Keenan Wyrobek (Co-founder/CTO, Zipline)

Keenan Wyrobek, Co-founder and CTO of Zipline, joins Jim Belosic to talk about building one of the world's largest autonomous drone delivery companies. From creating ROS, the open source robotics platform that transformed robotics development, to launching lifesaving medical deliveries in Rwanda, Keenan shares the winding path that led to Zipline.

They discuss how Zipline went from an idea to operating around the world, why rapid prototyping and relentless testing are at the core of building reliable products, and how focusing on the real customer problem helped shape every engineering decision along the way. The conversation also covers robotics, startups, and the lessons Keenan has learned from turning ambitious ideas into reality.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
One of my favorite vendors at the time was a a

(00:01):
local bouncy castle company whowas helping make prototypes of
this airbag for us.
Okay.
And who was the first customer?
Uh the public health system ofRwanda.

SPEAKER_02 (00:11):
You're like, screw it, I'm gonna go do this to go
to Africa and talk my way intopeople's cars or what?

SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
Third grader engineering plus motorized
suspenders equals pain.
Uh but yeah, I just yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (00:21):
Did you wear suspenders every day?
No, I just thought you'd like amotorized suspenders.
Were you watching a lot of likeLinux or something?

SPEAKER_02 (00:39):
Hey guys, welcome to the Just Gonna Send It podcast.
I am your host, Jim Belosik.
Today we're joined by a veryspecial guest, Keenan Weirobeck,
uh co-founder, CTO of Zipline.
Yes?
Is it CTO?
Okay.
Yep.
Um for those of you Well, okay,everyone knows about Zipline.

SPEAKER_03 (00:56):
I can't just in case they don't, though.

SPEAKER_02 (00:58):
Okay, yeah.
Sorry, we're joined by producerDom, too.
Um everyone knows what Ziplineis, but Keenan, do you want to
tell everybody what Zipline isin your own words?

SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
So at you know, at our base,we're a drone delivery company.
Um we are all about deliveringhealthcare when it's needed, the
parts you need to do your jobwhen it's needed outside of
healthcare, delivering hot foodand goods for people's personal
lives.
Uh, we do that in nine countriesaround the world.
Um and uh yeah, including nowhere in the United States.

SPEAKER_02 (01:30):
And so I I've known about you guys forever.
Um when did you start?
Like you said maybe 10 years agoor something like that?

SPEAKER_00 (01:38):
We started we we started 12 years ago and started
serving our first customer uhjust about a little more than 10
years ago.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44):
Okay, and who was the first customer?

SPEAKER_00 (01:46):
Uh the public health system of Rwanda.

SPEAKER_02 (01:50):
How do you land a customer like that?
Like I guess maybe take us backa little bit, um, maybe a year
or two before that firstcustomer, that first delivery.
What did that time frame looklike?

SPEAKER_00 (02:03):
Yeah, I I started, you know, I had the luxury of
spending a couple years lookingfor my next big thing I wanted
to work on.
Before this, I started uh Ross,a robot operating system, and
spent about uh decade gettingthat uh to become the the Linux
of robotics, really.
And um and I wanted to findsomething similarly impactful.

(02:24):
At that time, uh Amazon was likedrone delivery coming next year.
And uh my wife's anepidemiologist, and I kept
hearing these stories of publichealth campaigns, like vaccine
campaigns that got stuck onlogistics.
So I was like, all right, let'sI'm gonna go explore this.
And so spent a bunch of time inCentral America and Africa, just
literally uh going deep withanybody in this world of

(02:46):
logistics who would who would godeep with me.
I literally cocked my way intothe car of the head of the uh
pharmacy system for a wholecountry and rode in his car for
like six days as he was visitingall these uh clinics and
pharmacies around the country.

SPEAKER_02 (03:00):
What do you mean, talked your way into his car?
You're just like hanging outoutside of his car and you're
like, give me a ride.

SPEAKER_00 (03:05):
Basically, I was there, I was talking to someone
who worked for him and I wasexplaining what I was doing, and
I was like, is there any way Icould just like go with you?
He was like, I'm about to headout to go visit a bunch of
sites.
And I was like, how how could Ipossibly go along with you?
And he gave me a funny look andthey said, Come on.
And I wasn't even packed for it,just went.
It was awesome.
Uh that that's not even thecraziest story from back then of
like talking my way into variouslike uh learning opportunities,

(03:28):
let's call them.
Um, but what's cool about thatis that the the deeper what we
went into it, it was reallyclear that the the supplies were
there, the doctors were there,everybody knew what to do, but
they just needed the supplies todo their job, which is something
I can relate to, right?
Like I've spent my whole careermaking hardware, right?
If we make hardware,fundamentally your velocity and
and your output's dictated bycan you get the stuff you need

(03:49):
to do your job, the literalphysical stuff.
And so I could really relate tothese doctors, and and it was
just like, okay, let's build adrone system that gets all these
medical supplies, starting withblood, from point A to point B.
And that's where we started.

SPEAKER_02 (04:02):
Okay.
That's so what were you doing?
Like, did you have a job too?
And while you're trying to getthis thing off the ground, or
are you just you're like, screwit, I'm gonna go do this and go
to Africa and talk my way intopeople's cars, or what?

SPEAKER_00 (04:14):
Yeah, I mean, I so at the time, so I was started
Ross back at Stanford, spun thatout into a company called Willow
Garage that really got it going,uh, and then spun that out into
a nonprofit to basically stewardRoss.
And so at that, I wasunattached.
I looked at a bunch of differentpotential startups at that
point.
I started some in ed tech andsome other things that I thought

(04:35):
were interesting, exploringvarious directions.
Um, and so yeah, I was I was ina very luxurious place to just
explore and not do any techdevelopment, just really go
understand the problems and tosee if there's something I
thought uh that I could solveuniquely and that like needed to
be solved uh uniquely.
And and I was literallyexploring.
So yeah, that was it was a veryspecial time um of trying lots

(04:57):
of things, meeting a lot ofpeople, going deep on a bunch of
problems that turned out to bedead ends, and then finding this
one that I just really gotexcited about.

SPEAKER_02 (05:04):
So you you said you had the the luxury to explore
and do that.
Yeah.
Um luxuries are usually earned.
So let's talk about the beforetimes.
Um so actually I'll go all theway back.
Like as a kid, um, you know, areyou are you messing with robots?
Are you doing you know, are youtaking stuff apart?

(05:24):
What what's what are you like asa kid?
What are your parents like inorder to raise you, the the the
man you've become today?
And then we'll we'll end up atWillow and and more about Ross.
But yeah, what are the the earlyevening?
Oh, awesome parents.

