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Launching Drone Delivery · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem,
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  Speaker 1: the show where we talk to entrepreneurs and engineers about
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the future they're going to build once they solve a
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  Speaker 1: few problems. My guest today is Keenan Wirobek. He's the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: co founder of the drone delivery company zip Line, and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: he has a message for the world. The drones are coming.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: There's going to be more planes and flying cars flying
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  Speaker 1: the airspace in twenty years by a factor of one
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  Speaker 1: hundred than there are aircraft flying in the air today,
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  Speaker 1: flying taxis, aerial pizza delivery. It could all be coming.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, Keenan's company, zip Line is already doing hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of drone deliveries a day every day in Rwanda and Ghana.
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  Speaker 1: But the company has come up against a really interesting,
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  Speaker 1: kind of surprising problem as it tries to expand the US.
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  Speaker 1: It's not really a technological problem. It's more a problem
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  Speaker 1: about the way America thinks about airspace, about the way
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  Speaker 1: we regulate the sky itself, and this problem it goes
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  Speaker 1: back to the early days of flight, but it also
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  Speaker 1: has a huge impact on the present right now. Keenan's
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  Speaker 1: a robotics engineer by training, and by the time he
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  Speaker 1: co founded zip Line back in twenty fourteen, he'd already
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  Speaker 1: worked on a few successful projects. So he was at
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  Speaker 1: this moment when he could really think hard about what
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: his next big thing should be. And he told me
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  Speaker 1: he went around looking for a problem to solve, kept
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  Speaker 1: coming up with ideas, but when he went and asked
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  Speaker 1: experts in the real world, is this a problem, they'd
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  Speaker 1: be like, actually, no, that is not really a problem
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  Speaker 1: for us. Finally, his wife pointed him in a new direction.
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  Speaker 1: My wife's an epidemiologist, and she was telling me to
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: see these stories about health campaigns, you know, vaccine campaigns,
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  Speaker 1: they just get stuck on logistics, and so of course
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  Speaker 1: the wheels are turning. It's like, okay, maybe drones and
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  Speaker 1: that actually that that seems like maybe there's a there's
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  Speaker 1: a real problem to solve here that people are going
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  Speaker 1: to really care about. Um. But at the same time,
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  Speaker 1: I will learn you I'm a very skeptical person, so
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  Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, I'm gonna dig into this, We're gonna
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: go learn about this, and I'm just sure there's gonna
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  Speaker 1: be a thousand reasons why you know, they're never gonna work.
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  Speaker 1: We can't ever solve this problem. Uh, And so we
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  Speaker 1: spend a bunch of time and intential America, where my
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  Speaker 1: wife is from. In Africa, we visited this one medical
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  Speaker 1: supply warehouse in Tanzania, and outside the warehouse as far
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: as you could see, you know, football fields of palette stacked,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you know, two stories high in places. We're just outside
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  Speaker 1: this warehouse. We're like, what's why do you have all
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  Speaker 1: these medical supplies you know, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, other things. Why
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  Speaker 1: are they outside? And you know, one of the people
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  Speaker 1: in the delegation sort of quietly because they were kind
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  Speaker 1: of embarrassed about it, they're like, yeah, that's all expired medicine.
