is here's the cool part about stealth. If you go that long and I don't recommend this for anybody. Like it's nothing very special case. 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. 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 US but it's casinos Aquiltas in Latin America. And we have different names. That means like magical kitchens essentially. 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 Kitchen park in Middle East. We were going to go with Yala Kitchens. Like, you know, it's like a bunch of things like this. So it was very hard to connect the dots.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, you're extra stealth.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Anyways, and so at some point an even bigger vision for, for this company emerges to, to digitize the physical world where you know, we're category creating the, the creating a category. The term industrial AI.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Talk about when this bigger vision starts

[Travis Kalanick]

to culminate so look, the, the vision for digitizing the physical world for me started at Uber, okay? And treating atoms like bits started at Uber. You were, it was sci fi. At one point, I promise, you would touch glass and a car would come to you and you had satellite view. You're watching this car come to you. That was crazy. Now it's just like, whatever, okay? But it was crazy. At the time. Everybody's first Uber experience was a magical moment. So we, you know, digitizing the physical world was the thing. And this idea of what I would call an atoms based computer was something I sort of was working on in terms of her framework at the end of Uber, which is CPU manipulates bits, storage stores bits, network moves bits from point A to point B. Okay, well, CPU manipulates bits, what manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? That's real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B. What moves atoms? Well, that's transport or logistics. And those now are your three core computing resources in an atoms based computer. And you know what? Everything you learn in your computer science curriculum, everything you learn in engineering, it plays in the Adams world. Same frameworks, all the data structures, all the algorithms, it works exactly the same. And I get algorithms? Oh, totally, totally. In fact, we use, we use tcp. We use TCP Sawtooth to basically manage how much demand to send to certain kitchens based on capacity and reliability, as an example. But like we look at when I go and I'm messing around, like when I'm pitching this to a tech person who wants to understand that 10,000 square foot facility I call a 10,000 square foot semiconductor, and it's a 30 core processor. 30 kitchens, they're computing atoms, not bits. The corridors where the food moves, that's a network bus. The processing center is like an L1 cache or something similar.

[Ben Horowitz]

He's taking this analogy very far.

[Travis Kalanick]

The cold storage, where you have ice cream and juice, okay, that's pre computed items that sit on the edge, those are your akamai servers. The courier who comes and picks up the food and goes on the road and brings the. The meal to you, he that's a TCP packet. This shit goes forever.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's excellent.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so the vision started at Uber.

[Travis Kalanick]

So the point is, is that atoms based computation is a thing. And honestly, it's always been a thing. And the idea that, oh, okay, Uber was network for the physical world, digitized transportation. And by the way, almost done. Why almost done? Because it's almost fully software. Right. Waymos are cruising it's almost fully software. But what about CPU for the physical world and storage for the physical world? Basically digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate. There's just so much to do there. It's crazy. And so there's a huge amount of innovation. There's not just with what Adams is doing, but, like, there's going to be lots of stuff even beyond what we're doing. It's a portfolio strategy, really, if you're investing.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's very interesting because you kind of got to the conclusion that we've now all learned from AI, which is you can model just about anything with computation. And you basically were ahead of that in modeling this physical world, even metaphorically computation. And now kind of manifesting that probably entirely with AI on top of your computational.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's funny because the framework started near the end of my Uber time, really, when we were getting deep. We were going into deep learning and heavy duty ML and we would go after some of the best AI. We had an AI lab that was probably one of the best in the world as well.

[Podcast Host]

And.

[Travis Kalanick]

And I was always pitching that the physical world is more interesting for this stuff than the digital one. And look, I'm selling my book like, that's what we do. Right. But you have way many more variables. Axes of stochastic distribution.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Much harder problem.

[Travis Kalanick]

Which then means you're not going to solve it with an algorithm. You're going to solve it by empirically understanding how it works.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Right.

[Podcast Host]

So let's fast forward to how the. The bigger vision for Adams comes together in terms of the combination of companies.

[Travis Kalanick]

I keep stopping you. I know.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And then I want to get to the partnership because it also ties together.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. It's all good. So, okay, you gotta have your manufacturing logistics hub. That's the real estate. You've got to have your automated production, and you've got to have your autonomous burritos. The minute. About a year ago, I started looking into autonomous burritos and I went to China and checked out all of the Autonomy guys. I was here in the US Talking to a lot of the Autonomy guys. Word got out. They're like, travis is looking at Autonomy again. People started going, what's going on? And you know, folks like, you know, folks like Uber. Other partners across different categories were like, we're interested, like, for one reason or another. Because it's like you could even be doing. You could be like supply chain guy on food. You're also saying, I need to have. For business continuity and just like, peace of mind. I need to have another alternative for how these freight, how these trucks, heavy transport are going to move. And I need an alternative and I'd love to have a partner as an example, this kind of stuff. And so, okay, so partnered with a couple folks, actually created a new company to do it. Because funding autonomy through a sort of core food company, this wasn't going to work at first. And the reason why is because it's like these are just different profiles. A real estate company, this is like heavy duty software. Big, big money going after it.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's like a computer company trying to build a network company off of the side. You got to buy a networking company.

