[zachware]

What’s often overlooked about Zipline is that they started as Romotive, a company that made iPhone—powered robots for kids.

Through the sheer force of willpower by the CEO (Keller) they found a new path and have become what they are. It’s a great startup story of how to persevere.

Disclosure: My firm was one of their first investors.

[deepnotderp]

Is that story written down anywhere? I'd be interested in learning more about it ^_^

[roksenhorn]

Hi there! Ryan from the Zipline founding team / Romo product lead.

We always had aspirations of building robots that solved real problems. Our early plan was to slowly make the toy robot more and more useful. But suddenly in 2013, it felt like the robotics industry was moving much faster than we expected. We threw out the plan and started searching for the highest impact work we could do.

We spent months talking to customers, exploring technical approaches, and decided to race to bring something to market. Within two years, we were making daily lifesaving deliveries by drone.

[deepnotderp]

Awesome, thanks for answering and welcome to HN :)

[nojvek]

Oh wow. I loved Romotive and funded them on Kickstarter. Didn’t realize it was them.