SPEAKER_00 (05:38):
Uh a teacher and a scientist willing to let indulge
my curiosities like to twolevels that I now realize were
like very unique and a bitcrazy.
Um got to take apart absolutelyeverything, got to try to fix
things, got to try to buildthings.
Um yeah, that I think I stillremember like one of the dumbest
things I ever did in the thirdgrade was like make motorized

(06:00):
suspenders.
Um third grader engineering plusmotorized suspenders equals
pain.
Um but yeah, I just yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (06:09):
Did you wear suspenders every day?

SPEAKER_00 (06:11):
No, I just thought you had motorized suspenders.

SPEAKER_01 (06:14):
Okay.
Were you watching a lot of likeLooney Tunes or something?

SPEAKER_00 (06:18):
I I uh you know, I I I I I am willing to indulge now
mentally, then physically, crazyideas.
Um and um yeah, built all kindsof crazy things.
I still remember in the fifthgrade making hooking all the
desks in my classroom up byMorse code.
And first of all, it was awesomethat my teachers let me do this.

(06:39):
I just thought it was a goodidea.
I can still remember like myclassmates being like, who the
the hell?
A flashy light when I push abutton here on other people's
desks, like who wants this?
Get out of here.
Um yeah, but anyway, I thoughtit was a good idea.
It wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 (06:54):
I mean I think a lot of people, a lot of people have
some of those opportunities, butthe people who lean in, like the
teachers that will let you dothat, it's they'll let you do it
because you're also like not atotal screw up.
Like you must have been gettingokay grades and testing okay and
stuff like that.
Because I hear both sides.

(07:14):
I hear, you know, oh, you know,I I get all this freedom, um,
but then the teacher punishesme, you know, because I'm I'm
not getting good grades.
So you kind of have to haveboth, right?
Is that is that possible?
Can you can you get freedomsfrom teachers if you're
performing?
Or or is it just because theteacher was super cool and liked
you?

SPEAKER_00 (07:31):
Or honestly, at that age, it was the latter.
The teacher was super cool andliked me and saw something in
me, I think.
Um grades were not amazing then.
Grades got better later, once Ikind of figured out how to like
do good grades.
That wasn't in the early days.
Um mostly because I was mostlyexcited to just take stuff apart
and build stuff.
And you know, it was like it'slike, no, no, learn to spell,

(07:51):
which to be clear, I stillhaven't learned.
Um they're like, well, you mustlearn to spell.
I was like, who cares?
Like I there's all this otherstuff.
And and uh yeah, just amazingteachers.
I go, I was I was super lucky.

SPEAKER_02 (08:02):
Okay, so so you're making motorized suspenders, uh,
you're doing Morse code in fifthgrade, uh, you you get through
high school, um, you end up atStanford.
So what is what is college likefor you?
Did you know, like, were youlike, man, I want to go to
Stanford, or or were you justlike, hey, I need to go to
college because I want to dosomething, or did you just go to

(08:24):
college and you didn't want toknow what you want to do yet?
Like, what was your path?

SPEAKER_00 (08:29):
I so I I went I for college, I went to Johns Hopkins
before Stanford was grad school.
And I like I was I was reallydrawn to all the medical robotic
stuff at at Hopkins.

SPEAKER_02 (08:41):
Um are you thinking like in high school you're like
you want to get into likemedical cool stuff?

SPEAKER_00 (08:47):
Or I was I was just like what are the pro I like I
knew I like to build stuff, Iknew I want to solve problems, I
knew I love invention, and Ilove I just wanted to figure out
like where the important stuffwas.
Um and um that was part of why Iwent to Hopkins.
Uh in high school, I made a uhan underwater, an ROV, an
underwater robot.
Um that got me connected to aprofessor at Hopkins, uh who's

(09:09):
you know, one of the worldrenowned um uh specialists in
like the he built the system.
This is Dr.
Lewis Whitcomb, who built thesystem that went to the bottom
of the Mary Islands trench andstuff like that.
And so, like, you know, I gotyou know, I when I when I was
visiting colleges, I visitedthere first and I just
immediately connected with theseprofessors.
I was like, I have to go here.
And um, yeah, what drew me toHopkins actually was really

(09:31):
awesome for me because Hopkinshas a philosophy for grad
students of only having uh threeto five grad students in a lab,
unlike Stanford, where you havelike 15 to 20, which means the
undergrads get to do a lot ofgrad student level like problem
solving.
And so that was great.
I freshman year, I was likedoing the crazy stuff I dreamed
of doing um uh at in college.

(09:52):
Um and just, yeah, anything Icould do to work on um various
things in medical robotics, gotto work in the urology
department there, um, worked onsome underwater robotic stuff as
well.
Uh, but very quickly got the bugon the medical side and just
went really deep in that spaceand built robots that could do
like surgery on you inside anMRI field.

(10:12):
So, like no metal, no wires, nomotors.
Um, that was stuff like that.
Just where people were like,hey, if you could only use
surgery while you're getting anMRI and you know, you could
biopsy perfectly for thesereally rare cancers.
And that was like, sweet, whydon't we figure that?
I got I want to work on that.

SPEAKER_02 (10:26):
This this is really cool because like we go back and
forth on, you know, collegeisn't for everyone.
You know, sometimes sometimespeople are better off going into
a trade, and sometimes peoplesay, Oh, I went to college, uh,
but it was a waste.
You know, I I didn't I didn'tlearn anything, I didn't get the
opportunity.
It sounds like you found somesort of magic there.

(10:47):
Um, but it's it's because youwere maybe you got like an
insider track because you got tosee you know that you talked to
that professor before you evenwent there, you know.
Is that totally part of it?

SPEAKER_00 (10:59):
I think that's part of it.
I think the insider track camefrom just like building from a
really early young age, justlike building, you know, just
doing and like you know, I thinkyou mentioned the college trade.
We I I have a little team on theside at Zip Lime, we call the
new products team that does allthe really crazy stuff, uh that
Zip on all in the early days.
And I just lost my secondlong-term high school graduate

(11:23):
intern to a startup to to be afounder of their own startup.
The second time now in two inthree years.
Um, and uh, which is interestingbecause like I've now I now
warned some parents when I findthese really special high school
grads who want to intern forthis team.
I'm like, hey, very good chancethat they will not be going to

(11:43):
uh to college if they come inturn here.

SPEAKER_02 (11:45):
Straight into the pros.

SPEAKER_00 (11:46):
Yeah.
I think it's all I I for me, itwas what I for me it's just all
about rate of learning.
I was it was I was having somuch fun learning, getting to do
all young old exposure from areally young age.
And like that went all the waythrough through uh um college,
grad school too, but I didn'tfinish grad school because I was
just like the had this awesomeopportunity to leave grad school

(12:07):
and and I felt like just have abigger impact on the world and
learn more faster than I waslearning in grad school and took
it.

SPEAKER_03 (12:13):
Were you doing like robotics clubs through high
school and college forexperience?

