Six months. Day-one infrastructure. Equity from day one. A clear path to a standalone company with outside-led capital by month nine. This is the program for operators who want to build a company without spending the first year re-inventing what every studio has already solved.
Most founders spend their first 6 months building infrastructure. You'll spend it building your company.
Initial check from Round Z to cover personal runway, validation costs, and incorporation. Wired on day one.
Meaningful founding-team equity from incorporation. You're the operating CEO, not an EIR-with-options.
First three hires routed off the work-tested Forkaia pool. Zero recruiter fees. Average hire in under two weeks.
Brand, design, legal, ops, payroll, accounting, IT — all provided. You opt out as you scale, not opt in.
Stealth's LP and operator network handles your outside-led round at month 9–12. You skip the cold-pitch grind.
Shared CRM with cross-portfolio customer intelligence. If we've sold to a buyer before, you start with the warm intro.
Either way, you leave with a real company.
For operators with a clear thesis they want to build into a company, and the conviction to lead it. You bring the idea and the obsession — we bring the system to compress 24 months of execution into 9.
For proven operators between things — late-stage employee at a unicorn, second-time founder between companies, exec from a great company looking to build. You bring execution; we bring the thesis from our internal pipeline.
Either refine your thesis or match to a Stealth thesis. Discovery interviews. Market map. Kill or commit by end of month.
25+ customer interviews. Pricing tested. First 3 LOIs in writing. Validation gate: 3 LOIs or kill the thesis.
Company incorporated. First 2 hires off Forkaia. MVP scoped. Brand and identity systems from Stealth Studio.
Product in hands of first paying customers. Pricing model tested. CRM live. First revenue dollar landed.
Distribution channel proven. Repeatable acquisition motion identified. Founder narrative for outside investors tightened.
Outside-led seed conversations begin. Stealth makes warm intros to its capital network. Data room assembled.
Months 7–12 are post-program: scaling toward outside-led seed or Series A with continued Stealth support.
We've placed 18+ operating CEOs into Stealth companies. The pattern repeats.
You've built something real — a product, a team, a business unit. The work speaks before you do.
Most of our FIRs are between second and third career chapters. Old enough to know how, young enough to grind.
You want the upside, you want the ownership, you want the responsibility — and you've thought about all three honestly.
You hear hard feedback without ego flares. You ask "why" before you defend.
This isn't a sabbatical or a learning experience. We are building real companies that need real CEOs.
If you've never shipped anything, you're not a fit yet — start with a Forkaia® task and come back.
Stealth is collaborative by design. If your model is "lone genius with a mission," you're better off solo-founding.
Studios run on weekly critique. If you can't take it, the program will eat you alive.
Standard founding CEO equity is 10–18% depending on track. Track A (you bring the thesis) is higher; Track B (we bring the thesis) is lower. Vesting is 4 years with a 1-year cliff. All equity is in the operating company, not in Stealth. As Stealth contributes capital, infrastructure, and IP, our stake is 30–50% pre-Series A, designed to be diluted normally through outside rounds.
$150K personal runway capital is wired on day one — yours to use for living expenses, validation costs, contractor work, etc. Once the company incorporates and starts paying salaries (typically month 3), you're on a market-rate salary for an early-stage CEO ($150K–$200K depending on location and the company's funding state). You're not a paid employee of Stealth; you're the founding CEO of your own company that Stealth has co-founded with you.
No. Stealth runs remote-first. Quarterly in-person all-hands. If you choose to work near other portfolio teams (LA, NYC, Austin clusters), Stealth covers co-working costs. The shared infrastructure is fully remote-accessible.
You have two options: pivot to a Track B thesis from Stealth's internal pipeline, or part ways with the $150K runway already paid (you don't owe it back). Approximately 30% of Track A FIRs pivot to Track B in the first 8 weeks. That's by design — killing bad ideas fast is the point.
Currently active theses (Q4 2026 cohort): AI infrastructure for vertical SaaS, energy-compliance software, creator economy infrastructure, healthcare workflow automation, and education technology. Stealth has built across all six sectors in our portfolio and won't take ideas outside areas where we have operating expertise.
Full-time. You should plan to spend the first 6 months exclusively on the program — this isn't a side project. Stealth founders typically work 50–60 hour weeks. The infrastructure exists so you can spend those hours on company-building, not on logistics.
You're never out — once you're a Stealth founder, you're permanently in the network. The 6-month program just marks the structured part. After that, your company graduates onto its own runway with continued access to Stealth infrastructure and capital introductions as long as it stays in the portfolio.
Submit the form below. We review weekly. If it's a fit, expect: 30-min intro call within 5 days → deeper 90-min thesis or experience deep-dive → reference checks → final dinner with Ali Sina and 1–2 portfolio CEOs. From application to decision is typically 4–6 weeks. We accept 4–8 FIRs per quarterly cohort.
A short application. We review weekly. Decision in 4–6 weeks.
If you want to follow what Stealth is building before applying, the easiest path is to subscribe to our quarterly outcomes report.
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