Building Zipline: From launch disaster to drone-delivery giant | Keller Cliffton (Co-founder, CEO)

Keller Cliffton is the co-founder and CEO of Zipline, the world's largest commercial autonomous delivery system, which today serves 5,000 hospitals across multiple countries and saves an estimated 17,000 lives per year. In this episode, Keller breaks down his extreme hiring philosophy that has powered Zipline for over a decade. He also walks through Zipline’s full origin story: from a near-dead home robot startup to a scrappy bet on drone blood delivery in Rwanda, to 135 million autonomous miles flown. In today's episode, we discuss: Why Zipline hires teenagers over PhDs Why the best startup employees are "heat-seeking missiles for pain" The 5 leadership attributes Zipline has never shared publicly The brutal firing advice that shaped Keller’s leadership How Rwanda’s health minister changed Zipline’s trajectory References: Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com Alfred Lin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linalfred/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com Apple: https://www.apple.com Brian Chesky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/ Cleveland Clinic: https://my.clevelandclinic.org Netflix: https://www.netflix.com Paul Kagame: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkagame/ Reflect Orbital: https://www.reflectorbital.com Sequoia Capital: https://www.sequoiacapital.com SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com Sphero: https://www.sphero.com Tesla: https://www.tesla.com University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu Walmart: https://www.walmart.com Zipline: https://www.zipline.com Where to find Keller: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellerrc/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/Keller Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 02:11 Why Zipline doesn't hire for experience 06:04 Are founders born or made? 07:37 Why Zipline hires 17-year-olds over PhDs 17:03 The employees Zipline doesn't want 18:53 The ultimate startup hire is a "heat-seeking missile" 20:36 Why blind references are a non-negotiable 23:07 Can candidates admit when they screwed up? 30:10 Zipline's secret leadership playbook 35:16 Why you should always fire quickly 36:26 The early vision for Zipline 39:48 How Zipline almost died - twice 44:55 From toy robots to drone delivery: Zipline's pivot 51:35 How Rwanda's health minister changed everything 57:10 Why Zipline's launch was a "complete disaster" 1:04:05 Scaling from 1 hospital to 5000 1:05:17 The 10x hardware cost rule every founder should know