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  Speaker 1: That was one of those like moments where it clicked
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  Speaker 1: of like, Okay, supply is actually not the big problem.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: There's actually something much more practical around around how to run,
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  Speaker 1: you know, how to get this supply from you know,
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  Speaker 1: point a these warehouses to these doctors. That was one
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  Speaker 1: of the experiences that kind of just like the bit
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  Speaker 1: flipped in my head from like this is probably not
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  Speaker 1: a problem we can solve to like, holy shit, we
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  Speaker 1: have to solve this problem. And it just became really
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  Speaker 1: clear you could leap frog over all these factors by
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  Speaker 1: doing this with drones in an on demand way. So
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  Speaker 1: this is the rare instance where a robot can solve
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  Speaker 1: a big important problem in the world that the people
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  Speaker 1: dealing with the problem actually agree is a big important
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  Speaker 1: problem exactly. And I'd say that that people agreeing it's
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: important problem was another big part of my concern. Right,
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  Speaker 1: Like in Silicon Valley, we like to use the word
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: disruption as a good word. Right, you walk into a
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  Speaker 1: health system, a national health system of a country and say,
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  Speaker 1: let's disrupt this, Like nobody is exciting. Yeah, everybody's like,
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  Speaker 1: here's the door. We're busy. You're like, go' disrupt somebody else,
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  Speaker 1: Like we have a job to do. I was very
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  Speaker 1: worried that there just wasn't going to be an appetite
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  Speaker 1: for change in these health systems. But really the opposite happened,
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  Speaker 1: where we got started getting to know these health systems
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  Speaker 1: and the ministers of health in these countries. And I
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  Speaker 1: still remember the first interaction with the Minister of health
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  Speaker 1: in Rwanda. She said, Okay, you've got two weeks. You know,
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  Speaker 1: we've got all the data, like you've been modeling how
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  Speaker 1: a drone system, like this could work in a health system.
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  Speaker 1: Put together the case, what's the health impact, what's the
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  Speaker 1: economic impact, and then we'll go from there, and that
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  Speaker 1: was just like amazing. The rest is of course history.
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  Speaker 1: The case was really compelling on the health side and
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  Speaker 1: the economic side, and they became our first customer. And specifically,
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  Speaker 1: what is the ask, what is the job? The job
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  Speaker 1: from Rwanda is deliver blood on demand. The obvious answer
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  Speaker 1: in the early days like, okay, cool, which drone are
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  Speaker 1: we going to buy? So went out to all the
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  Speaker 1: drone companies they could make a drone that could do
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  Speaker 1: what we wanted. And this was an incredibly frustrating journey
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  Speaker 1: because the best quote I got for a drone was
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  Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars per drone with a two hundred
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  Speaker 1: flight warranty if I didn't fly it in the rain.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And it was like and obviously the economics of that
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  Speaker 1: are just like don't work at all. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: the customers want delivery all the time when it's waning
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  Speaker 1: or this was all really clear and it just became
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  Speaker 1: this is one of those wake up call moments of like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: you gotta do this yourself. Um, and getting this first
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  Speaker 1: product service off the ground for this customer is going
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  Speaker 1: to be a much bigger lift than than you thought.
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  Speaker 1: So you realize you're going to have to build your
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  Speaker 1: own drones from scratch. And one of the things that's
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: interesting to me about this part of the story is
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  Speaker 1: is it right you wind up basically using iPhone parts.
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  Speaker 1: So the sensors, many of the sensors that make the
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  Speaker 1: drone fly, Um, you know, these are the same sensors
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  Speaker 1: that are in your phone. Uh, And that the tech
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  Speaker 1: like whether or not you know what orientation your phone
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  Speaker 1: is started for your video is like, so your phone
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  Speaker 1: knows the videos should be sideways, are playing those which
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  Speaker 1: way is up? And how to fly without you know,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: falling out of the sky. And it's truly the same
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: basically the same sensors. Oh yeah, made by the same companies.
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  Speaker 1: Like yeah, what if there are others? Can you just
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: like rattle off like, oh, sure, what sensors that are
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: in my iPhone more or less are in your drones? Yeah?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So GPS, Uh, the cell modems that are in your
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  Speaker 1: we have in our drones. Even the basically the processors
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  Speaker 1: that are in your phone, we use very similar technology
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  Speaker 1: processing cheap more or less similar exactly. That they're so
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  Speaker 1: power efficient and they're so capable. It's amazing to me.
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  Speaker 1: I guess in part because you know, I've gotten used
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  Speaker 1: to thinking about giant businesses like I don't know, Uber
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  Speaker 1: or Instagram that like, okay, I guess that those you
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  Speaker 1: couldn't have without the iPhone, right, that is intuitive to me.