SPEAKER_00 (12:19):
I that wasn't not in high school.
Um we we did a whole bunch oflike projects with other
classmates that were just kindof weird and strange, uh, just
because that's the friends thatI love spending time with.
It was like, oh, the schoolwants a starting system for the
swim team.
Like, can we build that?
Like it's like we built one.
Uh, was it awesome?
Not as awesome as I imagined itwould be.

(12:40):
Or uh yeah, we built all webuilt various robot systems,
like the ROV I mentioned.
Also, just crazier ideas.
The the we would just like sitaround after school and be like,
I wonder if you could like makea sound orbit your head.
Um, sound like it's orbitingyour head, and the pitch of the
sound would be the distance likethe like the space was around
you.
So you could like see in three,like at least a 2D plane.

(13:03):
And we built that.
You had to like hug a laptop,you know, not a laptop, a
desktop computer on a cart witha battery behind you to make it
work.
Uh, and it barely worked forlike 20 minutes before breaking,
but it just ideas that hadn'tthat were terrible ideas, but
really good for learning andjust also for learning the
process of exploring ideas.
I still remember when one of myfriends uh he was like, Oh, I'm

(13:24):
gonna solve, you remember expomarkers?
He's like, I can recharge anexpo marker.
Uh like make a little thing youplug an expo marker in, and it
worked.
It worked beautifully.
And I still remember when theschool got a cease and assist
from the expo company uh whenthis got some news.
I was like, oh, that'sinteresting.
What is that about?
What's a cease and desist?
Like I, you know, it's got allthese interesting exposures to

(13:44):
people like kind of thinkingdifferently and trying things
and um and and getting a littlebit of exposure of like what is
the real world outside of youknow playing in your garage look
like.

SPEAKER_02 (13:54):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's cool becauselike sometimes you know, we'll
we'll encourage people to go theclub route.
You know, we're like, hey, joina club, it can it can pay off
dividends, you know.
If you have um a high schoolrobotics club that can help you,
you know, start uh on a on abetter path towards college.
And if you're in college and youjoin a club, then that can help
you with a career, you know,after college or whatever.

(14:16):
But it sounds like, or you canjust wing it with a group of
buddies and just do cool shit ifthere's a club or not, right?
Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 (14:23):
And today is so fun.
I meet so many people inelementary school, let alone
high school, who who are, whocan have access to technologies
and learning on about thesetechnologies that like I didn't
get till I was in grad school.
And I'm just so jealous becausethey can do all these amazing
things.
They just have an idea and theycan try it and build it and
learn from it.
And I still think to this day, II reflect more on my less on the

(14:44):
crazy things I tried at that agethat were total disasters to
guide my thinking and problemsolving to like succeed at
Zipline today than like what Ilearned later in life when the
pressure was on you really hadto succeed.
You just those early earlyopportunities to try things and
fail and try things and fail andtry things and maybe work and
maybe work and and fail.
Uh, you just I don't know.
That that's where I got so manyof my nuggets on how to think.

SPEAKER_02 (15:08):
So that's that's actually something we should
pull on a little bit.
Um, we talk a lot about you knowhow people grew up, how were
they they were raised.
That kind of sets you up to bean adult.
But if you're a listener and youdidn't get raised like that, you
didn't have those opportunities,it's like, well, what do I do
now?
I'm 35.
You know, how do I um how do Iget those opportunities now?

(15:28):
So you're saying even if youdidn't get it when you were
little, you can still simulatethat today by just trying stuff,
just go out and do it, justexperiment.

SPEAKER_00 (15:37):
Yeah.
Take take a problem, like itcould be sitting in your house
and be like, just buildsomething for it.
Just just start there.
I think there's so many coolideas come from like, you know,
a problem you actually alreadyunderstand and imagine imagining
the solution to it.
And and like even if it neverworks out, you're gonna learn a
ton with everything you do.
You're gonna learn newtechnologies, you're gonna learn
like how to think about problemsolving.

(15:59):
Um, yeah, just just and it's sofun to learn now, right?
You can AI can teach you,YouTube can teach you, you know,
it's uh there's so much greatopen source out there.
Um, you it's this the world'syour oyster, and and so much has
gotten so affordable um uh interms of like technologies for
prototyping and building.
It's it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 (16:19):
So so you go, you're Johns Hopkins, you you're doing
crazy no-metal robots inside ofMRI machines.
That's awesome.
You go to Stanford.
Tell us about Willow Garage.

SPEAKER_00 (16:32):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (16:34):
I mean, that's like that's a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 (16:36):
Yeah.
This was the fun, that was a funtransition.
So at Stanford, it's like, allright, I'm gonna get a PhD.
I got all this funding for aPhD, I should do a PhD.
So I talked to all these folksfinishing their PhDs, being
like, what advice would you giveme?
How'd your pro how did yourjourney go?
That kind of thing.
And um, you know, going intothose conversations, like, all
right, well, I I need to advancethe field of robotics that, you

(16:58):
know, some way, uh algorithms,math, whatever it's gonna be.
Uh, but but instead I kepthearing the same thing in all
these conversations with allthese uh people getting their
PhDs in robotics, which waslike, yeah, my PhD journey was,
you know, you know, years ofclues in together a robot and
collaging together the software,and then and then maybe you do
some new stuff at the very endof all that and like get your
video and then hope the robotdoesn't break before the video's

(17:19):
done, and then like get youknow, graduate and get out of
there, and and that robot goesin the trash heap.
And that was like everybody'sstory over and over and over
again.
And um, it just gave me thatitch of like, oh, there's an
opportunity here.
If there was code sharing, ifthere was open source and in
robotics, um this the world ofrobotics would just be so much
the world of uh roboticsinnovation would be so much more

(17:40):
powerful so people could buildon each other's results.

SPEAKER_02 (17:42):
Because the PhD guys, the PhD guys are basically
starting from scratch everysingle time, throwing it away.
And so so you're saying, hey,what if we kept this like
library of knowledge that youcould repurpose?
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (17:53):
Exactly.
Everybody who could contributecontribute to it.
And so we started that atStanford and we got that going
and tried to fundraise for it,uh, and eventually met the
person who funded Willow Garage,Scott Hassan.
And he's like, look, I'll I wantto fund you.
This is I'm you know, I want toI built, I made my fortune on
open source, you know, in the inthe dot-com boom.

(18:14):
I want to pay it forward.
I'm really passionate aboutrobotics.
You're clearly passionate aboutopen source robotics, like I'll
fund you, but you gotta leaveStanford.
You can't do this at Stanford.
I tried that back when I was inStanford.
You got to leave.
Um come do it at Willow Garage.
And we did.
So we my my partner Eric Burrand I, we left Stanford, went to
Willow Garage, got it goingthere.
Eventually became all of whatWillow Garage did.
And yeah, it was just it wentamazingly well.