[Travis Kalanick]

So we just got. And these partners wanted a pure play and so we created that sort of near the end of last year. But what happened is it's like you gotta get. Okay, well now I need to get my team together. I need to get my guys from way back when, 2016, when we were 2017, where we were running hardcore at Autonomy. We need to get that going. Because if you're going to be in the specialized robotics game, you have to have autonomy for yourself. You have to. Your robots are moving and acting in the physical world and you cannot depend on only one company that has an existence proof. Now, of course Tesla's going to get there sometime soon or maybe some amount of time, we don't know exactly. You can't be dependent in that way. And so, okay, get your team together. Eric Meihofer, who ran atg, is already running my food robotics division, that's Uber's advanced technology group is working for us. And then Anthony Levandowski, who is one of my top leads on Autonomy back at Uber, was running Pronto, which was an autonomous mining company, let's call it off road autonomy, but in a workflow or category where it's like much more than just like this thing needs to move. It's like, how does it move? What is the context for which it's moving? It's like a very specialized thing. I was the biggest investor in Pronto. I'm like, let's go. So acquired Pronto and now I'm in the mining business. But it's not like I didn't know about it. I was the biggest investor in it to begin with for a good reason. It's one of the most beautiful and interesting autonomy categories or use cases. And on our mining business we, you know, we have, our mission statement is more productive mines to power Earth's industries. We can go to a gold, a gold mine CEO right now and say would you like to get 20% more gold per year? We don't get no right now. He says prove it. He says prove it. And we're like, let's go. But that's what's happened is so separately, Pronto is working on mining for eight years on their own. Seven, eight years on their own. Go ahead.

[Ben Horowitz]

Also a great target for Autonomy because you know, maybe the worst job for humans there is is the mining jobs, right?

[Travis Kalanick]

And we have so our mining customers. Because we're operating in a bunch of mines around the world, our mining customers have existential safety problems, or let's call safety issues safety concerns. Like where bad things can happen on any given day and you've got real people that are putting their lives on the line when they're at these mines. And so when you automate certain parts of mining, you dramatically improve safety. And I mean in a real way that's like when you look at the work that's being done and how it's being done, it's a little bit heart wrenching when you are exposed to it and you see how minds work, it's not the mind's fault. It's just the nature of the work. And there's a massive safety upside that goes along with the productivity upside, which is really special. So what happened is, is that Pronto just now is coming past human productivity. So it's like you do, it's like any enterprise software company, you do some cool pilots with big companies, you got stuff and you're like, dude, I got like, I've got like eight seats at this 10,000 person company. And you're like, okay, maybe. And then all of a sudden it's better. And in the Autonomy world, it's about. It's better than human productivity. That means your mines and the quarries. And it's like, it's like exactly go time. That's when you hit the gas. So we are going to see super exponential. We're seeing it. We're in the middle of it right now. Super exponential growth on the mining side, which is super special. These guys ran a very lean startup for a long time. And now I'm going to their customers who are begging us to move faster and get more out there. We have to manufacture kits. Sorry. We have to do supply chain and manufacture the kits. We have to install these kits on these machines that are in the middle of the Amazon or on the border of Saudi and Iraq or like in these crazy wild places and do it fast and then do the change management at every one of These mines. So they're like, it's time to go, let's go. And they're pushing us. And so our, you know, how we talk to them is like, look, we were a lean startup and we're going to muscular.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And that's how I talk to the team too. Because you don't want to get fat. It's like lean muscle, you know.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

But we need some protein shakes and creatine and things like that. And it's about process, professionalizing a lot of this stuff. But it's, in some ways the growth there is almost deterministic as long as you do the professional things to like, get all that stuff in mind. But what it means is that existing minds are going to be producing more and they're going to be able to go much further and getting more and new minds are going to emerge that couldn't. That were not viable before. And what that means for AI, what that means for progress here and everywhere. Super big deal.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And so to, to continue, we'll get to the partnership conversation. At what point does this become sort of. Are you thinking from the beginning this is a conglomerate or at what point does this become all wrapped up in the, in the atoms?

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, so this, I mean, the, the fundraise was part of it. So what happened is, is we started the fundraise and you know, Ben remembers this because I gave him a preview at first in Vegas actually. And I'm like, I was like the guy with a trench coat that's got like 20 watches. I' watch. Do you want. I got a. I got all kinds of watches. And he's like, dude, I just want the whole freaking trench coat, dude. Like, I, you know, the, the idea being I don't want to invest in mining or transport or food. I want the things that you're doing and let's be partners for all the things you do. And so that's. That was the impetus for bringing the companies together. And the funding itself. Yeah, the creation of Adams and the funding itself being at what we would call top co. Level.

