Keenan, Keller Rinaudo, and Ryan Oksenhorn cofounded Zipline in 2014 and in 2021 became a $2.75B company that has saved tens of thousands of lives and raised $490M. Zipline now delivers medical supplies in >5 countries to communities of tens of millions of people. In Rwanda, 75% of blood deliveries outside the capital use Zipline. They've overcome flying in storms, deploying 9000 miles away, and managing safety-critical logistics. Hear from Keenan how they've relentlessly iterated to...

Will, Delian Asparouhov, and Dan Marshall cofounded Varda in 2020. In their first year, they raised >$50M and hired a stellar team. Varda is leading in-space manufacturing starting with discovery and production of therapeutics and materials, and eventually chip fab. It’s ambitious and less crazy than it sounds, given they've brought folks from @SpaceX , @Stripe, @Amazon, @Apple, @NASA, and @LockheedMartin. We’ll hear what Varda is all about and the lessons Bruey learned from the early...

George is known as the Founding Father of Genomics and the Father of Synthetic Biology. He’s a biology wizard, with interests ranging from sequencing DNA to organ transplantation, in applications as wide-ranging as resurrecting wooly mammoths and dating apps. George became a Harvard medical school professor in 1986, and was one of the architects of the Human Genome Project in the early 1990s. Since he’s been instrumental in driving forward an array of technologies. He’s also co-founded of...

Matthias Meiner, Daniel Wiegand, Sebastian Born, and Patrick Nathen co-founded Lilium Aerospace in 2015 to transform transportation with EVTOL planes. Since then, they've grown to 800 people, raised almost a billion dollars, and shipped over 10 flying prototypes, iterating far faster than a traditional aerospace program. On the show, Matthias shares tales of engineering scrappiness like 3D printing drones and convincing future suppliers to donate parts. Matthias also shares his philosophy on...

At Fifty Years we back founders using technology to solve the world’s biggest problems: climate change, health, free speech, affordable housing and other global issues. These problems demand urgency. Moving fast means saving lives and creating a future worth living. Thus: SPEED Calvin, Peter, Ilya, and Ian built the prototype that became Segment in Dec 2012, after 24 months of trying different ideas and spending $500k. Eight years later, @Twilio acquired Segment for $3.2B. Segment now helps...

John and Ryan McLinko started Astranis in 2015. Both had spent time in traditional aerospace, and they were excited to build a company that would deliver internet to billions of people, at a pace that would make traditional companies blush. Astranis is now a company worth more than $1B and is gearing up for deployments that will deliver internet to millions of people in communities in Alaska and Peru. They build on timecycles 2-7x faster than traditional companies, with smaller teams, faster...

Chris and Hamish McKenzie started Substack in 2017, after Chris wrote a manifesto on everything wrong with the internet. They’ve connected thousands of writers to more than a million paid subscribers. Substack is now a global brand, and so popular that we’ve heard folks say “I saw it on a Substack” when referring to a non-substack email newsletter. They’ve launched >20 major features and iterated on dozens more. Substack got to 7k subscribers in the first few months of the company, and...

Fifty Years is launching SPEED, a show about leaders who move fast! We started this show to bring the fastest strategies and tactics to bear on the world's biggest problems! Episode #2 is with Erik Schluntz of Cobalt Robotics. Erik and his cofounder Travis started in 2016, on a quest to bring useful robots into human spaces, fast. They went from nothing to a first mobile robot prototype in 2 weeks, and a working robot at a paying customer site in 12 months. We dive into what speed means to...

Fifty Years is launching SPEED, a show about leaders who move fast! We started this show to bring the fastest strategies and tactics to bear on the world's biggest problems! Episode #1 is with Deepika Bodapati of Athelas. Deepika and her cofounder Tanay started in 2016, college dropouts wanting to bring cheap blood tests to everyone. They’ve helped more than 150,000 patients and built a $1.5B company! We dive into what speed means to Deepika, and what the team did to become successful. We...