(18:36):
We built a community around it,we got a whole bunch of
universities bought in and somecompanies in the early days.
Um, and really the communityjust took off like wildfire once
we got once we got it, once wegot the base product good
enough, we spent a lot of timewith, we brought in all these
grad students and said, okay,come come over for the summer
and try this thing.
Of course, in the early days itwas useless garbage, right?
They couldn't do anything.

(18:57):
Uh, but eventually we we learnedfrom them and iterated and
iterated and iterated and got tothe point where all of a sudden
people were like, Oh wow, I canthen just jump on this platform
and and actually innovate on topof it.
Um, and then like they all wentback to their universities, and
then now everybody uses Ross forrobotics research and most
companies.
And so it was a pretty powerfuluh thing that took off.
Honestly, it was so funnybecause in the very early days

(19:19):
of Stanford we had this deck, itsaid make the Linux of robotics,
and it had the Rosie the roboton the front slide.
And I remember the we pitchedand got rejected by you know
gazillion people for funding atStanford um as like a donor type
funding.
And so many of their feedbackwas like, you know, you have no
credibility, like this is crazy.
You can't talk about the Linuxof robotics.
Stop, you know, don't be youknow, you sound crazy saying

(19:40):
this.
Yeah, and it only took likethree or four years before it
just happened.
Uh, and it was it was prettywild.

SPEAKER_02 (19:47):
That's that's incredible.
So tell me, it you said that theguy was like, Oh, yeah, I made
my fortune in open source, andand Ross is open source.
How how do you make money inopen source?
I'm always unsure on that.

SPEAKER_00 (20:01):
Well, he I mean he didn't make his funny money in
open source, he made his moneyon open source.
All right, open source.
So he built companies on Linuxand on the various open source
software stacks for the web.
And he's like, he wanted to payfor like the foundation of the
future industry so people couldbuild make their fortunes on you
know open source and robotics.
And that was one of the thingsthat we wanted to do is is

(20:21):
really enable innovation and andcompany uh you know, startups to
not have to build all the littlepieces just to get you know get
going in robotics, but insteadtake a big common open source
platform and build on top of it,just like you can on the web.

SPEAKER_02 (20:36):
Yeah.
So when you look at Ross today,like are you are you going, you
know, are you proud of of whereit is?
Do you feel like you're watchingfrom the sidelines?
Are you do you are you stillactive?
You know, what is what is thatlike to kind of watch it?

SPEAKER_00 (20:47):
Oh, I'm not super active.
The people who've led it since Imoved on are doing a phenom much
better job leading it than I diduh leading it.
So yeah, super impressed withwhat they've done.
Uh very proud of it, absolutely.
Uh yeah, I think it just likewhen I think back on it, it's
really just I I'm just so gladthat you know my the the people

(21:08):
who started Ross with me that wedid ignore all the people who
said we were crazy and just kindof really just believed and went
for it.
And um yeah, I was recently at abig Stanford, they created a new
robotics center at Stanford andlike touring the 50 or so
robotics labs that are now atStanford, and like everything is
built on Ross there.
And it's just crazy to see thatjust like it's like like what

(21:31):
there's yeah, it's why I meanit's just it's also testament to
open source.
You build something really good,people are gonna use it, and
that's just awesome andsatisfying.

SPEAKER_02 (21:39):
It's I I'm jealous that you have such a good
legacy.
Like I I think about legacy alot where uh you know, if if I I
guess maybe we have the samefeeling, you know, we can walk
around and aim, you know, orpoint to to some individual
customers that uh their businessexists because uh we exist.
You know, so um We're kind oflike the open source platform

(22:02):
for sheet metal, I guess.
Um, but a lot of people can canbuild on top of that dumb sheet
metal and then make a realbusiness out of it.
So I'm pretty proud.

SPEAKER_00 (22:09):
Your your legacy is way broader than that.
Like I like the the the youknow, as as this country really
like rebuilds its capabilitiesin manufacturing
industrialization, like youknow, you were one of the first
companies, I think really thefirst company who really showed
w how possible that is.
Um everybody else I know ofshowed it in a much smaller

(22:30):
scale.
Um, and you really showed like,no, this can be big in this
country, and we don't have toinnovate.

SPEAKER_02 (22:36):
If we just if we we just keep saying yes, and then
it gets harder and harder andharder.
But bigger and bigger.
We're still showing up.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Um okay, so so Ross is goinggood.
And you know, what what doesyour exit look like?
Are you you're like, um, I'm Igot it to the point where other
people can run it better than meand I want to go solve a new

(22:58):
problem, or what what did thattransition look like?

SPEAKER_00 (23:01):
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
Some of the leaders who werepart of that Ross world were
like, hey, we want to go createa foundation to steward this
long term, and they had a greatvision for it.
And at that point, like theywere having a bigger leadership
impact on the vision of it thanI was, and they were also doing
a phenomenal job of reallybuilding the community and the
and the and that momentum.
And um, and yeah, and I was Iwas getting that itch of like,

(23:22):
okay, I've been doing it formaybe eight years at that point,
and I was getting that itch oflike, all right, I feel like I'm
ready for the next like bigchallenge that needs solving.
And that's uh so they went anddid that, and I I went off and
started exploring.

SPEAKER_02 (23:33):
Can you can you talk about some of the other uh
things that you explored that uhdid not turn into zipline?

SPEAKER_00 (23:40):
Oh, so many things.
So many things.
Um yeah, I I worked on an edtech uh product in reading uh
that was really interesting, butnever never got traction.
Um I worked on some otherconcepts actually with the
co-founders that we did ziplinewith.
You may have heard of some aproduct called a meeting owl.
Uh that was one thing.
Uh is that what we have?
We have we have meeting owl,yeah.

(24:02):
Excellent.
That that was something we Iworked on with my co-founders,
and we were like, hey, we don'twe're not excited about this,
but one of the people we'reworking on was, and then he went
off and did it.
Um and uh looked at uh looked atthings, um, some things in the
industrial automation space uhthat I think are only now
becoming possible.
And we looked at oh so manydifferent things.
Gosh, it'd be a long, it'd takeus a while to take you through

(24:23):
all of it.
I spent better part of two yearsum just exploring a whole bunch
of things.
Some things like hands-on.
Like I'm a big believer that ifyou want to exploring in theory
is a waste of time.
If you want to explore, you haveto do, right?
You can't like explore an edtech reading app, you gotta
build it.
You can't explore like Zipline.
We didn't go out to thesegovernments and get you know
this behind-the-scenes access tohow these logistics systems are

(24:44):
working by saying, We'rethinking about building drones.
We built a deck saying we aremaking drones to solve this
problem and here's how it works.
And even though it was all justsketches and nothing, no tech
behind it, that's what got us inthe door to get the learnings
and the feedback we reallyneeded.
Um yeah, it was a fun two yearsof going deep and and you know,
dead ends uh and some things weweren't excited about.
Uh, but obviously, you know,this is something that we just

(25:06):
got so excited about we couldn'thelp ourselves, and we went for
it.