[Podcast Narrator]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so now it's just one entity. I mean, there's sub entities there all over the place, but. But it's one equity structure which is great for the employees and great for me because managing. I honestly, I don't know how Elon does it or did it slash does it. It's pretty wild. And I'm really glad I don't have that headache, to be honest.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very complicated alignment, but you Know, it's a kind of an interesting point because it's very obvious, you know, when we talked about it here, the way it should work. And I think the narrative of how these things get built is mistold constantly by the industry, by the press, which is if you hear about, how did Facebook come about, how did Google come about, how did Tesla come? Oh, they had this idea and the idea was to do this, but that's not really what happened. A lot of motherfuckers had that idea. You know, there's a lot of those ideas out there. And like, if you look at Tesla, there was a very famous documentary called who Killed the Electric Car? That came out before Tesla. And if you're an entrepreneur watching that, what you would see is big oil, big auto, big government. We're never going to let that happen. They would kill you. But then the reality is, oh, Elon Musk, that motherfucker's hard to kill, right? So he, by himself, kind of decarbonized American auto industry, which is really unbelievable in retrospect. But then it gets told, right? Like if you listen to the politicians now, they're like, oh, he didn't build Tesla. He just like struck a gold mine and is just pulling the gold out. Like all those people built it. But why didn't all those people build another Tesla? Like, there's only one. Because there's only one non fungible, very rare person in that equation who could do that and same. And that's why there's only one SpaceX. And that's why, you know, that's why Meta's Meta and Friendster's Friendster and all that kind of thing.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's a good one. I haven't heard that one for a long time. Yeah, it's good.

[Ben Horowitz]

And so to build, you know, to build a company, you know, a great company, it's always a great entrepreneur. And so when we looked at it, we're like, there's a very few entrepreneurs in the history of the Valley that built something like Uber. And that Uber, basically it survived and is still a very valuable company without them, which almost, you know, like, that never happens without the founder. I mean, it usually turns to crap very fast. And so that was what we like. Yes, the idea is great, the ambition is amazing. It's going to be amazing for the world if he pulls it off. But we want to invest in the guy who could pull it off. And that's kind of what drove the whole thing.

[Travis Kalanick]

And there's a fun thing, I realized this at Uber too, is That I think in many ways maybe Bezos was the guy to sort of really go there. Which is the only constraint to your imagination is management capacity. Because, like, look at all the things that Amazon started doing. They were earlier than everybody else, starting to do lots of things.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so I'm like, by the way, another good one.

[Ben Horowitz]

How many motherfuckers had the idea for an online bookstore, online, retail or online, Any of that.

[Travis Kalanick]

There we go.

[Ben Horowitz]

And how many Amazons?

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, totally.

[Ben Horowitz]

You know, and, and by the way, Jeff, like everybody who knows Jeff, everybody who's heard him talk, you're like, oh, he's very special. That's a special CEO right there. And look, and that's our business is to invest in that kind of very, very special individual. And they're super rare.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so I think in many ways Bezos may have been, I always want to say the OG on something, but then you find out a hundred years earlier somebody else did that. But of our time where it's like, how did AWS happen? It literally had nothing to do with a bookstore.

[Podcast Narrator]

Really?

[Ben Horowitz]

Nothing.

[Travis Kalanick]

I mean, there's some, there's some fun stories they tell, but it's like this is just a whole new thing.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, but yeah, by the way, it wasn't like the shit that was running Amazon.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, totally. That's my point.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. So, so once you get the foothold, the beach head, whatever, and it's working, you can start going. You Uber rides, then it's Uber eats, then it's Uber autonomy, then it was uber freight, then it's like Uber AI labs. Like, you can start letting your imagination with constraints start to do really interesting things. And so where you start matters.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, you're right. And it has to be like you need knowledge. Yeah, right. Like the thing that Amazon did have on AWS is they had knowledge of what it meant to run these things at scale because they were the first to get to, or one of the first like five to get to that kind of scale. And so they had that knowledge. Totally different business. Totally different. But they had the knowledge about what the product should be. And because he's a customer of these things, right, Ed, Uber, he all of a sudden he knows what the network is, he knows how to do that. And although it's a totally different business, that knowledge is transferable if you can scale and execute and expand management.

[Travis Kalanick]

And sometimes you go to. Sometimes those. Look, adjacent categories are way easier than whole new off the rails categories.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes. And there's also, I mean, the amazing thing about AWS Is it's one of the few expansions where nobody would think, well what I want to buy from Amazon is like a compute cloud. Like nobody was thinking that at the time. There's always, oh, I should sell them more stuff they want to buy from me. But that's a whole nother thing. But if you have that level of Jeff skill which in terms of organizational design, cultural continuity, that guy is peak bezos.

[Travis Kalanick]

Hard to beat.

[Ben Horowitz]

Very good.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. So where you start matters.

[Ben Horowitz]

Don't let him living his best life. He gets a lot of bad PR for that money.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I was wondering, Jaz, you could have had a version of living your best life where you're just like, hey, this is what I do, you know? Or was it like I'm going to keep doing it forever? Or was it like, hey, I, I chased the promised land, I got really far, but I could have got so much further, I'm gonna get there next. What was the sort of motivation to just get right back in the.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's just I love being in the arena fighting it and it's not.

[Ben Horowitz]

And by the way, he's one of the very rare, rare guys who made as much money as he did and wanted to keep playing.

