Two Spots on TIME's Best Inventions of 2024

It’s great to see a company culture where an internal chat thread blows up once there’s a national news article that emphasizes a win. In my previous roles, I would routinely dive through news threads to see if any invention or launch ever received a notice. Operating under stealth has various benefits but does take a hit to morale when you realize the world does not know about what you’re working on, and how long it will be before it hears about it (if it even makes it out of stealth…). Well, seeing the Time list of top inventions of 2024 was the feather in my cap this week.

I’ll be honest, working for a Google company has no shortage of opportunities to see a post about your flying shopping cart in the Verge or TechCrunch. Wing was proudly featured in the aerospace section of the list as “Retail Delivery by Drone”. Though we are still early in the story, making drone delivery a reality in one US metro with giants like Walmart and DoorDash is giving way to rapid expansion in 2025.

Now, the exciting surprise was the story of the Robotic Knee Relief - a partnership between outdoor giant Arc’teryx and a small San Francisco-based startup named Skip. Skip spun out of the Google X Moonshot factory in 2023 when the tech layoffs hit maximum capacity. The now-defunct Dephy FASTER product line, mentioned on my website, was my first immersion into the product world. It included an Actuator Package (affectionately nicknamed the ActPack) that was the motor and brain for the early prototypes of this device seen in the Alphabet X image below. The X team were regular customers, and I’m proud that they survived the outcome of tech layoffs and are now productionizing their device. Happy to be part of the early chapter of this success story!

Celebrate the wins where you can, there’s always time to work more.