SPEAKER_02 (25:10):
So, how do you know when you're exploring something,
you know, you got two years andyou're messing with a bunch of
different things that are allover the map, right?
Yeah.
Ed tech to industrial automationto who knows what.
Yeah.
How do you, when you'reexploring something, how do you
know when to give up?
When when you're like, uh, Iwent pretty deep, but I'm I'm
bailing out.
Is there is there common umcommon things that you look for

(25:33):
or like a tingle on the back ofyour neck where you're like, oh
god, I gotta get out of here?

SPEAKER_00 (25:37):
Yeah.
I mean so the exploration is isall is like you is a process of
distilling um to the like thereal first principles questions.
Right?
So for let's take zipline.
It was like, okay, hey, intheory this makes sense, but why
might it not make sense?
Okay.
Uh will these public healthsystems actually contract with a

(26:00):
startup?
Um, is there supply, right?
If you being sitting there withdrones to deliver supply, but
the supply's not available, likewhat's the point?
Um, is there gonna be demand,right?
Are are are these doctors andand and these health systems
gonna actually pick this up andchange how they work to do this?
And then and then you you kindof identify these like
fundamental questions and thenfigure out, okay, what's the

(26:20):
best way to answer them?
Um and usually that's out in thefield, really getting to know
what's going on in the field.
Um and I'll tell you like onestory.
Uh it's not a negative example,but a positive example was in a
country that I shouldn't namebecause they asked us not to,
where uh we were getting a tourof one of their big logistics
warehouses for medical uhsupplies, vaccines and blood and
pharmaceuticals.

(26:41):
And outside the warehouse,there's like a football field
two stories high of pallets anduh boxes.
And I'm like, Well, what's thedeal with this stuff outside?
And they don't really answer.
And we go inside and get tolearn about how their operation
works.
And later that night, I'm havingdinner with one of the people
who was giving us that tour.
Um, and he's like, Look, Icouldn't say this in front of
everybody, but like all thatstuff outside, that was all

(27:01):
expired medicine.
Um, like it's a big deal for us,it's very embarrassing, so we
don't talk about it.
But like it was one of thosemoments of like clicking of
like, holy smokes, there's thisapplies there.
So, like this one big questionthat was on our mind um felt uh
that was one of what the datapoints that really kind of
checked it off for us.
And in other projects, we'd askthese fundamental questions and
we'd get to a dead end.

(27:22):
We're like, you know, I justdon't believe, right?
I don't believe this is reallygonna work, or there this
appetite's really there for thisproblem to be solved, or or that
I could solve the problem.
That's the other thing, too.
It's like, okay, now that I'mstanding the problem all the
way, it's like, oh boy, thisproblem is like not actually
something that I'm equipped toto go after um or ready to go
after.
So um is that is that does thatanswer your question?

SPEAKER_02 (27:42):
No, that's amazing.
Yeah, it's basically use firstprinciples, or oftentimes we
call it five whys.
Well, just keep asking why, youknow, until you get to the right
problem.
Keep asking that.
And if if you can get all theway there and it still makes
sense, then go for it.
Like you'd be a good investor.
Are you an investor?
Are you an angel, Ever?

SPEAKER_00 (28:00):
I've done a little bit now.
I don't do much of it.
I'm just so all in on zipline,but I I have done a little bit
of some companies are justfreaking amazing.

SPEAKER_02 (28:08):
From what I've seen, I I think you would do okay.
Uh I've I've had the opportunityto do a couple like very, very
small angel checks.
Um, or sometimes we trade metalfor equity.

SPEAKER_03 (28:18):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (28:19):
Every once in a while.
But it's it's cool because I usethe same approach.
I'm like, okay, all right, youknow, what is their likelihood
of success?
What kind of roadblocks are theygonna hit?
Um assume that the market isthere, then you know, what are
their supply chain issues gonnabe?
And and sometimes even if wedon't invest, it helps it helps
the guy figure out like some ofthese questions, and then

(28:41):
they'll come back in six monthsand be like, hey, I solved that
that huge problem when you saidno, I didn't say yes.
So that's super cool.
Um okay, so so you see theexpired medicine, and you're
like, All right, this is allstarting to make sense.
You make a deck that says, uh,we are making drones, they're
just sketches, but we are doingthis.
Um someone just hand you a checkand they're like, freaking go

(29:04):
for it, and then you go for it,or or what did that look like?

SPEAKER_00 (29:08):
Ooh, no, not not another the the I mean, so okay,
how how the money followed thecustomers.
So we went pretty deep in aboutfive countries and then narrowed
down to three and got to thepoint where we didn't have
government contracts yet, but wehad like we were advanced in the
government contracting processin these countries.

(29:28):
And I think that was our cheatcode.
Once we had that, then theninvestors were like, okay, this
is this is real.
Uh, that was also cheat code forthe best talent.
It's like you know, trying toget people to come do something
crazy like this.
It's like, no, no, we reallyhave customers.
Like, this is real.
Um, and also the cheat code for,you know, I think it's also
cheat code having thosecustomers that we could spend

(29:49):
this time with and be so deeplyconnected to what their real
problems were was a cheat codefor some of the hardest like
leadership challenges of likewhat, you know, what are the
requirements of this system?
What can we cut?
How simple can we make it, thatkind of thing.
Uh, having those customers gaveus the clarity of uh uh to
really, really focus.
And not I'll give you one of themost intense examples of that.

(30:12):
Um the we had just pivoted fromwhat was going to be our first
country, but we messed up thegovernment contracting to Rwanda
that became the our firstcountry to launch.
We were about three three monthsout from having to launch for
the companies just to stay inexistence.
We were behind schedule, as youcan imagine, right?
Like no startup doing somethinglike this is ever on schedule, I
don't think.
And um, and the Minister ofHealth starts emailing us

(30:35):
pictures of people who weredying because they weren't
getting blood.
Um and you know, when you'redoing a really complicated
system uh technology, system ofsystems type thing, engineers
can get lost in preference andstyle and like academic to type
on arguments.
But when you have that, it'slike, no, no, no, what forget
all that.
Like what we we know what'sneeded that we know what the

(30:57):
problem we're solving is is whatwhat is the best way to go solve
this problem for this realhuman, uh, and everything else
that it gets cut instantly,right?
The debates go out the window.
Uh, and it's really not onlymotivating but clarifying.
Because obviously the simplestpossible system is gonna be the
best system.
Uh, and when you no one's everdone something like this before,
it's really easy to makesomething that's like more

(31:19):
complicated than it needs to be.
But I found that again, havingthose customers who really
needed it, um, it's so close sopowerful for the talent, for the
investors, and of course for thegetting the architecture
decisions right, what we couldcut, you know, down to the very
very essence of what we neededto ship.

