# @zipline on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/B73AH26A3eb
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70713004-zipline-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/64157a5ecc.jpg
- **Posted:** 2020-01-28T10:07:48.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Zipline (@zipline) — https://gondola.cc/zipline

## Caption

#HumansofZipline
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Paul Willard is an aerospace engineer and investor in Zipline.
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“When we upgraded our drones in Rwanda, we removed the GPS chips, noses, and parachute charges, and sent the old planes back to California in a big crate. That crate was sitting behind our production facility ever since. I worked for Boeing in the 1990s and spent a lot of time building airplanes in museums of flight, so I thought about it and decided to find good homes for the old planes.
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I started calling all the museums - told them about how this is a historic plane and they should really display it. When they started saying yes, I had to figure out how to reassemble the planes! We needed to build battery boxes without the battery itself to fill out the cavity in the nose, had to go dumpster diving through the old parts, started borrowing tools from Kevin and ordering parts from our supplier…then Colin and I had to figure out how to mount the drones for display - we invented a great system. So now all the old drones are whole again, and I’m delivering them to museums around the country. This plane went to the World Economic Forum’s Center for 4th Industrial Revolution.
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It’s crazy to see how far the company has come. I invested because Keenan’s idea for a plane was one of the only realistic models I saw. In fact, his numbers were conservative!  Most entrepreneurs were trying to make aerodynamics perform on Moore’s Law but Zipline had an attitude of keep it simple and know what you don’t know. I remember Will telling us about the Minister of Health in Rwanda saying we could fully integrate with the blood supply system, not just address emergencies. She was brilliant and it’s to the team’s credit that we listened. Same with dropping the package by parachute instead of landing like so many other delivery aircraft. We could have over-engineered it, but instead we kept it simple. Turns out the doctors didn’t want anything to do with getting an aircraft back up in the air, anyway.  It seems like an obvious thing in hindsight but it wasn’t at the time. The ability to act on pretty good decisions and learn from them sets Zipline apart every day.”

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## Tags

humansofzipline

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