This week the first nationwide autonomous drone network in the world has been announced - flying over Switzerland starting next month.

Has it been created by a national air force? By Amazon? By Google?

No. It’s been created by a startup co-founded by 31 year old Paola Santana.

Six years ago Paola travelled from her home in Dominican Republic to join the Singularity University summer program with a group of entrepreneurs from around the world.

Paola had no idea what lay ahead for her, saying "I’m talking to you about 2010… I didn’t know this word entrepreneur, either in English or Spanish... I didn’t understand what this word was talking about.”

Paola had started life as a lawyer, working on strategic plans for the World Bank, the OECD and Domincan government. At Singularity University, a futurist’s summer camp in Silicon Valley, she was challenged by Peter Diamandis and the faculty to “come up with an idea that could solve a big world problem, using technology that could have an impact on over one billion people in 10 years.”

Sharing her experience as a lawyer, seeing the challenges in third world countries to get critical supplies where they were needed, her group came up with the idea of a drone delivery company. 

Inspired, she left law and launched Matternet with co-student and co-founder Andreas Raptopoulos.

Following the Haiti earthquake, Matternet had their first drones in the air to help with supplies to the refugee camp there. Paola recalls “We delivered medicines and chocolate for kids. So they loved it.”

While Amazon was working with the slow moving FAA to get approval for their drones in the US, Paola and Andreas began growing their drone networks in countries who were far more open and welcoming of the technology. Soon they were delivering medical supplies in Bhutan, Papua New Zealand and Paola’s Domincan Republic.

This week, their small startup has leap frogged all the larger companies to be the first in the world to launch a full nationally approved drone system.

Aptly in the country where the Red Cross was founded, partnering with Swiss Post, the drone network will deliver medical supplies and samples between hospitals, clinics and labs all over Switzerland starting next month.

How has a small startup ended up beating all the big companies to a national roll-out?

Paola says it’s because they didn’t go to where the biggest markets were, where there’s already over-regulation on drones, but to the people who needed the technology most. 

That was countries that urgently needed medical supplies: “The people who most understand this technology are the people who most need it.”

That’s what has driven Paola with Matternet - the power of drones to save lives. 

Comparing her medical drones to the armed drones airforces use, she says “In the right hands, you can turn this technology from life-taking to life-giving.”

If Paola can be at the forefront of a technology that she had never heard of six years ago, and is now growing a startup that’s raised $13 million in funding when she didn’t know what the word ‘entrepreneur’ meant six years ago, what can you achieve in the next six years?

We’re living in a world where any one of us can lead a new industry and have a global impact.

Provided we follow the path of greatest need.

And we follow our highest purpose.

“The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.” ~ Robert Schuller