SPEAKER_02 (31:35):
That's that's powerful.
Um, I'm I I I think everybusiness needs that.
Everyone might, I mean, you guyshad incredibly powerful photos.
Like, I guess, you know, likewhat's what's your powerful
photo?
What's your motivator?
What's what's something thatalmost any company can grab onto
to help them simplify and andcut scope and just you know

(31:56):
latch on the MVP and get it outthere.
That's that's cool.
I want to think about that.
I think everyone should thinkabout that.
What's what's your photo ofsomeone who needs blood?
And I mean, like, look atUkraine, you know, if you're
getting shot at, you developsome uh some technology with
whatever the hell you got andyou get it out there.
It doesn't have to be perfect,it just has to exist.
So that's that's crazy.

(32:18):
So this is uh like what's thistime period?
You know, you you go fromconcept and you know, going to
customers because you don't havean actual product, right?
You just you're saying, like,hey, I can deliver this using
we're developing aggressively,very term.
We so you go, they they get thecontract, and then you're like,

(32:39):
okay, cool.
I got I got the contract.
I have to fulfill the contract.

SPEAKER_00 (32:41):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (32:42):
You go to an investor then with your cheat
code now, and you're like, hey,give me some money so I can hire
some great people, start tobuild some stuff.
How long does this take?

SPEAKER_00 (32:50):
Like, what what yeah, that was awesome.
The you know, Sequoia came infor us real early there, and and
and like, you know, so lifethen, you know, we got access to
this cattle ranch uh fortesting, and and we decided we
were gonna just all work therefull time.
So we got a little trailer, likewe were at this cattle ranch.

(33:10):
We moved in.
Uh we had a little trailer, likeit was just big enough.
It was like, in hindsight, itwas crazy what we tried to do in
terms of manufacturingprototyping in this trailer on
this cattle ranch.
But it was phenomenal because wejust flight test outside all day
long.
Yeah, I still remember when thepartnership of Sequoia came out
in the middle of a rainstorm, wehad drones up in the air, and
like there it was, it was Ididn't realize at the time, but

(33:32):
like they told us after they'relike, look, we had looked at a
lot of drone companies backthen, drones were pretty hot
back then, and there was nothingmore clarifying than like that
for them.
Everybody else was like, I mean,demo, oh, but only in the nicest
weather, and only in the andonly and only and like and for
us, it wasn't that we weren'tdemoing, we were just testing
all day, every day, drones inthe air.
And and like, of course, it wastesting in the rain because it
rains all the time where we'rein Rwanda, and like we knew we

(33:53):
had to fly in the rain, so wewere never gonna stop flying in
the rain in our test site.
And um, yeah, it it was it was ait was a it was a grind.
It was we were figuring out theproduct and the requirements as
we were going, of course.
Um and you know, this was afixed wing drone.
So picture a you know 10-footwingspan, sort of large RC plane
looking um drone.

(34:15):
And uh, we did fixed wingbecause again, we're so deep
with our customers, they caredabout two things range and low
cost.
And nothing, almost nothing elsemattered.
And if you're gonna do range,you're gonna do fixed wing.
You're not gonna do a verticaltakeoff and landing.
That's like as a 10x advantage,it's not a subtle trait.
Um, and so we knew that.
But then of course now you justlike how do you deliver?
Because you can't like land todeliver.
How are you gonna take off andand uh and and land um in all

(34:39):
this crazy weather?
And so we really focused on likehow are we gonna do that?
And turning through, youwouldn't believe the stuff we
prototyped about how to land andhow to launch.
Oh I I I uh yeah that's what wewant to hear about.

SPEAKER_02 (34:51):
I mean, talk about the prototype process.
What what what were some of theearly ones?
What were the biggest failures?
Um, what were the biggestlearnings?

SPEAKER_00 (35:00):
Yeah, uh, I now understand the physics of a um
of a stunt airbag very well,because I was very convinced
that a stunt airbag with a dronebelly flopping onto it was how
you should land at steel.

SPEAKER_02 (35:12):
The stunt guys, when they jump off of a building,
they land, they they land ontheir back in the big airbag
thing.

SPEAKER_00 (35:17):
Exactly.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (35:18):
Okay, so a fixed wing, you thought a fixed wing
was gonna like flip on it.

SPEAKER_00 (35:23):
Like, that's how we should watch the service.
It turns out that the impactenergy just of the of the
material of an of a bag.
Um yeah, I I remember one of ourone of my favorite vendors at
the time was a a local bouncycastle company who was helping
make prototypes of this airbagfor us.
Uh and uh they're like they theyuh the I I swear they coasted me

(35:47):
the first time because they werejust like this guy, you know,
like what this order just camein with this weird sketch on
literal pencil sketch of whatthey wanted.
Can't be real.
And I was like, I went andknocked on their door.
I was like, no, no, seriously,please can you make this?
Um and uh that was one of thecrazier ideas, partly because uh
on a weird it was held to theground with uh eight-foot uh
stakes, you know, the ones usinglike circus tents.

(36:10):
Um yeah, and the big a big windcame in one day at our test site
and just ripped like 38-footstakes out of the ground and
went flying across.
Uh that was one that was one ofthe many moments where we were
like, oh geez.
Uh there's certain things thatwe just didn't like, you know,
as we were prototyping fast, wedidn't quite see coming.

(36:30):
But yeah, we tried so many waysto land that drone in all
weather.
And uh we actually startedoperating in Rwanda with a
system that used off-the-shelfdeep sea fishing reels and poles
and a line between the two,where the drone would come in,
catch that line between twofishing poles, and the fishing
reels would go and then it wouldland on a bouncy castle mat.

SPEAKER_02 (36:51):
And that's how we started something like if you're
landing on an aircraft carrier,like the tail of a pick grab it,
and then exactly.
Yeah, that seemed that seemspretty good.
I guess you gotta go wind allthat stuff up after you're done.

SPEAKER_00 (37:02):
It was operationally nightmare, but like we could do
it, and we start operating.
Now that the system is likefully computer controlled and
off the ground and resets itselfand it's beautiful and done
well, but gotta start somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 (37:14):
You guys were using nets at one point, right?
It wouldn't it go into a net?
We tried nets.
Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (37:20):
We tried nets.
Uh the problem with a net and adrone is it's very hard to the
net damages a drone.
Yeah, the reason actually I'mtalking about landing so much is
like in aircraft in general, allaircraft, hard landings
determine the life of anaircraft.
So if you reliably gently landthat plane, planes can almost
last forever.
Um, because the lows when you'rein the air and the sort of you

(37:42):
can design and test for thatvery well, but it's the hard
landing that gets you.
And every drone we'd ever met,everybody we met in drone space
was telling us stories abouthow, like, yep, we thought we
had a drone that would last for10,000 cycles, only lasted for
100 because we didn't understandhard landings.
And so it's like, all right, wehave to have a reliably gentle
landing solution.
And so we were on a quest tofigure that out.
Um, and we ended up with thisaircraft carrier system because

(38:04):
it was still to this day, farand away the most reliably
gentle way to do it.
And uh yeah, we've done it now.
That that system has now landedover two million uh flights in
commercial locations.

