Transcript File
Hello, I'm Bruce Edwards and welcome to
this podcast produced by the International Monetary Fund.
MR. RINAUDO [soundbite]:
“Zipline is the startup that designs,
manufacturers, and operates autonomous electric aircraft that deliver medicine
to hard‑to‑reach places in the world.”
MR.
EDWARDS: There are a lot
of different layers to development. Sometimes there’s a need where the solution
is not at all that obvious, but other times it’s simply about connecting the
dots.
There’s a need where the solution is
available but out of reach, because of the lack of infrastructure like roads,
power lines, or telephone wires. Technology is helping connect those dots more
than ever before and the phenomenon has come to be known as “leapfrogging.”
Today we hear from the people behind a
startup that uses drones to make emergency blood deliveries to remote clinics
in Rwanda. The founder and CEO of Zipline is Keller Rinaudo and his chief
revenue officer is Matthew Steckman.
I started by asking Keller: why Rwanda?
MR.
RINAUDO: The reason we
actually started in Rwanda, which often kind of surprises people, is that there
was an amazing opportunity to partner with a government that had a really
specific vision for how automated and instant delivery could save lives.
So, by working together, we were
essentially able to show that this technology can actually make it possible to
increase access to really crucial medical products while actually reducing
waste and saving lives.
Not only did we have a really innovative
government in Rwanda, but it’s also a pretty small country that is pretty
centralized. So, that made it an amazing place to demonstrate the power of this
technology, and now we’re basically in the process of using Rwanda as a role
model—other countries are basically seeing what was accomplished in Rwanda and
basically following their lead.
MR.
EDWARDS: So, talk to me a
little bit about the technology, like how does it work exactly, and what do you
use to deliver these products?
MR.
RINAUDO: The experience of
using Zipline is actually really simple. A doctor or nurse anywhere in a
country can pick up a phone—a feature phone or a smartphone—and can send a text
message or website message and say, ‘we have a patient who's in danger and this
is what we need.’
They'll get a text message back saying, ‘thanks
for your order, the Zip’s on the way.’ And then 15 minutes later, they’ll get a
text saying, ‘hey, please walk outside, the order’s about to be made.’
Then they walk outside and they’ll watch
the small aircraft fly over at about 30 feet and the package is dropped. We
use a simple paper parachute that allows that package to basically fall
reliably and precisely into the courtyard of a hospital or a lab or a health
facility. The doctor immediately has what they need to save a patient’s life.
So, a hundred percent of the team that’s
running the distribution center today is Rwandan, and they have actually been
able to figure out—they’ve been able to master something that the richest,
biggest, technology companies in the world have not been able to do.
MR.
EDWARDS: That’s
interesting. Did you have trouble recruiting the talent that you needed to get
this going in Rwanda; was there a skill set that you were looking for that
wasn’t there, did you have to do training?
MR.
RINAUDO: There certainly
is a skill set that’s required to operate an automated instant delivery system
at a national scale, but nobody in the world has it!
What we’re doing is unprecedented, so we’ve
realized that really what we need to do is just focus on finding people who
have the right core traits, which means people who are really ambitious,
hardworking, and excited to learn.
So, we really have focused all our hiring—in
any country where we operate—on finding individuals who have those traits and
then doing a really good job of training them and basically developing their
skills over time, so that they become world experts at operating autonomous
vehicles.
MR.
EDWARDS: Matt, maybe you
can answer this question. In terms of capital, the investment that it took to
develop this technology and to implement the project, did the capital come from
within Rwanda or did it come from abroad?
MR.
STECKMAN: So, it’s really
a combination. With any good technical project, the hardest part of it is not
the first 90 percent, it’s the last 10 percent to make it real and to
make it physical and to make it work when you need it every day.
So, yeah, the capital came from a lot of
different places, but the work that was done in Rwanda, the capital, and the
sponsorship from the government of Rwanda, that push, that last
10 percent, that actually made it real.
MR.
EDWARDS: It seems to be a
little easier to leapfrog in Africa than it does in advanced economies like
United States and Europe. Why do you think that is; is it easier to cut through
red tape perhaps? What’s your opinion on that?
MR.
RINAUDO: I think there are
two parts, and one part is well understood and one isn’t. I think the part
that’s well understood is that it’s definitely the case that some problems are
more severe in the developing world than they are in the developed world, so
solutions to those problems naturally start in the developing world.