[Travis Kalanick]

I mean start over basically. Not totally, but almost completely. Right?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So the. Yeah, you gotta really want because also remember I did it stealth.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So what it means, here's the thing about stealth is that stealth and starting

[Ben Horowitz]

at the bottom, right. Doing it by hand.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

Like not, not like I walked in, I acquired this company, executive chairman, I, I acquired, I acquired cloud kitchens, partnered with a buddy of mine, Diego. Right. And there were like six people in the company that I acquired. Okay. So it was so funny because you gotta think the last all hands I did had 20,000 people. The next all hands I did. And it's the only company I was in, had six. And I stood in front just like the same and I'm like, let's go guys, let's do this charts. You know, like here, what's happening? You know, let's roll, let's do it. And these guys who like I just walked in, they're like, what the fuck just happened? They went to work that morning at a six person startup and an hour later the founder of Uber is now the CEO.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Yeah. That is wild, by the way. Like we've seen it so many times where somebody gets to the penthouse and they're like, oh, I want to do a new thing. But they don't want to go all the way down to the Ground floor and start at the bottom, fucking putting the building together. Okay. Now you're in a fucking shotgun house. They want to jump all the way to the. Which never works. You can't start at the top.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. And the bottom thing also is about. There's a humility thing to it and there's like, there's an anti fame thing to it. And what I mean by that is imagine you start from the bottom. You also do it stealth. It means you plus everybody in your company gets fulfillment from the work they do every day. Not because they're going to get famous, but because they enjoy the people they're working with and what they're doing day in, day out.

[Ben Horowitz]

By the way, if you can pull it off, that's a very significant cultural advantage. Because as soon as the company feels like it's doing something for the outside status, it's a dangerous.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's a volatile situation.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's right. You start making decisions based on external validation versus internal correctness.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. You lose true north.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. And that's part of the upside of stealth and part of what I was doing because, remember, I wanted to build without worrying about what the New York Times was saying. So it starts with internal correctness versus external validation.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Which once, once the company starts doing that, it's hard to. Like, you already see this with the big labs. People keep going, oh, why did the big labs, you know, smack themselves in the face? Well, it's because they need that external validation for their employees because their employees are addicted to it. I want to be a good guy. I want to be a good AI researcher. So go ahead and tell them that we're going to take all the jobs. It's like, really, you want to say that. You don't even know if it's true, but you want to say that, well, why are you doing that? Well, it's that external validation is so important to them. And it's so important not just to the people running it, but to all the people in the company. And so they almost have to do it even though they. If you wanted. If that's what you think, then work on, like, those problems work on like, oh, you don't want it to reward hack. Well, why don't you try and solve that as opposed to go running your mouth? Because you care about the external validation more than the actual thing. And that's the. It's very easy to slip into that. Like many companies slip into that. And it's.

[Travis Kalanick]

And here's the thing.

[Ben Horowitz]

Once it gets out of the Bag. It's very hard to.

[Travis Kalanick]

There's a human nature aspect to being proud of what you do, wanting your mom to be proud of what you do and your community at large.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So there is a human nature piece which I was malnourishing by being stealth, but it forced a emotional intelligence that's very powerful now that we're moving out of stealth.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And it will be interesting to see how the coming years go.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. That's going to be a very interesting cultural case study. See what the company is like over time.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

So we've talked about, you know, what books were to Amazon, you know, food is to atoms in the sense of it's where you start and where you start matters. So why was it important that you started at food in terms of what's generalizable, what's like. Yeah, same word.

[Travis Kalanick]

So here's the thing, right? So what cloud kitchens was. Was all about the way I saw it. And this was what I brought to the party. But it was like, this is digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate. It was called we. I called it when I came. People know it as cloud kitchens because that's what we'd sell restaurant customers on. But the name of the company was City Storage Systems. Ah, okay. Storage for the physical world. This is digitized real estate.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

This is a food computer with a basis in real estate storage.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Ben Horowitz]

That needs a network.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. So this was the name of the company from the beginning. Or once I came in. Okay. It was purposely boring because I was going stealth. You imagine selling something called City Storage Systems. Like, people are like, what is that? They'll forget literally 20 minutes after you talk to them. They're like, city CSS. They're like thinking HTML. They're like, they're confused. They don't know what's going on. So for me, the framework was already there. I already thought about this as digitized manufacturing and real estate. About an atoms based computer, about a food computer. And that's why I was excited. The idea captured me because of that. And so it wasn't like, why'd you start with food? It was like I saw something different than even maybe the. The. The original team that was working on it saw it, but I saw where it was going and. And in the way that I just described. And that's what the romance was about. And yes, there are lots of digitized manufacturing problems out there.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Like mining, like mining like a whole bunch of other things. But this just captured me at the right time. You know, I was Sitting at the bar and somebody came up and we had a great conversation, you know, went to Cabo the next weekend and then just put a ring on it, like, let's go.

[Ben Horowitz]

Serendipity, man. Yeah, that's a real thing.