SPEAKER_02 (38:15):
That's that's amazing.
How how many uh like hobby gradeRC planes did you guys go
through?
Like, did you are you are you doyou start like when you're
prototyping, do you sometimes goto like off-the-shelf stuff just
to understand the basics?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (38:29):
Yeah.
I mean, the way when we in thoseearly days, we just we break the
problem into like we think arethe like big hard parts of it,
whether it's a product questionor a technical question or
whatever it is.
And so in those early days,there was one team just working
on the avionics, just theelectronics and software to
reliably fly in crazy weather.
And they were doing all thetesting on our off-the-shelf uh
RC planes.

(38:50):
And then a separate team waslike, all right, what's the
actual aircraft that can carrythe payload we need?
And they were just working onthat with you know real control
of controlling of thoseprototypes, and totally
separately off on the side, wehad um we were developing the
landing system uh and we testedthat.
We took a launcher, like apneumatic launcher, and a big
old plywood drone, literallyplywood wings and everything,

(39:10):
same weight and same, and we'duh we would fire the launcher
right after the landing systemto test the landing system.
And and these we could all workuh independently, uh, each each
each effort iterating at its maxvelocity.
And so those are the early days,and and it was so fun back then
for Zipline because when I sayeach team, we're talking like
one or two people per team.
Uh, we were only a dozen people,the whole company, and uh and

(39:33):
really trying to figure out thefirst system that could serve
customers.

SPEAKER_02 (39:37):
So you said the early days were very fun.
I mean, what let's skip forwardto today.
Like what what are thechallenges today?
I mean, as the company's evolvedover a decade, um, I mean, you
guys are solving real problemsstill, you have real customers,
way more customers.
Um is it still fun?
Or, you know, what's I I I knowthey're still fun, but also like

(39:58):
what's the grind that you didn'texpect?

SPEAKER_00 (40:01):
Oh, the grind.
Yeah, this is definitely one ofthose stories where we didn't do
this because we thought it wouldbe easy.
You know, I'm sorry, we didn'tdo this because it was easy
because we did it because wethought it would be easy for
sure.
And everything has been weatheris a good example.
Maybe a hundred challenges over10 years around weather.
You know, all our use cases needall weather operation.

(40:24):
That's just been, you know, andso um, you know, good example
today with our second product,which is our precision delivery
platform that delivers in ametro area, where the the fixed
wing platform we were talkingabout, that's for going from a
metro and serving likecountryside.
Um, this precision deliveryplatform, um we have uh we have

(40:44):
a weather chasing team.
They have a trailer with fourdocks on it, uh, four drones.
And yeah, right now they're inuh Panhandle, uh, Florida, uh,
because that's where we thinkthere's gonna be the most uh
probability of encounteringlightning strikes.
Uh before that, they were atthis uh our weather team found a
uh the windiest ranch in theUnited States, and we rented

(41:04):
access to this ranch and flewthere until we got good at it.
And before that, we were up inupstate New York um flying in
icing conditions, um, chasingthe icing conditions up there.
And um, it's just the weatherhas been all about understanding
it because it in a lot of thestuff we do, no one else does
it, right?
Or if they do it, it doesn'tapply.
A good example, I just mentionedicing conditions, right?

(41:27):
In a commercial airliner, right,that flies in these conditions,
they actually ducked theirexhaust heat into the leading
edge of their wing and vaporizethe water in icing conditions,
right?
It it works, it's it does nottranslate to a small drone.
Uh we don't have the equivalentof like exhaust heat from a jet
engine to duck it in front ofour exactly um power there is

(41:51):
this mind-boggling.
Um, and so we've had to come upwith our own solutions to these
problems.
And and icing is this classicexample in engineering where
it's it is extraordinarilycomplicated.
There's like dozens of types ofice, and it's the way that bonds
to materials varies and the wayit accumulates varies.
And and so we've spent a lot oftime really making sure we
understand these problems wellso that we know we're uh

(42:12):
in-house engineering and testingum the way we should.
You know, maybe another way toanswer your questions, I this is
something that like you probablydon't appreciate from the
outside of Zipline, but half ofall what the work we do at
Zipline, like, and this is atevery level, is is test.
Um, it's not new development.
It is developing you knowhardware loop testing systems.

(42:32):
It's like the weather chasing Imentioned.
It's our flight high-volume testsites.
Uh, we do phenomenal amounts oftesting on the ground.
We have a whole building nowdedicated to testing, uh ground
testing, running 24-7.
Uh, and we're getting reallygood at basically how to break
things in representative ways sowe can speed up our development
process and reach ever higherlevels of reliability.
And um, and that like andbasically half of all of our

(42:55):
work across uh like the historyof Zipline has just been on that
side of the equation.

SPEAKER_02 (42:59):
So you're yeah, you're not developing new
vehicles or anything, you'rejust making the existing
vehicles hardened, you know,against all kinds of weird
stuff.

SPEAKER_00 (43:08):
Exactly.
And and figuring out how and notjust harden them, but like get
better and better and faster attesting them.
So if we like on our ourexisting plot um products, we
you know we want to make thembetter by improving something
about the hardware.
It's all about how quickly canyou re-validate that like that
that improvement strictly madethe system more reliable, didn't
have aggression, and somehow uhhow quickly can you do that is

(43:31):
uh fundamental to our velocityof the company and our velocity
of getting these solutions outto our partners.
And so by basically hiringpeople who are really creative
and really good at breaking shituh uh in all kinds of amazing
ways, like we've built thisamazing capability that enables
us to take new things and shipthem uh, you know, well, by

(43:51):
aerospace standards incrediblyfast.

SPEAKER_02 (43:54):
Yeah, we always talk about how we can test as much as
we want, um, but our customersare endlessly.
Creative and they will figureout new ways to break things.
What are some of the weirdestlike edge cases you've had where
you know you test and test andtrain and prepare, and then you
release it out in the wild andyou're like, well, we weren't
expecting that.

SPEAKER_00 (44:14):
Yeah.
Oh, there's so many goodstories.
Um, so a good hardware technicalone that uh is around
electrostatic discharge.
So when we started Zipline, wewere flying our drones, and I
knew about a thing calledtriboelectric uh charge uh
electrostatic discharge buildup.
And that's basically where it'swhat happens when you take a
balloon, rub it on your head,and then your hair stands up.