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  Speaker 1: But the idea that, like, you know, a company sending
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  Speaker 1: drones across sub Saharan Africa to deliver blood, that that
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  Speaker 1: is also built on the iPhone is wild. Like you
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  Speaker 1: needed the cell phone the smartphone revolution. You needed the
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  Speaker 1: iPhone to have come along and made all these components
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  Speaker 1: super cheap, super reliable, super smart exactly. So I want
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to try. I want to just talk through in some detail,
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  Speaker 1: how like one on what do you call it delivery?
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  Speaker 1: I guess how one delivery works. So some doctor or
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  Speaker 1: nurse needs something in their hospital. What happens? Yeah, so
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  Speaker 1: a doctor or nurse needs something, they place their order
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  Speaker 1: right And by the way, we're really flexible there. They
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  Speaker 1: can use an app, they can use their phone, they
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  Speaker 1: can use WhatsApp, they can pick up the phone and
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  Speaker 1: call us, whatever's easy for them. So our team they're
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  Speaker 1: they're gonna get the unit of blood out of the
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  Speaker 1: freezer or fridge. They're gonna get the unit off the shelf,
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  Speaker 1: they're gonna pack it up, put it into one of
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  Speaker 1: the drones. The drone gets put into a launcher. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna pause you there because we have a video
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  Speaker 1: and I know we're like watching videos on a podcast
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  Speaker 1: is a questionable move, but let's try it, because like
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  Speaker 1: I do want to see it. Right, it's a it's yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's cool. So you ready, I'm gonna you push play too, Okay, ready,
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  Speaker 1: go all right? Okay, So, so somebody is loading it
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  Speaker 1: looks like a plane, a plane about the size of
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  Speaker 1: a person, onto some kind of a launcher right onto
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  Speaker 1: like a ramp exactly. Well, there's propellers. The propellers are spinning,
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  Speaker 1: I like your narration. And then there's a guy. What's
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  Speaker 1: the guy there doing? Oh, it just launched. He just
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  Speaker 1: launched it. Yeah, wingspans about ten feet so picture. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's like a big RC plane. Okay, a big remote
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  Speaker 1: control plane. And by the way, I mean, it's not
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  Speaker 1: in fact remote controlled, right, Like what does it is?
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  Speaker 1: It actually just flying on its own? Yeah, so it
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  Speaker 1: is flying it's flying automatically all the way out to
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  Speaker 1: the delivery site. Does that mean there are people whose
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  Speaker 1: job is to sit somewhere at the warehouse fan in
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  Speaker 1: office and like look at what a camera from to
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  Speaker 1: basically do air traffic control, to look at what all
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  Speaker 1: the drones are doing and make sure that exactly So
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  Speaker 1: we call our drones zips, and we call those people
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  Speaker 1: ZIP controllers. Their job is very similar to air traffic control.