[Travis Kalanick]

So. And that's okay, because the thing is, if you believe that you can, like, find something, make it work, just grind it out, make it work, will it into working, your imagination can keep going. So for me, it wasn't. It's not as much about where you start. It's about making sure you're passionate about where you start and then where you go, you have no idea. And this is very much. I go back to the Bezos style, which is like, your imagination will just keep coming up with new cool ideas. And so it's not about where you start, it's about why you start and how you build a culture that allows you to keep going into new places over time and lets your imagination, when it's right, flourish.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's why it's not an idea, it's an idea maze. And the more you learn about the idea and all the things and you don't know any. Like, the thing that is so hard to understand coming from the outside is, you know, so little when you start. Like when he's. I mean, he didn't even tell me he started. He didn't know fucking 1% of the fucking problems he was going to run into with cloud kitchens.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, for sure.

[Ben Horowitz]

Because you've got to really get into it.

[Travis Kalanick]

By the way, what tech guy knows anything about real estate? Yeah, 0.0.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. So it's all. The whole thing is a learning process and then the best entrepreneurs can take those learnings and then apply, multiply the applications. And that's, you know, it's just a very, very rare thing. Like, look, the fact that Elon has taken SpaceX to Starlink, to data centers in space. It's just like nobody would start there

[Travis Kalanick]

or think about this. The first Roadster is now Optimus.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay. Talk about.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes. Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

Letting the imagination flourish is a beautiful thing.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Understanding what the core, core principles are and applying them.

[Podcast Host]

So with that said, paint us a picture about the future of Adams or more about the. Or maybe say some of the guiding principles that will dictate, you know, which industries you enter next or how you think about where you go from there.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, look, I tell people I'm very focused right now because it's only food, mining and transport. There's so many things I haven't done yet. Like, like I'm so constrained right now. But it goes back to that thing I was saying before is you've got to find that beachhead, make it flourish, build management capacity to solve 98% of the problems that are going on, and then you have the room to go do a new thing. And really what it is, it's, you know, I've been accused of using the marathon analogy too much.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna live up to that. Which is, you know, at some point you might be doing a business and it just starts working. I. I started seeing that on rides at Uber, where it was like, I had my leads in different GEOs and I'd call them up because we would jam on hard ideas and crank and all this. We didn't have much to talk about.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Because shit was working.

[Travis Kalanick]

It was just worked, you know, and they're like, travis, we got this. I don't know why you're calling me right now.

[Ben Horowitz]

You know, so actually this brings up one of the things that he did best at Uber, having had to deal with these guys was like, if you look at most companies, most of the, really the big tech companies that, that emerged in the 2000 2000s and tens, the management team were kind of professional middle managers, et cetera. He had so many guys who you would have gone, no, that's a founder. You know, that's a founder over there. That's a founder over there. That's a. That's an actual entrepreneur. And it's amazing that he's not building his own company because he's, like, working for Travis. But that enabled them, like, to get to a multitude of ideas. You need, like, a team like that. And there's just not that many people who can build that kind of. It's just a. It's a very hard to attract and maintain that level of capability because those guys, unless you're building something absolutely spectacular, you know they're not going to be in. And even if you are, you're dealing with. You got to be able to manage that well.

[Travis Kalanick]

What happens is the management of it becomes an empowerment puzzle.

[Podcast Narrator]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Ben Horowitz]

By the way, not unlike here, but I know.

[Travis Kalanick]

I was about to say, so you've got, you've got. I've got, you know. Yeah, I'm running Uber, let's say I have, I don't know, five continents going at any given time. You have an engineering team that's multiplexed across a finance team that's multiplexed across product. Like, there's a lot going on. And the only way it works is, okay, you have that entrepreneur there. But they have to be basically, empowerment starts with alignment, which is. Okay, what's the strategy? Are we aligned on it?

[Ben Horowitz]

That's the challenge. Right? Empowerment plus alignment.

[Travis Kalanick]

So alignment on the front end, accountability on the back end. And we would call this let builders build

[Podcast Host]

anyway.

[Ben Horowitz]

And there's also. So you've got alignment, but alignment is multidimensional because it's alignment on. Okay, what are the goals? What are the objectives? Also, what is the culture like?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

What is the behavior you guys are doing over there? Because that's going to affect us over here and us over there and so forth. So, like, we can't dilute the culture because we gave you autonomy. We've got to have that. And that, that, that combination is. It's like a very high level management skill.

[Travis Kalanick]

And that leader has to be good enough to do it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And that leader then has to work with the CFO and the CFO's people, the product, the head of product and the product guys, people, engineering and engineering people, to make sure that it works. Because if I'm a single point of failure, it ain't scaling on 24 time zones. There's no fricking way. And I think that's the difference between what we did@uber versus we're seeing how a lot of other companies are expanding internationally. They were buying things like I was like, well, I buy. We could just freaking do this. Well, the city's a city, let's go.

[Ben Horowitz]

And then if you buy it, guess what? You got another culture.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Okay. And now you got another reputation. And then that reputation is going to seep back. And then, okay, now you don't have a culture. And by the way, because how are those motherfuckers getting away with that in Korea when we can't get away with that in the U.S. like all those things.

[Travis Kalanick]

And by the way, your product, your technology is a reflection of your culture. So then what happens is you just have the cultures reflected in the technology and in how even that technology is built. The product decisions that are made. And now you got to fuse these products and technologies together, which is very hard two years later, maybe.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, exactly.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's why I didn't buy Lyft,

[Ben Horowitz]

by the way. That was a very different culture.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. I can attest this was the reason I couldn't do it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, super interesting.

