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