# New products need a different development process than successors

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/new-products-need-a-different-development-process-than/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Adam Bry](https://realalpha.app/builders/adam-bry/) · Adam Bry is cofounder and CEO of Skydio. · Co-founded Skydio, building autonomous drones from research pioneered at MIT and Google’s Project Wing.
- Host: [Ti Morse](https://realalpha.app/people/ti-morse/) · Host, Relentless · Interviews hard-tech founders on Relentless; guests include Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong and Hadrian's Chris Power.
- Show: Relentless
- Episode: [The Drone Startup That's Outcompeting China | Adam Bry, Skydio](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/), Nov 8, 2026
- Moment: 30:56 to 33:41 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/new-products-need-a-different-development-process-than/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1856

## Quote

> “The successor to X10, our current flagship drone, needs to come out of the gate with **better reliability than this thing**, which is already a hard and mature platform.”
> — [Adam Bry](https://realalpha.app/builders/adam-bry/) at [32:30](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1950) · Relentless

## Takeaways

1. Development rigor depends on a product's expected scale.
2. A flagship successor must improve on a mature platform.
3. Field and factory data inform the next design.

## About this segment

Adam Bry says a low-volume first product warrants different tradeoffs from a flagship successor that must scale immediately. Prior product and factory data inform reliability and manufacturing decisions.

From “The Drone Startup That's Outcompeting China | Adam Bry, Skydio”, Nov 8, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[31:00](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1860) sort of the frontiers and the most ambiguity is if you're going to make like a thousand of these drones you may be happy to have a less refined design process because you don't want to set up You know, if you're making a million Cybertrucks, maybe you have like one stamping press that costs a fuck ton of money and you install that. But if you're doing a thousand drones, you might be willing to have, you know, this piece, you know, this part could be one part, but you're going to make it two parts because it's just more efficient to do that on a thousand pieces.

[31:27](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1887) When you think about designing a product that can scale, what is the process of going from, this is the first iteration and like shippable, but then here's how we're going to basically like systematically like eliminate complexity so it's just simpler and simpler. This is why I think it's really important to, context is so important and I force myself to this. I encourage everybody at the company to really think specifically about what problem we're trying to solve here.

[31:52](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1912) So, for example, R10 that you're holding there was a brand new product for us, brand new product line. We never had like a specific option. Indoor drone for public safety and for confined space inspection. We also know, just based on the dynamics in that market today, we're not going to be building 10,000 of these things a month. That market is just not at that place. I think eventually, it'll probably get there because we don't have any history here. We're also not going to want to come out of the gate by shipping too many and getting ahead of our skis in terms of the actual maturity and delivering the results that our customers expect.

[32:26](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1946) So the set of trade-offs that we make when we're developing R10 is very different from what we do when we're developing the successor to X10. The successor to X10, our current flagship drone, needs to come out of the gate with better reliability than this thing, which is already a hard and mature platform. It needs to come out of the gate with more manufacturability and higher scale than this thing.

[32:48](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1968) And so the development process that we run for the successor to X10 is necessarily like way more rigorous in manufacturing and reliability than what we do for like a new program that's targeting lower volumes. And this is kind of an Elonism, but I think that there's just no substitute. The only way to learn like the really hard lessons in manufacturing and reliability is to have done it with prior products.

[33:13](https://realalpha.app/v/nb7EinVtdok/?t=1993) Like there's just no shortcut on that stuff. So when we're developing the successor here, we're just deep in the data of what's happening on our manufacturing line, what quality issues have there been in the field, what have we learned from that, how can we shortcut all those things in the design process, where are we spending the most money in our supply chain in the factory that can be optimized out, and I'm very excited about what we'll be able to do here, but it's a very different process from a brand new product that's going to start at lower volumes.