[Ben Horowitz]

The.

[Podcast Host]

And so you're constrained now by, by three different industries. What is the.

[Travis Kalanick]

Can you take him off Script.

[Podcast Host]

No, no. What is the criteria that's going to determine if and when you go into another.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, it's the beachhead thing and it's the. It's the. I'll go back to the marathon analogy is that if it's getting easy, you must make it hard again.

[Ben Horowitz]

But you got to get it too easy.

[Travis Kalanick]

You got it. You've got to start. It's a. And it's a vibe. It's like a. It's like a. It's like a feeling where you basically, I'm constantly creating problems. Yeah, I'm a problem creator. A problem creator might be like. Like creating a problem might be like, hey, let's do Uber in China, okay? That's creating a real fricking problem. And by the way, you don't have a full understanding of that problem when you create it. And why is that hard? Because, well, if you create a problem, you have to solve it. So I have this framework I call the meta problem, which is the derivative of your problem creation dt must be less than or equal to the derivative of your problem solving dt. And if it's not, you have a real fucking problem.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, well, then you're underwater. Yeah. Then you're underwater. And then you can drown. And then. Yeah, if you have multiples of those, you're really underwater.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's right. So when you make. When you create a problem, you're guessing at what your capacity is to solve problems, and you're guessing 6 months, 12, 18 months ahead with only a certain understanding of what the nature of the problem is. And when you get it really wrong, you're underwater. And then you must stop all problem creation so that you can get back above water. And then when you go from your neck and then you're like, at your waist in terms of how underwater you are with your problem solving. When you're at your waist, you're like, oh, I could get to here. You create more problems. You let the problem creation spigot open.

[Ben Horowitz]

And by the way, when you talk about capacity, a lot of it in this case is he's talking about his personal capacity, because he's got to be able. If he's creating a new large problem, he's got to be able to not pay attention in nearly the level of detail to the other parts of his business. Those have to be working, because if he's solving problems over there and creating a big new problem and that one gets in trouble, like, then. So it's not just like, capacity of the team, it's also personal capacity.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, it's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of both.

[Ben Horowitz]

And like, it's a real.

[Travis Kalanick]

I never felt like, I never felt like rideshare was solved because what happened? Oh, it's time for autonomy.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Podcast Narrator]

Okay.

[Travis Kalanick]

All right, let's go.

[Ben Horowitz]

By the way, you were right about that.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Just despite.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

I'm not gonna even mention names.

[Podcast Host]

And so if you, if you had still been running Uber, you know, in this other universe or some of the vision that you have here with atoms, would that have been, you know, could you have gone to mining with like,

[Travis Kalanick]

it's a continuation of the same vision.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Right. So the digitizing the physical world, the atom space computation, that was already set.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so if the future of food is about. Infrastructure, automated production, automated logistics, that's the future of Uber eats too. Now, it doesn't mean when you're an OEM and you make a food computer, it doesn't mean you have to make all the parts.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so, but, but it, but the future is the same.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so, so that's my point is that, is that once you have that framework, why is the framework important? It's because it tells you what the future is going to be. It's correct. And it's also compelling. Like, it's interesting once you start seeing things, like, by the way, I built with my team, like 500 cloud kitchens, facilities around the world. Like, you could just look at it as like, why are you building kitchens? Which, of course, I sort of would go around all the time and tell people, I'm just your local home humble kit. I'm just your local humble kitchen builder. You know, just sort of messing around. But like, when you're hiring, it's like, why does this matter?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Oh, that's right. It's a food computer.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

But once. So it's a mix of. It's telling you where the future is going and it's pointing the way towards where the interesting things are. And it's helping you describe this in a way to really top quality talent who now can see what you see and can get excited about it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. And there's another kind of interesting thing which we went through when we were understanding the business, which is unlike in a computer where you have storage and that storage kind of becomes obsolete over time, in the physical storage world, in real estate, if you have the computer optimizing the storage, the storage becomes more valuable. So you build the food computer and the storage is essential to deliver the end service, particularly before there's OEMs, and everybody knows there's a food computer available, but that food computer multiplies the value of the real estate. So it's weird. Imagine a computer that multiplied the value of its storage. I guess it's a little like in AI, like if you've got data, all of a sudden data has become valuable.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

In a way that it wasn't really before.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, well, or you think of it this way, we could go to a data center. That's real estate. Right. How much, how many, how many tops are now happening at a Data center today versus 20 years ago?

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So. And how much value is coming out of those tops?

