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Relentless · 3 min · Nov 8, 2026
Leaders review customer failures to keep product work grounded
Adam Bry
Skydio's leaders spend half an hour reviewing videos of customer product failures at recurring staff meetings.
In this episode
Full analysis- 7:04China's sanctions forced Skydio to rebuild its supply chain5 min
- 42:34Skydio made irreversible bets before the technology was proven3 min
- 56:01Lean teams can grow output without growing headcount4 min
- 11:40Battery-swapping docks must earn their added complexity3 min
- 49:05Hardware firms can control quality in-house or through suppliers3 min
- 14:12A wingtip gimbal keeps the camera clear of the drone's wing2 min
- 30:56New products need a different development process than successors3 min
- 36:41Leaders review customer failures to keep product work grounded3 min
“we literally spend like half an hour looking through videos of things going wrong”
Adam Bryat 38:47 · Relentless
Takeaways
- Senior leaders review field issues in recurring meetings.
- They spend half an hour watching failure videos.
- The review keeps customer pain and fixes visible.
About this segment
Skydio's leaders spend half an hour reviewing videos of customer product failures at recurring staff meetings. Adam Bry says the ritual keeps teams close to customer pain and focused on fixes.
Adam Bry is cofounder and CEO of Skydio.
Co-founded Skydio, building autonomous drones from research pioneered at MIT and Google’s Project Wing.
Ti Morse, Host · Host, Relentless
Interviews hard-tech founders on Relentless; guests include Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong and Hadrian's Chris Power.
From “The Drone Startup That's Outcompeting China | Adam Bry, Skydio”, Nov 8, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 36:44
a drone gets injured or killed in the line of duty we're happy to replace it how often are you trying to refocus the entire team towards here's what the customer is actually experiencing totally that's a huge, huge part of what we do. And it's actually interesting. So like when we started working with public safety, public, so we work with a lot of different kinds of customers, public safety is, is typically the most controversial. And we started working with public safety in the summer of 2020, right after George Floyd, which was like maybe one of the most polarizing moments in the company's, in the country's history, right? In terms of attitude towards law enforcement. And just the thought of like a Silicon Valley company selling technology to public safety was total anathema. We got all kinds of articles written about how could you
- 37:27
guys do this and how evil it is. And I would say prevailing attitudes amongst tech people in Silicon Valley at the time were somewhere between mixed and negative, that this was a worthwhile thing to be doing. And internally at Skydio, it was polarizing. And I think there's a lot of reasonable concerns to be had. What has happened over time, and I've seen it over and over again, And it's pretty deterministic, like even people who are generally concerned or skeptical of public safety, the more that they're here and the more that they actually see what what it means to work with public safety and the missions that those customers have and how they use our products, I would say people not not go from being like sort of skeptical to OK with it, but skeptical to like immensely champions of it, proud of it.
- 38:11
And so it's a very and then so that's part of it. But I think the other, like for me, and I think many of us at Skydio, it's hugely motivating to see how our products are being used. And then it also just, I think, is key to developing good products. And so we do a lot to have as many people at Skydio as immersed as possible in the reality that our customers are living. I mean, in good and bad ways, like, you know, another example of this, my weekly staff meeting, so all the senior leaders of the company, we get together once a week, once every two weeks.
- 38:43
we start that meeting by looking at all of the product issues that we've had in customers hands over the last two weeks and it's very painful we literally spend like half an hour looking through videos of things going wrong uh and we do that to like for a few reasons one to like immerse ourselves in the pain that our customers are feeling and two to make sure that we're like we're doing the right things we're not going to solve everything in that meeting um but we can make sure that we're at least organized and have lines of work that are aimed at at solving all these things. So I think, yeah, we do a lot to try to just continually immerse ourselves in the reality of our customers, both good and bad. You've been at this for like 13 or 14 years.