The Method

Documenting the extraordinary

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

Documenting the extraordinary: Zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

Zipline CEO @keller read Ender's Game 15 times as a kid, and says Kobe Bryant read it 50 times.

The lesson that stuck with him: "Help is never coming."

"I read Ender's Game like 15 times when I was a kid. I was the shrimp in class. I was teased relentlessly for being short. I had a huge chip on my shoulder growing up, and reading Ender’s Game, I was like, got it. You just gotta work harder, be faster, be smarter, take more risk."

"I actually just read a biography of Kobe Bryant, and it turns out that Kobe was obsessed with that book. He read it like 50 times when he was a kid."

"People who haven't read it, or unfortunately who have seen the movie, which is terrible, probably don’t appreciate that overall feeling in the book of, help is never coming. He has to do everything himself."

"Reading a lot of science fiction gave me this sense of, the future could be awesome. It's only gonna be awesome if we’re willing to take the risks and go build it."
@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

Experts told Zipline CEO @keller his drone delivery idea was "stupid" and would never work.

Years later, a University of Pennsylvania study reported a 51% reduction in maternal mortality at hospitals served by Zipline:

"We were being told by experts that this idea was stupid, it was never gonna work, we were wasting our time. It would never be reliable. It would never make sense from a unit economics perspective. We would never get regulatory permission. There were like 10 reasons not to do the thing."

"It was only 3 years in that a lot of these big institutions like the University of Pennsylvania actually reached out and said, this actually seems like it’s scaling. Can we study this?"

"It was only really 6, 7, 8 years after originally launching this service that we were able to get results like the one the University of Pennsylvania recently published, showing a 51% reduction in maternal mortality across all these hospitals that are benefiting from Zipline."

"Had you told us when we were launching the service that we were gonna achieve a 5% reduction in maternal mortality, we would’ve said, that’s totally worth committing our lives to."
@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

@sophiadew Class is in session

[The Method @themethodshow]

Zipline CEO @keller on how the pinnacle of startup ambition went from Dropbox in 2013 to superintelligence, nuclear fusion, and asteroid mining just 13 years later:

"When I first moved to the Bay Area in 2013, I had just learned about startups. I had got all the way through college without even really realizing entrepreneurship was a thing you could do in your career."

"The most inspiring, fast-growing startup with the best people and the best investors, basically the pinnacle of what could be achieved in startup land, was Dropbox in 2013. $4 billion valuation and 1,000 people and the best investors, and they were getting ready to go public."

"Over just 13 years, the scope and scale of human ambition has accelerated dramatically. File sharing was the most ambitious version."

"Now you have teams accelerating rapidly in superintelligence and autonomous cars and nuclear fusion and asteroid mining and orbital data centers and life extension and DNA computing."

"For people who want to go have an adventure or work on something hard, it is 100% the case that there has never been a time in human history like this one."
@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

What is NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's method for managing relationships?

Transparency.

“When they see that it's okay to be vulnerable as a CEO, that as a leader, I can ask for help, I can be uncertain, I can be wrong. When they see us do that, then they all can do that.”

“I reason in front of everybody what we need to do. We work together to come up with a strategy. Whatever strategy it is, everybody hears it at the same time."

“I'm usually the last person to talk, to describe, based on everything that we've done, this is the direction and these are the priorities. And to make sure that if there's any ambiguity, I've taken out the ambiguity.”

“If they need help, I need them to ask us for it. Nobody loses alone. Nobody fails alone.”

[The Method @themethodshow]

@tkisrage @sophiadew This is so sick

[The Method @themethodshow]

Zipline CEO @keller explains why he runs Zipline like special forces teams instead of an army of middle managers:

"It's rare that I have to decide that. We've really designed the company to be a whole bunch of special forces teams that are working on these super ambitious problems."

"If you look at an organization like the Army, you have some decision-makers at the top and a massive layer of middle managers who are designed to communicate decisions and then filter them out to a huge number of people who are actually doing the fighting."

"Zipline has always wanted to design itself much more like special forces teams, where these are highly trained, highly empowered teams. You give them one clear goal, and then they will do whatever it takes to achieve the goal. They can innovate. They can endure hardship. They can fail and then regroup."

