About this episode From the show’s notes Keller Cliffton joins John Collison to talk about Zipline’s journey to 115 million miles flown, the lost art of American airplanes, building 50k drones a year in California, getting to 99.9% reliability, and US vs. Chinese manufacturing.
Books referenced:
Read the show’s notes in full The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Skunk Works by Ben Rich
Apple in China by Patrick McGee
Timestamps
Chapters 21 · press a time to start there 00:00 Intro 00:45 115 million miles flown 04:10 Why drone delivery took so long 07:38 Getting started in Rwanda 13:31 51% reduction in maternal mortality 15:33 Access vs. waste 21:45 Scaling globally 24:05 Zipline’s Platform 1 25:50 The Right Stuff 27:22 Drone design and safety 30:12 Getting to 99.9% reliability 34:39 Multimodal logistics Show all 21 chapters 38:15 Zipline’s Platform 2 44:03 US drone regs and the FAA 48:02 Progress and stagnation in US aviation 51:30 If Keller ran the FAA 54:24 30% WoW growth in Texas 58:25 Why Texas and not California? 1:00:28 Building 50k drones in California 1:06:18 US vs. Chinese manufacturing 1:11:30 Advice for hardtech founders 
