The Idea: In 2011, Keller Rinaudo Cliffton was building smartphone-controlled toy robots at a company called Romotive. The product was cute, but it wasn't changing lives. After Romotive shut down in 2014, Keller gathered his co-founders - Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, and Will Hetzler - and asked a different question: What if drones could deliver medicine to people who couldn't get it any other way? They pitched the government of Rwanda, a small country with mountainous terrain and poor roads where blood shortages killed patients daily. Rwanda said yes. For their first year, Zipline served exactly one hospital. Their drones crashed. Their systems failed. The government was patient. Keller's bet was that if they could prove drones could save lives at national scale in Africa, the rest of the world would follow. This was the beginning of Zipline.

The Execution:

• 2014: Keller and his co-founders founded Zipline with a mission to build the world's first national-scale drone delivery system.
• 2016: Launched operations in Rwanda, making their first blood delivery to a rural hospital - the world's first commercial drone delivery service.
• 2019: Reached a $1.2B valuation after expanding to Ghana and raising $190M from Baillie Gifford and TPG's Rise Fund.
• 2022: Became the first company to receive FAA Part 135 approval for long-range drone delivery in the US.
• 2023: Raised $330M at a $4.2B valuation, announced Platform 2 drones for home delivery, and hit one million commercial deliveries.
• 2024: Partnered with Walmart to deliver to 75% of the Dallas-Fort Worth population, becoming the largest drone delivery footprint of any US retailer.
• 2025: Named to CNBC Disruptor 50 at $5.1B valuation, tripled US customers, and crossed 100 million autonomous miles.
• January 2026: Raised $600M at $7.6B valuation from Fidelity, Tiger Global, and Valor Equity Partners. US deliveries growing 15% week-over-week.

The lesson? Keller didn't start with the biggest market - he started with the market that needed him most. Rwanda's difficult terrain and urgent healthcare needs made it the perfect proving ground. Seven years later, that bet unlocked partnerships with Walmart, Panera, and the Mayo Clinic. Sometimes the best path to dominating developed markets is proving your technology where it's needed most.