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  Speaker 1: And do they generally have to do anything or do
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  Speaker 1: the drones take care of themselves? The drones take care
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  Speaker 1: of themselves. Okay, so here, let's keep watching. So now
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  Speaker 1: now that drone is going to make the drop. First
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  Speaker 1: of all, you have to picture a package. So picture
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  Speaker 1: a cake box, right size package with a paper parachute
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  Speaker 1: on it that's in the belly of this drone. And
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  Speaker 1: so the drone flies over the delivery site and when
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  Speaker 1: it drops it, that paper parachute will inflate and the
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  Speaker 1: package drifts to the ground a little bit like a cartoon,
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  Speaker 1: is how I That's how I'm watching it right now. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it worked, It worked. It looks kind of fast, it's
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: coming down kind of fast. Yeah, yeah, it's it does
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  Speaker 1: come down fast. It's a This is the fun of
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  Speaker 1: the engineering challenge here. If you come down really slowly,
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  Speaker 1: that accuracy that basically goes gets worse because the wind
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  Speaker 1: can blow it to the side. More basic, exactly exactly
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: if it hit you on the head, it looks like
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  Speaker 1: it would hurt. I have been a test subject of
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: this intentionally to make sure someone who has to do
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: it under it. So it hit you on the head.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're telling me? You know what's happening.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I live to tell the tale. So okay, I'm more seriously,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: has anybody ever gotten hurt by one of your drones? No,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: No one's gotten hurt by one of our drones. But
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of engineering work that goes into really
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: minimizing the chances that you can get hurt by a drone. Okay,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: tell me about the end of the flight. It doesn't
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  Speaker 1: land in the way one would think of a little
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  Speaker 1: plane landing. It doesn't land it. Yeah, So there's like
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: two arms sticking into the air. There's two poles sticking
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: into the air, and those poles are on motors. Okay,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: so they move up and down, but basically you know
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  Speaker 1: they're on motors. Between those two poles. Is a string, okay,
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  Speaker 1: really small string okay. And basically what's happening is our
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  Speaker 1: drone flies between these two poles and at the last second,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: look the last fraction of a second. Yeah, if everything
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  Speaker 1: looks good, those poles, the motors on those poles will
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  Speaker 1: snap those polls up, so the line flings into the
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: tailhook of the plane, capturing the plane and that's how
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  Speaker 1: it lands. That is amazing in a minute, the truly
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  Speaker 1: surprising reason that it's harder to build a drone business
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in the United States than in Rwanda. Now, let's get
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  Speaker 1: back to what's your problem. Zipline expanded from Rwanda to
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  Speaker 1: Ghana a few years ago and now delivers lots of
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: medical supplies across both countries. It's like a normal routine
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  Speaker 1: thing there, hundreds of flights a day every day. But
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  Speaker 1: the company is just starting to expand into the United States.
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  Speaker 1: So far, ziplanes work in this country is limited to
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: a few pilot projects. They're delivering medical supplies for a
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: hospital system in North Carolina. They're also flying stuff like
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: bandages and over the counter medicine to Walmart customers in
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: rural Arkansas. And in their work in the United States,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Zipline is facing one particularly hard problem. A lot of
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  Speaker 1: the challenge comes down to the regulatory environment. In the US,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: our airspace is very old fashioned. We have a philosophy
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: here in the US and the airspace where we kind
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of grandfather everything in so not absolutely everything, but mostly everything.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of things you could do in the forties
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  Speaker 1: you can still do in the airspace today, and that
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  Speaker 1: makes things very complicated. Most other countries, basically the way
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  Speaker 1: they talk about it is, say we have modernized our airspace.
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  Speaker 1: We've required things like transponders so all planes can tell
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  Speaker 1: by radio where all the other planes are. We don't
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  Speaker 1: require that here in So you're telling me there's some
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  Speaker 1: device that you can put in a plane that allows
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  Speaker 1: all other planes to know that plane is there, and
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  Speaker 1: in the US you don't have to have that in
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  Speaker 1: your plane. That is correct and as crazy as it sounds.
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  Speaker 1: And so in terms of like regulating airspace, like Ghana
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  Speaker 1: and Rwanda are doing sort of sensible modern things that
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the US is not doing. That's exactly right, and that
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: makes their airspace essentially much simpler to integrate drones into
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  Speaker 1: versus here in the US. Tell me what other problems
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  Speaker 1: are you trying to solve what's a technical one that's
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: interesting when we're working on that that's extraordinarily hard, which is,
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  Speaker 1: this comes down to operating in airspaces like the United States,
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  Speaker 1: where you have planes flying around that don't have you know,
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  Speaker 1: a radio transponder that tells you where they are, and
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: so you have to have sensing on the drone that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: directly senses where these other aircraft are hard to avoid. Okay,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and this is something that's very hard to do for
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a bunch of reasons. We tried radar and radar that
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: can see in all directions. It just you literally need
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: hundreds of pounds of radar equipment to see far enough
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: in all directions, which of course there drones don't weigh
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: hundreds of pounds to begin with. And camera is the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: same problem. So many cameras with so many lenses and
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: so many you know, pixels if you will see that,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you know, that speck in the air, and of course
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: cameras they just don't work when it's cloudy, which is
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you know, a big deal. So basically you've had to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: do a sensor technology development from the ground up for this,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: and it's it's something that's been really challenging and really
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: really exciting because if we can solve this problem, it'll
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: enable scaled operations for drones, you know, around the world.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: So how do you solve it? Are you getting closer?
