Zipline: A Full-Stack Engineering Team

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Zipline is a full stack engineering team. So we design the avionics from scratch, our mechanical engineering team designs the aircraft and do all the aerodynamics analysis. We are doing a huge amount of sort of wild innovation on the aeroacoustics front as we talk about to make sure that these vehicles are actually silent for the customers that we're delivering to. And yeah, and so right now, you can actually see, you know, these are fuselage is, this is final vehicle basically preflight checksSo that we can guarantee a vehicle is going to pass preflight check when we send it to a distribution center.

Reducing complexity, increasing speed, enhancing the user interface, reducing costs, reducing waste, enhancing equality, and saving lives; this is the mission of Zipline. Today on the show, we are joined by Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, the co-founder of the company on a mission to provide the world with an autonomous drone logistics system that is incomparable to any other delivery service on the planet. Despite the enormous amount of skepticism they were up against, Keller and his team chose to turn science fiction into reality. Through delivering blood to hospitals in Rwanda, Zipline has been able to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 88%, and they have flown over 40 million miles for commercial purposes. In this episode, Keller talks about the variety of challenges that have made the Zipline mission far harder than they anticipated, their humble approach to product development, and what this groundbreaking business model means for the future of logistics and human kind.

“Five and a half million kids lose their lives every year due to lack of access to basic medical products. A big part of that is logistics.” — @KellerRinaudo Key Points From This Episode:

The motivation behind the founding of Zipline.
What Zipline’s first year of operations in Rwanda consisted of.
Why the assumption that uptake of advanced technology always occurs in developed countries first is incorrect.
How Zipline has expanded its service since its founding.
The alternative delivery options to Zipline (and why Zipline believes its service offers so much more value to its customers).
Statistics that highlight the impact that Zipline has had on the Rwandan healthcare system.
Skepticism that the Zipline idea was met with prior to its launch.
Why naivete can be an entrepreneurial superpower.
The number of autonomous miles that Zipline drones have flown for commercial purposes.
Obstacles that Keller and his team have had to overcome to get Zipline to where it is today.
An overview of the expertise on the Zipline team.
Zipline’s approach to product development.
How Zipline has helped to evolve aerospace regulations.
Reasons for the drastic increase in demand for instant delivery.
The problems with traditional delivery mechanisms and how Zipline is solving them.