"We had a maintenance crisis over the summer, so we had this special forces team with this super ambitious goal set over 90 days to totally rework the entire way that our maintenance process was working."

"We've now gone from the lowest fleet health we had ever been at in July to the highest fleet health the company has ever been at in mid-September."

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

@wheresaddie We hope so too! Getting to tell this story felt like a good way to start

[The Method @themethodshow]

@jasoncrawford @Keller And that timeline is only going to get shorter and shorter!

[The Method @themethodshow]

@sophiadew I would've copied your notes in college for sure

[The Method @themethodshow]

What can you learn from Zipline?

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

Zipline CEO @keller pitched Rwanda's health minister on delivering every medical supply by drone.

Her response: "Keller, shut up. Just do blood."

"The customer, in this case the Minister of Health of Rwanda, was the expert. We weren't. Her name was Agnes Binagwaho. She was this incredible public servant."

"We were saying, we'll use autonomous aircraft to deliver all products in the public healthcare supply chain to every hospital and health facility in the country. At some point she was just like, Keller, shut up. Just do blood."

"She was the one who gave us this very narrow, focused beachhead, where she was like, Keller, show us that the technology can do this one thing, because this would be game changing for a health system."

"It's really lucky that she did because we actually spent the first year falling on our faces and hardly able to deliver to 1 hospital, let alone 20."
@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

@dk227s Extremely real

[The Method @themethodshow]

@sophiadew We're going old school with pen and paper I like it!

[The Method @themethodshow]

@sophiadew Stress of running a startup < stress of climbing a sheer cliff

[The Method @themethodshow]

> be Keller Cliffton
> apply to Harvard at the last minute
> write admissions essay in one night
> get accepted, study biochemistry
> build Harvard's first rock-climbing wall
> graduate in 2009, become a professional rock climber
> spend years living out of a Honda Fit
> get inspired by Tony Hsieh to become an entrepreneur
> co-found robotics startup Romotive in 2011
> build robots controlled by iPhones
> visit Tanzania in 2014
> see hospitals struggling to get medical supplies
> pivot to autonomous delivery drones
> rename the company Zipline
> launch in Rwanda in 2016
> set out to deliver blood to 21 hospitals
> expand into Ghana and the US
> partner with Walmart and healthcare providers
> deliver so fast that its closest thing to teleportation
> surpass 3 million deliveries
> grow Zipline to a $21.5 billion valuation

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

@liangsays Plus Zipline? Extremely strong naming game

[The Method @themethodshow]

@being_on_line Media Studies 🤝 The Method

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

Zipline CEO @keller on how drone deliveries went from "Jesus Christ himself is delivering blood from the sky" to "it's 30 seconds late" in just 7 days:

"You'd go and meet nurses and doctors at a remote hospital and say, now you just send a text message, and an autonomous vehicle's gonna deliver it 10 or 15 minutes later. People are looking at you like you're totally crazy."

"One doctor told me, it's as though Jesus Christ himself is delivering blood from the sky. People would form these huge crowds to watch deliveries for the first few days."

"What is amazing to me is that by day 7, people are 100% bored of it. It's completely normal. I had one doctor come out, and we were watching a delivery together, and she just picked it up, looked at her watch, looked at me and was like, it’s 30 seconds late."

"Humans are so good at adapting to the new normal that something goes from science fiction to entitlement in approximately 7 days."
@zipline

[The Method @themethodshow]

The Method E1: Inside Zipline with Keller Cliffton

It was illegal to fly autonomously in US airspace when Keller Cliffton started Zipline, and most investors "weren't willing to invest in illegal things." Zipline launched in Rwanda instead, flying blood to 21 hospitals. It's now valued at $21.5 billion.

@Keller, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, sat down with @sophiadew at Zipline's South San Francisco factory to break down why they started in Rwanda, why each 10x jump in scale breaks everything, and the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries:

00:00 the closest thing to teleportation
01:38 why Zipline launched in Rwanda first
03:14 the UPenn study and a 51% drop in maternal mortality
04:17 why tech keeps solving "rich people problems"
06:00 bringing Zipline to the US and going back to square one
07:28 why every 10x breaks the company
09:16 running teams like special forces
10:42 people patting the droid to say thank you
11:19 the case for 50 billion US instant deliveries
13:30 from pro rock climber to "happy to fail"

@zipline