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: We're getting a lot closer. And this is I have
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: to tease here because the actual thing I can't talk
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: about quite. It's a secret because of like intellectual property,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: because you're going to try and plent it, literally because
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: of intellectual property, because we're gonna because we're trying to
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: patent it. So let me ask a question. If you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: haven't solved this problem yet, how are you able to
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: fly in the US? Yeah? So in the US, and
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this is true of all drone operators in the US.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Even even everybody who flies drones in the US is
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: doing exactly this thing I'm gonna describe, which is not sophisticated.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: There are people along those routes looking at the sky. Wow.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So wherever your drones flood, you have people who are
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: your employees. They are getting paid by the hour to
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: look at the sky and what text or something if
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: they push a button, if they see exactly they have
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: a special app that they can communicate with our controller.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: If they see something and then there's a whole protocol
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: around what do And just to be clear, you don't
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: have to do this in Rwanda or in Ghana because
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: all of the planes flying there have transponders, so the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: drones automatically know when there's another plane. Yeah, and you know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: we feed our data there into basically their literal air
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: traffic control, so they have a view of their whole airspace,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: including all the aircraft with people and all of our drives.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: So wild to me that we don't have that. Maybe
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I'm super naive, I guess obviously I am super naive
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to be surprised by that. Like is there any broader
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: lesson from that, Like, is there anything I can conclude
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: about the way the United States works, the way regulation
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: works here? I don't know. I mean it is some
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of it is a philosophical thing, right like here we
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: sort of we sort of romanticize and cherish like sort
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: of the old ways of flying, and so we cowboys
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: cowboys in the sky and their little cessna or whatever exactly.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: They are pilots I've met who have told me to
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: my face, I'm never going to put a transponder because
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: that means people know where I am, and some of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it is also just uh, you know, I think this
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: is one of the things I think a lot about
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: with this country, right, where As we kind of mature,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: if you will, as a country, right, A lot of
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: these countries like Rwanda and Ghana, these are literally young countries.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Their whole mindset is around growth and becoming, you know,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and becoming the economic power they want to be in
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: the future and things like that, and they're very willing
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to sort of make decisions that are very future focused.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: And I think more and more I see, you know,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: as a as a society right at the balance between
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: clinging to the past and and focusing on the future
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and how do you do both in the right way?
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: So we so we actually you know, stay who we
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: want to be and become who we need to be.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And that's a that's a tricky thing to do. And
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: I see when I sit in a room of the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: fa leadership and they're literally debating this kind of thing,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: like in these kind of terms, the FAA has more
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: old as regulations that makes it harder for you to
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: do what you do. You're working closely with the FAA,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and like like where does that sort of land like,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: is there some I know there's no endpoint, but if
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: there's some big like step that's going to happen where
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: they're going to say, Okay, you can delivered hospitals all
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: over the country and like what problems do you have
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: to solve for that to happen. Yeah, So the journey
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: with the FA, Yeah, it's incremental rights. It's all about
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: taking the right next step that leads you to the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: next step that leads you to the next step, both
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: for them to get comfortable, for them to learn, for
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: us to get to know each other. Literally, there's a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: lot of trust that has to be built between a
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: company like Zipline doing something very new and a regulator
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like the FA who you know, to their credit, right,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the advent of autonomy in the airspace is like the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: biggest change to the airspace literally since flight began. Yeah, right,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: and I mean that in every sense of the word. Right.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: There's going to be more planes and flying cars flying
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: in the airspace in twenty years by a factor of
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: one hundred than there are aircraft flying the air to
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: It's that big of a change. And you know, to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: their credit, like they can't you know, they can't be
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: reckless here, this is going to be hard to do,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and do it safely in a minute, The Lightning Round,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: including Keenan's tips for solving hard problems and the biggest
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: misconception most people have about drones. Okay, let's get back
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: to the show. We're gonna close with the Lightning Round.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Are you ready? I'm ready. What is one piece of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: advice you'd give to somebody who is trying to solve
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a hard problem. If it's a hard business or customer problem,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: start with real human customers before you do anything else.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: If it's a technology problem, focus on the hardest part
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of the technology problem, ignore all the rest, and then
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: go on to the next hardest and then go on
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the next hardest. What's your favorite app on your phone?
