Zipline's global drone delivery vision

Earlier this year, the world's largest drone delivery company, Zipline, announced a major new partnership with Uber. Soon, if you live in the United States, you may be able to order a salad on Uber Eats and have it dropped from the sky by an autonomous robot. The deal sent Zipline's projected valuation soaring into the tens of billions of dollars. But if you live in Rwanda, this is actually old news. That's where the company began its operations. In many respects, it's where Zipline built its model, not around food and consumer goods, but with lifesaving blood deliveries. At the same time the company is supercharging its U.S. operations, it also continues to expand across the African continent. Last year, Zipline and the US State Department entered into a $150 million pay for performance agreement to help the company triple its African health logistics footprint. Caitlin Burton is the CEO of Zipline Africa and head of international expansion. I am not exaggerating when I say that when she thinks about her job, she is thinking about the entire planet. We recorded this episode in front of a live audience in New York. Here's Caitlin Burton. Caitlin, thanks so much for doing this.

Thank you for having

me. I have been told by a reliable source that you always keep to the same time zone. You're based in Paris. You oversee Zipline's operations in Africa. You're here for UNGA. What time is it for you right now?

I don't know. When I'm in New York, I do get up at like 2 or 3 in the morning. So yeah, I more or less am on the same time zone at all times. It's tough on the West Coast in Asia, but I try.

That's hardcore unga. Yeah,

yeah. It takes a lot of like, this is like a mental and physical endurance game for the rest of my life.

Are you winning?

We're just getting started, day one.

All right. Yeah. So you joined Zipline in 2019. Your background was with humanitarian agencies. You'd done some business development work in Africa already. Why Zipline at that time? What drew you to this company that was really sort of still in startup mode, even in the Africa operations? What led you to jump into that opportunity?

Yeah, we were just a handful of people back then. I did work in humanitarian zones. I worked for Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan and Eastern Congo. And the goal there was just to get close to our problem and really understand what's going on out there. Because before that, I had worked a bit in biz dev. And the job was to win the money. And you could make up all sorts of great stories from behind your desk in DC. But I didn't feel great about that. And so I somehow got convinced right after I got married to go move to South Sudan and work for Dr. Lap orders. You know, it was like from there I found my way into FinTech when it was just being invented. And there was this like enormous realization that the private sector can invent digital financial products that will instantly change the lives of millions of households. It's just credit and savings and insurance that, they haven't had access to. And you didn't need to have traditional infrastructure like banks. You could just do it on your phone. Huge leapfrog moment. And it didn't take a lot of