BY DAVID MALONEY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
THE DC VELOCITY Q&A
thoughtleaders
FEW PEOPLE ARE FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO COMBINE THEIR JOB WITH THEIR
passion. Keller Rinaudo is one of them. Rinaudo is CEO and cofounder of Zipline, a
company that builds autonomous drones designed for delivering medical supplies to
remote parts of the world.
The Harvard-educated Rinaudo started his career as a software engineer and a professional rock climber. For a time, he built computers out of RNA and DNA to operate in
human cells as molecular doctors. Then, he discovered the wonderful world of logistics
and the possibilities of using new technologies to deliver medical supplies to all of the
world’s inhabitants, wherever they may live.
San Francisco-based Zipline employs 40 aerospace and software engineers and is funded by an impressive slate of investors, including Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, Paul
Allen, Jerry Yang, and Stanford University. The tech firm builds and operates 40-pound
battery-powered drones that look like small airplanes. The drones are catapult-launched
and fly to remote destinations to make deliveries by paper parachutes. They then return
to the distribution center, where they fly into a large net or are caught by a tailhook and
quickly made ready for further deliveries. (You can watch a video of a drone delivery on
24 DC VELOCITY FEBRUARY 2019 www.dcvelocity.com
INTERVIEW WITH KELLER RINAUDO While many question
whether drone
deliveries will ever
happen in the U.S.,
Keller Rinaudo is
already using
autonomous aircraft
to deliver medical
supplies to remote
locations in Africa.
High-flying bird
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