An example of that would be that mobile
payments have really taken off in many parts of Africa, because people don’t
actually have traditional bank accounts, and that I think is part of that.
Obviously, in instances where Zipline can
make a delivery to a place that wouldn’t otherwise be reachable by roads, that’s
a good example of leapfrogging over the absence of infrastructure.
I think the other half of leapfrogging is
that young countries tend to be more willing to try new things and take a
little bit of risk. In short, they tend to be more entrepreneurial.
I think as countries become rich and old,
they tend to become more risk-averse and concerned about protecting what they
have and not interested in doing new things. So, I actually think there’s an
aspect of leapfrogging that it’s necessary for a government or for a people to
be really entrepreneurial, enterprising, like the definition of the word. So, I
think a lot of the countries that you see taking these leapfrogging
opportunities today are the ones where that spirit of entrepreneurship is
really strong.
MR.
EDWARDS: It seems that emerging
technologies are turning entrepreneurs like you guys into development workers. You’re
working toward the development of these countries in what you’re doing; your
product is contributing pretty significantly to a serious development issue
within the country. Can you see that happening more and more?
MR.
RINAUDO: I think if it
doesn’t happen, the world is going to end—and I'm not even sure that that’s an
exaggeration. I think technology is going to have really disruptive impact on
all traditional industries and economies. Automation is going to fundamentally
change the kinds of skills that people need to be competitive in a global
workforce and it’s coming way faster than anybody realizes.
So, there are major problems that humanity
faces, like getting all 7 billion people on the planet access to health care,
getting them access to education, getting them access to food. These are basic
ones.
We have the technology and the resources to
solve those problems today, but I don’t believe that we’re going to solve them
at scale via more traditional models of foreign aid. The only way we can solve
problems at that scale is through entrepreneurship and new technological
solutions.
So, that’s why I answer that question so
strongly! I actually think it’s imperative for the human race that people
realize that these global problems that affect billions of people are not the
responsibility of only foreign aid organizations or nonprofits. They are
fundamentally the responsibility of all of us and they’re also a huge economic
opportunity for startups, and it’s only startups that are going to be able to
solve that problem.
MR.
EDWARDS: So, I assume you
guys are thinking of expanding this beyond Rwanda. Where are you looking to
expand, and, because there are a lot of countries with pretty significant
governance issues, is that a deterrent for you?
MR.
STECKMAN: Yeah, that’s the
fundamental question for our business. Yes, we are looking at many other
countries in Africa—East, West, South, North, you name it—and having
conversations with health ministers and with heads of state and sometimes with foreign
direct investment offices, but we’re also looking outside of Africa.
This technology has incredible application
for archipelago nations that you find in Southeast Asia. It has excellent
application in the Middle East where there are long distances between city
centers. So, all over the place, it’s a different flavor of infrastructure
challenge, but still applicable to the way that you can, in this case, leapfrog
the traditional solution to logistics in trying to fly things in the air.
MR.
EDWARDS: Given the new
technology and with all the potential in Africa, why do you think there’s
still a reluctance to invest in ideas like this in Africa, you know, to invest
in startups?
MR.
RINAUDO: I think that
largely investors are doing pattern recognition—they look at the ideas that
have worked over the last 50 years, and they say these ideas primarily focused
on serving rich white people. So, they then say, well, what over problems do
rich white people have that we’re going to solve? I think the reality is that
pattern recognition actually is not very powerful at predicting the future. The
short answer is they’re just basically blind to the opportunity and I do think
that’s changing.
Zipline has been able to partner with the
best venture capitalists in the world, and the best global public health
organizations in the world, and the best governed countries in the world. I
think investors are starting to understand the size of these markets and the
potential to have a huge impact on the world, but nothing changes people’s
opinions faster than success, and that’s the reason that we work so hard. We
want to show that it’s possible to do this in a scalable and profitable way,
and it’s possible to use technology and engineering to solve global problems
and save hundreds of thousands of lives.
MR.
EDWARDS: That was Matthew
Steckman and Keller Rinaudo talking about how drone technology is helping
save lives in Rwanda.
You can watch the webcast of
Keller Rinaudo’s presentation at the IMF called “Leapfrogging Development”
by going to imf.org and typing “zipline” in the search box.
You
can also see some very cool videos of how Zipline works at flyzipline.com. If
you liked this podcast, subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast app. Just
look for “IMF podcasts.” You can also now follow us on Twitter: @imf_podcast.