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Travis Kalanick]

So the value of a data center in terms of what it provides society is going up over time dramatically, and there's a lot of happy data center owners right now because of it, no doubt. Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

My friend Rob Roy. Yeah, shout out to Rob.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, we'll get him on soon. So speaking of, you know, painting this vision to talent and just talking about where the future is going, talk more about the emerging category that Adams sits within, or you're calling industrial AI.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, so look, I, I did a, A vision letter when we launched Adams that outlined sort of vision for like physical AI, where we sit in it and even went into like, what a physical AI stack is. And it's really, in some ways, I, it was like, it was philosophy about where the technology world in the, in, in. In the tech industry, in the physical world, where it's going to go. But what I didn't do was get to the brass tacks and sort of when you look at, okay, well, there's software, there's bits that are affecting how atoms, what happens to atoms, like how they're assembled, where they go, what function do they do in the physical world? We basically, we started. I'm all over the place right now. Cut, edit. But. We wanted to create. We wanted to create an easy way to understand what it means. And I said, okay, Adam's mission, physical automation to transform industries. You're like, okay, okay. Kind of gets me there. But what does that mean exactly? Well, it means we take entire industries that are ripe for automation and AI and in doing so, that these are physical industries and in doing so just completely transforms them in a sense.

[Ben Horowitz]

You've had one idea like the Uber and Adams. Adams is the evolution of Uber in a sense, in that you kind of said, okay, we're the Cisco of the physical world. And then you're like, well, what about the other parts of the Physical world. And you built that, that you extended that vision into the computer and now you're adding the parts.

[Travis Kalanick]

But the computer is around an industry.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

So we make computers for industries. Yeah, those computers are.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right. That's an important kind of distinction. They're industry specific computers, but generalized networks in some sense.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yes. So you go, okay, why are we doing transport? Well, because you've got to have wheelbase for robots. Okay, cool. But like actually what it means is every industry is moving things. There's some movement of things eventually and you must have wheelbase as part of what they do if you want to automate full stack that industry as an example. But transport itself is an industry too, but maybe a horizontal one versus a vertical.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right?

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Peter Thiel a decade ago famously sort of talked about how we've had so much progress in bits but not in atoms. And because regulation or for whatever reason, it was just easier in bits. And yeah, here we are and we're finally, yeah, getting to it in real life.

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, and it's like, I think the entrepreneurs that are coming up since the uber time are not scared of regulation the way the bits.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, well that was a breakthrough in a large sense that you made.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah. And so what it means they've been

[Ben Horowitz]

trying to regulate bits lately.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, totally. So, but these go together because it's like once the bits start controlling atoms in the physical world, then the regulators are in the gang big time. And because that's generally how regulation works, it's about our physical world. And that's how it's been for thousands of years, really certainly hundreds. And so yeah, once you get in the physical world you're like, okay, regulatory is a thing. And you say, okay, when in the past have we seen something like this? And it's like if you start studying the second industrial revolution, there is so many parallels between what the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Fricks, like you just go through the list. Fords, the Fords, what those guys had to deal with in that massive rapid change at that moment.

[Ben Horowitz]

Same very similar political climate. Yeah, that's right.

[Travis Kalanick]

The, the, the New Dealers

[Ben Horowitz]

were not that different than the, the, you know, the, the, the current in terms of their complete hatred of the. That's right, industrialists.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay, so like there's a guy, Frick, who I think was Carnegie's partner and this is about steel and how to process steel and, and do it at scale. I, I believe this story is accurate. Let's just say mythology, possibly true, but I believe it's true. He a anarchist Broke into his office while he was working. This is in, like, the eight, like the early 1900s or late 1800s. An anarchist broke into his office, shot him in the neck. He got it stitched up, went back to work that day. And, like, somebody's gonna look it up. I. I believe it's true.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

But somebody should. Should fact check. But you get the vibe of what's going on and how those guys rolled. And think about some of the entrepreneurs today that roll that way. Not all of them do. The bits guys don't necessarily roll this way, but the Adams guys roll this way, definitely. Right. And so the second Industrial Revolution, and you look at the characters and what they had to deal with and the adversity they had to go through, by the way. They're also. None of these guys is Jesus. So they had their. They had their flaws, too. But there's a really. There's a very interesting parallel to what's happening, slash, about to happen now with, like, the coming industrial age. If we're selling our own book, we would call it the Adam's Age.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a book, actually, that's very interesting on the kind of building of the war machine by the industrialists which won us World War II. No question. And the resistance that they got. It's called Freedom's Forge. And, you know, it was this guy Bill Knudsen, who was like, the complete badass, who figured out, like, the mass production at Ford and then got in an argument with Henry Ford and went to Chevy or went to GM and, like, built Chevy and like, all that kind of thing, then went to work for the government for a dollar and to industrialize the nation. And the way he got fought by the press and everybody, like, on the most basic thing, like, he's like, well, if we tell him to shut down making cars and cars, by the way, employ 20% of America at the time. If we tell them to shut down making cars to make tanks and other things, then we're going to have to give them some money. So can we give them cost plus 7%, which seemed very reasonable reading about it. They're going to profit on the war. Da, da da da da. Eleanor Roosevelt, everybody was just out to kill this guy somehow. But that kind of resistance is, like, very similar to what we're seeing in data centers today and that kind of thing where I think the governor of New York just banned data centers in the state.

[Travis Kalanick]

There's a lot of parallels politically, which actually, I would just call that resistance to change.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. And Nature, very fast change.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's correct. So I, you know, I like, you know, I sort of think of it as like the most important truth seeking is the seeking of valuable unknown truths. But if you're good at finding valuable unknown truths, you're creating change, then you know things other people don't know, which means you can do things that other people can't do. And the better you are at it, the faster the change comes.

