A Medical Drone Startup’s Approach to Navigating Regulation, Building Trust, and Creating Amazing Teams
I first came across Zipline in a Bloomberg Technology article, “Startup Will Use Drones to Deliver Drugs and Blood Across Ghana.” Intrigued, I went to Zipline’s website. I discovered that what Zipline is doing 1) is truly incredible, and 2) comes with a daunting set of challenges. This led me to talk with Ryan Oksenhorn, Head of Software at Zipline, about how they deal with these challenges. His responses contain some surprising advice on dealing with regulation, building trust with collaborators, and building strong teams.
Zipline was founded in 2014 with the mission of providing every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies by drone. They are headquartered at Half Moon Bay, CA and assemble their drones in South San Francisco. Over the past 5 years, they’ve worked with the governments of Rwanda and Ghana (countries where transportation infrastructure is scarce) to develop and operate four drone delivery sites. When a doctor needs medicine, they contact a Zipline operator, who then packages the medicine and flies it out, reaching its destination within 30 minutes. Today, Zipline provides 13 million people with access to urgent medication. All of these facts informed my discussion with Ryan, which began with a topic that’s been showing up in tech news more and more frequently…
1. Dealing with regulation. I could see regulation as being a major area of concern for Zipline, seeing as it operates with both medical supplies and autonomous flight. One might think about innovation and regulation as two opposing forces: Innovation is about moving fast and creating new things, while regulation is about moving slow to make sure that you don’t accidentally create something bad. If you’re working on some cutting-edge technology, regulation might feel like a burden that prevents you from achieving your goals. Ryan, however, doesn’t feel that way at all. “We [at Zipline] look at regulation as simply a constraint, a constraint that forces us to spend a lot more time finding simple, safe solutions to problems,” says Ryan. As an example, there are many stringent laws that protect the privacy of patient data, so instead of trying to build a system that tracks dozens of individual patients’ data securely, Zipline opted to not collect patient data at all. Instead, doctors notify Zipline about what medicine they want, and Zipline delivers it without ever knowing who the medicine is for. By embracing the constraint of regulation, Zipline was about to find simpler, better ways to run their operations. Just as constraints breed creativity in art, let regulation be an opportunity to rethink and discover new ways of doing things.
Since autonomous flight is a relatively new technology, Zipline was able to work with regulators to shape policy, which is something that really surprised me, given the anti-regulation attitudes of companies like Google and Facebook. “Regulators haven’t figured out this puzzle [of drone regulation] yet,” says Ryan, “and they’re really excited to partner with us because they see the value of our work.” Zipline has shared the rich flight data that it’s accumulated over almost 3 years of operation with regulators. Using that data, they’ve worked together with regulators to figure out how they can better fit into existing regulatory frameworks, and even create new frameworks. Zipline’s willingness to be transparent and provide this data is really a win-win situation: they are assured that their product is lawful and safe, and regulators gain a huge amount of knowledge with which to make regulatory decisions. If you’re working on an emerging technology, consider being fully transparent with regulators from the start, and be willing to work with them, not against them. Regulators may be able to help you tweak your idea to be safer and more compliant, and they may even grant you special exceptions if they see the potential of your work. Regulators weren’t the only group that Zipline needed to work with, however. They also needed the help of…
2. Government collaboration. When I imagine being a Zipline engineer, pitching a drone delivery center for the very first time to the government of Rwanda, I see myself caught in a chicken-and-egg scenario. On the one hand, I need the government’s approval and support in order to build a drone center in Rwanda. On the other hand, in order to get government support, I would need evidence that my product works in the real world, i.e., I would need to have a working drone center. In my mind, there would be no way to guarantee that the product would work. What Zipline actually did really surprised me. When they asked to partner with the Rwandan government, they didn’t have a perfect, ready-to-deploy drone delivery system to give to them. They had a few barely working drones and a genuine desire to build something together. As Ryan put it, “We weren’t a bunch of foreigners coming here saying, ‘We are the solution.’ We were saying, ‘We want to help.’” By approaching Rwanda with a rough idea and desire to help, Zipline gained Rwanda’s trust, but not because it showed that the idea would definitely work. It showed that Zipline didn’t assume they knew everything about Rwanda’s problems, but rather was eager to learn from real experience and build something together. Zipline’s approach to establishing trust with Rwanda is a form of bringing a product to market as soon as possible, even before it’s complete. If you’re working on a product to solve some problem in your community or serve some audience, don’t wait until you think you’ve solved the problem before unveiling that product. Reach out to your community as early as possible, gather input from them, learn what their needs really are. You’ll be much more likely to provide something they really want, and you’ll build trust at the same time. (Check out this article for other tips on building a strong consumer base!) Aligning your team with those you serve is super important. Also important is…
3. Having a strong team. Zipline has people in two different locations in the US and four different delivery centers in Rwanda and Ghana. How do they make sure those people are all working together effectively? Ryan told me that running an effective organization involves obsessing over things that matter and NOT obsessing over things that don’t matter. For Zipline, this had led to an unconventional organizational structure that centers around their most important priority: operations. At most companies, engineers would be overseen by a project manager (PM), who would be in charge of deciding what the project’s goals and priorities are. Zipline has no PMs. Instead, engineers get feedback straight from the people using the product. “Day-to-day, our engineers report to drone operators,” Ryan told me. “Engineers regularly visit Rwanda and Ghana, and operators regularly come to Zipline HQ in California.” This constant communication and transparency means that everybody is on the same page and has what they need to get stuff done — one of Zipline’s core values is “You can’t innovate in the dark.” Zipline also does not have a single marketing person, as the value of their operations is readily seen by the people that they serve. By focusing exclusively on what’s important to their specific mission, Zipline is able to build a more effective organizational structure. When you’re managing your own venture, don’t assume that the way that other (perhaps super-successful) businesses are organized will also work for you. Design your team based on your specific situation and your specific values.
Ryan couldn’t stress to me enough how important it is to hire people that share your values. When hiring, Zipline goes to great lengths to make sure that they really understand a candidate well. “You have to get to know [your job candidates] and form a deep connection with them. Invest in them enough so that you have mutual trust,” Ryan said. “When we’re really excited about someone, we do our due diligence. There are times when we will go and cook dinner with a candidate’s family or babysit one of their children, so we can really see what kind of person they are. The way we look at it, hiring someone is a leap of faith, and we want to make sure we’re right. Diligently finding one right person takes less time than hiring ten wrong people.”
Talking with Ryan about Zipline was an incredibly informative experience, and it was so evident that he and the whole Zipline team are united by their desire to work on something that truly matters. I hope you can take the ideas that I’ve learned and shared with you today and use them to work on something that truly matters to you.
Find out more about Zipline at their website. Check out more delicious PIE (Profiles In Entrepreneurship) content here.