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: My favorite app on my phone. I'm sure I have
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: such a positive relationship with my phone. Actually, you know,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: recently I I got Nebula. I really like Nebula. I
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: don't know Nebula. What is it? It's basically a bunch
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of the more wonkier YouTubers got together and made an
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: ad free YouTube for to cheat sidestuff to YouTube algorithm,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: and they just make some great content. Oh great, Yeah,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that's a good tip. What's the biggest misconception people have
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: about drones? Biggest misconception people have about drones. I have
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: a good friend who's now worked at SpaceX and zip Line,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and he likes to joke that rockets are easier than
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: people think, and drones are harder than people think. Good.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: A lot of people they look at the little you know,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: they look at a drone that you play with as
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: a hobby, and they're like, what's the big deal. Let's
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: put a package on the bottom and deliver stuff. And
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I was a little guilty of that
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: too when I started zip Line two, two or three
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: more favorite trait and a co worker, Oh easy, someone
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: who has a lot of fun when ship gets hard. Yeah,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it's actually this actually the main thing I interview for.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: It's sort of funny because they're so much fun because
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: startups so just like it's one hard thing to the next, right,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and and people who really are going to enjoy that,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: And are you're gonna have fun with through that? You know?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: People who love the problem? Yeah, exactly. Um, what would
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: you do if you couldn't do what you do? Oh goodness,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I've looked. Yeah, this this is this is interesting if
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I carbon sequestration, how will you know when it's time
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to retire that I have? I have no idea, you know.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I think the you know, zip Line today is the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: biggest company I've ever worked at by a lot. How
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: big is it? Going on? Seven hundred folks? Yeah, um
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and um yeah. You know, if you had asked me
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: eight years ago, if I'd still be here when were
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: seven hundred people, I would have been like, Nope, that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound like me. So it's a painful growth for sure.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I work hard at it, and I have a lot
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: of awesome people around me who don't hesitate to give
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: me feedback, which is, you know, the only way to grow, right. So,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, like it's hard to imagine
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: that I can keep up the zip Line forever. Keenan
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Wyrobek is the founder of Ziplan. On the next few
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: episodes of What's Your Problem, I'll be talking to people
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: about artificial intelligence. What problems do we have to solve
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: to get to self driving cars and to chatpots that
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: we can actually chat with chatbot's good enough to teach
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: us a new language. Today's show was produced by Edith Russelo.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: It was edited by Kate Parkinson Morgan and Robert Smith,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: and it was engineered by Amanda kay Wong. Theme music
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: by Luis Garra. Our development team is Lee, Tom Mulad
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and Justine Lang. A huge team of people makes What's
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Your Problem possible. That team includes, but is not limited to,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Mia Lobell, Heather Fame, John Schnars, Kerrey Brodie,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Carli Mcglehory, Christina Sullivan, Jason Gambrell, Brand Hayes, Eric Sandler,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Morgan Ratner, Nicolemrano, Mary Beth Smith, Royston Deserve,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, Danielle Lakhan, Kazia Tan and David Clever. What's
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Your Problem is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcast listen on the iHeartRadio app,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or where I'm Jacob Goldstein and I'll be
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: back next week with another episode of What's Your Problem,