[Ben Horowitz]

And the matter that.

[Travis Kalanick]

And the faster the change comes, the more nature will do what it does. It's called resistance to change.

[Podcast Host]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so you have to figure out how to bring big time progress to overwhelm resistance to change. And you also have to build trust as best as you can so that you have more advocates versus adversaries. And this is the dynamic. And one of the things I want to say just on the industrial.

[Ben Horowitz]

The industrial, very hard to do, by the way.

[Travis Kalanick]

Very hard.

[Ben Horowitz]

Everybody loves progress. It's change they can't stand.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, those two happen to go together. So. Yeah. So like. But on the industrial AI thing, it was like my whole vision note was physical AI and like this theoretical thing. And it was very academic and theoretical. And I want to say, I want to get something that was practical, brass tacks. Industrial AI is basically this stack of software, sensors, robotics, machinery that automates an industry. And we take it one industry at a time. And it just became much more real and clear about what it is. You go physical AI, you're like, oh, so you're doing a humanoid? I'm like, no, no, we're the non humanoid guys. I don't have a problem with them. But that's not what we do. You're like, oh, do you do like some military thing? You're like, no, that's not my thing either. You know, it's like. So this felt very clean about what it is we're about and how we're going after it.

[Ben Horowitz]

By the way, you know, a really interesting point on this whole thing is one of the things that we completely forgot how to do. We were the best in the world by far. We taught the world how to do was manufacture. And now we've basically forgotten how to do it as a country other than like Elon. Like, if you need somebody who knows how to manufacture, you literally have to get them from Elon. And we're going to have to relearn that. And actually the beginnings of that are literally data centers. That is a manufacturing problem to a large extent with the cooling and the power. And you've got to Build your own power and all that kind of thing. And there's so much resistance to that from the exact people who were just harping and harping for years about all the manufacturing jobs are going away. Well, they're back, but we don't want them. And so that's how tough this story is and this kind of narrative is.

[Travis Kalanick]

Thank God there's still enough places that are still welcoming data centers that it's not like the federal system is a wonderful thing because it's like you have this competition of some kind of states. Yeah. It's really interesting how that works out.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Otherwise we'd be Europe.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Okay, so we were talking offline. You were saying when you started Uber, you, you know, worked with people who would choose to work with you. Yeah. Now you're in a different position. Yeah. You have, you know, a bit more choice. You've been building in stealth.

[Travis Kalanick]

Sure.

[Podcast Host]

Now you're this, you're coming out story.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Talk to us about, you know, what kind of team you're building here, how folks can help.

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, look, we multiple. We just multiply the number of industries we're going after by three. So that's a kind of a thing. And each of them is a multi trillion dollar.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Opportunity. And you know, look, I had, I had some awesome guys like, you know, this is kind of a funny thing to say, but when you make somebody hundreds of millions of dollars, it's hard to hire them again.

[Ben Horowitz]

So I've never had great success hiring rich people.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. So there you go. So you know, but, but you know, there's the crew like Emil Michaels, now under Secretary of Defense. But he was my right hand on doing just epic deal making and strategic moves. I need the next Emil Michael, if that makes sense. Like a head of Corp Dev biz Dev that can build an inspired team. An inspiring team. As an example, We're in the market for a general counsel. So we're looking for somebody who can ride shotgun and make sure that I'm. So I like to go to the line. We should be like a few inches off the line. That's a good thing to do. And then of course, it's just, I need a CEO of my mining business. I need to build technical leadership across the board from Autonomy, Heavy Duty Robotics. And it's really like we have lots of folks coming in like all the time, but it's like those epic leaders that can inspire their team to just go above and beyond and do really like make magic. So we're all, no matter where you are. As an entrepreneur, the talent game is the game. And again, when you multiply the industries by three, you're, we're back in the flow. And because we were stealth for so long, we weren't in the flow. We were cold calling everybody. And I think it's one of the beautiful things about us being back out there is okay, like, we can now have, like, a. A place for people to understand who we are, what we're about, and I can start putting teams together that can be out there in a very public way and, And. And let people know the great work we're doing.

[Podcast Host]

So. And if you're joining now, you're joining both with the benefit of having, you know, all the lessons you've learned and things you prove out with cloud kitchens and of course, Uber before. That's almost two decades, but early enough such that there's the upside of, you know, enormous opportunity going forward.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

And the ability to do something, like, super meaningful. I mean.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Save kids from working in the mines, you know, basically making it so that everybody can have great food. Like, you know, instead of, like, eating

[Travis Kalanick]

super healthy food that gives people their time back.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

While also saving money. Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. It's a hell of a mission. Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So we're having a lot of fun. It's good times. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

It's a great place to wrap. All right, Travis, thank you.

[Ben Horowitz]

Awesome.

[Travis Kalanick]

Thanks, guys.

[Podcast Narrator]

Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to, like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X16Z and subscribe to our [e-mail] thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. Should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investment, please see a16z.com disclosures.