(44:36):
Same thing happens on a on anaircraft.
Air flying over the aircraftbuilds up static electricity,
and then eventually that staticelectricity will use to
discharge or equalize throughthe aircraft.
If you have a metal plane, whichwe don't, then it sort of
equalizes through the skin.
And if you don't, it'll find apath to equalize.
And so we were testing for this.
Um, but we were we were flying abunch and we were finding um

(44:57):
every time we would fly throughtur this special sort of shear
layer turbulence, uh, the twonodes on our wing we have for
redundancy were going out at thesame time.
And we're like, oh, we these areso isolated, this can't be
happening.
Must have to be to do with thisturbulence and the mechanical
vibration.
So we were going deep and deepand deep on that.
Uh, and after um many, manysleepless nights of trying to
figure out what was wrong withthis problem, uh, we finally got

(45:19):
someone on the phone who waslike, you know, who knew just
was an expert in uhelectrostatic discharge in
flight.
And he's like, you know, there'sanother type of ESD in flight.
No, what, what?
And he's like, Yeah, when youyou know, when you go through
these shear layers, the thingson a like when on a commercial
airplane, they have a big jumpon the plane.
You go through those shearlayers, the electrical potential

(45:41):
of the air on either side can beas much as 50,000 volts
different from difference fromone side of the shear layer to
the other.
And we're like, oh, so you weget these big turbulents.
So we thought it wasmechanically hurting us somehow,
we didn't know.
No, no, what was actuallyhappening was like hitting the
whole drone with an ESD gun atthe same time.
Um, and that was equalizing likethrough this common path that

(46:03):
was like way out of the wingtipsand knocking out these two nodes
the exact same time.
And uh yeah, that's a funhardware one that was like one
of those things where like, youknow, we had a bunch of smart
people who were thought we werefairly knowledgeable and we were
going down and reading, and itwas just like an area of
knowledge we knew nothing about.

SPEAKER_02 (46:18):
And if we hadn't been making those phone calls to
learn, we wouldn't have we wecall it old man knowledge, you
know, just trying so hard at aproblem, and then you call your
dad and he's like, No, just turnit upside down.
You're like, Oh damn it.
You just had no idea.
With like the the it seems to melike the pace of like robotics
and AI and everything is scalingso crazy fast, like 10 years ago

(46:41):
it was moving fast, and thenfive years ago it was triple the
speed, and it seems like just inthe last year, everything is is
like exponential.
What what excites you the mostabout like what the future is?
We've talked a lot about thepast of Zipline, we've talked a
little bit about today'szipline.
What are you excited about?
What's what's something thatyou've never been able to do and
you might be able to do verysoon?

SPEAKER_00 (47:04):
What has me excited is less about what I can do and
more just like it is becomingeasier and easier to make take
robotics technology and make ituseful.
And and the like I recently metthis this middle schooler who
built automation technology forhis family's factory, right?

(47:26):
Like using using thistechnology, that's how
accessible it is.
That is so freaking cool.
And I'm a huge believer in justlike human capacity.
And um, I've always subscribedto the the more Japanese sort of
way of thinking about uhrobotics, which and automation,
which they like that that wordjust in that cultures means
productivity.
It's a productivity tool forhumans.
It's uh it helps humans do moreand be more capable.

(47:48):
And I'm just really excitedabout how democratized it is and
how anybody can get their handson it.
It's so much easier to learn,it's so much more capable, it's
so much easier to do much harderrobotics uh applications than it
used to be.
Um, and uh yeah, just it I areall around the world.
I meet people who are just like,they're just like, I wanted to
do this, and like I want to.
I I met this guy out in uh in uhin Tanzania who's like built a

(48:13):
full-on coffee sorting system,just himself, like with like a
couple hundred dollars worth ofhardware he was able to got his
hands on, and just like that'show his family's coffee like
sorting went that they used todo manually in the over the
kitchen table, and now they justpour the beans in and it just
sorts itself and it's just socool.
And I think you know, I thinkthe the future of what humans
are gonna do now that uh anybodycould get their hands on this,

(48:34):
and if they have an idea orproblem they want to solve, they
can do it now.
Uh it's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 (48:38):
Um democratized is is a good way to put it.
It's it's accessible now.
Um it's accessible and and andeasy.
I I think I think in the past itwas accessible, but you had to
go read a bunch of books, youhad to take classes, you had to
to do some sort ofapprenticeship or something, and
now you can do it in a weekend.
It's pretty amazing.

(48:58):
It's so cool.
So Keenan, uh we we end everyepisode with the same question.
Um what's one piece of advicethat you'd give to someone who's
listening uh who's hoping tobuild something on their own?

SPEAKER_00 (49:13):
Yeah.
Oh, good question.
Um if you're working onsomething that is complicated,
uh make sure you understand whatmatters most about the problem
and then come up with a simplesolution to that part of the
problem.
And then design the solution tothe rest of the problem.
If you do that, you'll end upwith a robust, simple overall

(49:34):
system.
I wish I had learned that lessonearlier in my career.
Uh yeah, start start with thesimplest possible solution to
the hardest, most uh importantpart of the problem.
I'll give one example.
So, like our first uh that fixedwing drone system, our first
long the platform, we call itthe long range platform that I
was talking about, we launchedour business on.
Like the fact that we understoodso deeply that what mattered

(49:55):
most about that problem was longrange and low cost, it gave us
conviction to do fixed wing,which many people were like, you
got to do VTOL, the industry isgoing VTOL drones are the future
of drones or VTOL.
What are you doing with thisfixed wing drone?
You're like in the past.
It gave us conviction to likeignore all those people and do
the thing that actually made theyeah made financial sense and
made the business work was beingunderstanding that was what

(50:16):
mattered most, and then comingup with the simplest solution to
that long range low cost, whichis fixed wing.
Um, and then again, flowing thesolution to the rest of the
problem around it.
Like, how do you launch it?
How do you land it?
How do you deliver?
That all came second.
Um, yeah, if we hadn't sort offollowed that mental model of
approaching the problem, uhZipline wouldn't be around
today.

SPEAKER_02 (50:34):
Yeah.
Dude, that's amazing.
This has been super incredible.
Thank you so much for taking thetime and being on here.
Um, if anyone wants to learnmore about you or more about
Zipline, how can they find you?
What's what's the best place tolearn?

SPEAKER_00 (50:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
Check us out, zipline.com.
And uh yeah, you can you canfind me on X.

SPEAKER_02 (50:52):
Cool.
All right.
Uh, thanks again for your time,and we will talk soon.
Cool.
Thank you so much.
This is a great conversation.

SPEAKER_03 (50:59):
Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 (51:00):
Do we have an outro?
Am I supposed to say something?

SPEAKER_03 (51:02):
Can you say like thanks for listening?
Love to have your feedback.
Find us uh on Insta and YouTubeat Suncutsen.

SPEAKER_02 (51:08):
Can we just use that?

SPEAKER_03 (51:09):
Thanks for joining us on today's episode.
If you have any questions,comments, or concerns, you can
email us at just gonna send itat sankcutsen.com or find us on
socials at sank cutsen atgymbelosic.
Don't forget to subscribe,download, and share with your
friends.
Thanks again for listening.
We'll catch you on the nextepisode.