Reinventing Delivery with Instant Drone Transport ft Zipline's Keller Cliffton -

In 2014, Keller Cliffton made an audacious pivot: shut down his robotic toy company and rebuild it as an autonomous drone delivery system for life-saving medical supplies. Investors were skeptical: The team knew nothing about drones, healthcare, or logistics. But they pushed forward anyway. This is the story of Zipline's journey from near-death to delivering blood to remote hospitals in Rwanda, battling volatile weather and regulatory hurdles, and eventually becoming a global leader in autonomous delivery: This year Zipline began delivering household items directly to front doors with its new Platform 2 in the US for the likes of Walmart and Chipotle. From fixing broken launchers at 3 AM before the Rwandan president's visit to winning unprecedented FAA approval, Zipline's founders bet everything—multiple times—on their vision. Their story proves that if you just keep going, even when everyone's written you off, you can build something truly transformational. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Keller Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oxenhorn, Maggie Jim, Alfred Lin 00:00 – Chewing Glass 00:55 – Discovering Entrepreneurship 02:00 – From Robots to Real Problems 03:00 – The Vision for Global Health Logistics 04:30 – Betting on Rwanda 06:00 – Building the System 08:00 – The First Flight 09:15 – Breakthrough and Scale 11:15 – The Moment of Validation 12:30 – Platform Two: A New Bet 14:15 – Seeing Is Believing 15:45 – The Next Frontier 16:30 – Never Giving Up