Grit10 Mars 2025

Meet the Man Who’s Making Supersonic Flight Possible Again | Blake Scholl

Guest: Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic

“Passion and drive trumps knowledge and experience,” says Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl. Long before he was running Boom — which earlier this year successfully tested the world’s first privately-developed supersonic jet — he was enabling “the world’s most obnoxious spam cannon” at Groupon, or designing a barcode-scanning game for retail shoppers.

But eventually, Blake found the courage to be more audacious and do something closer to his lifelong love of aviation. He began educating himself about things he had never thought to learn, and tapping his LinkedIn network to get intros to the smartest people in the industry.

“If you imagine yourself on like the day of IPO, 99 percent of what you needed to know to get to that day, you didn't know on day one,” he says. “So, why not take 99 percent to 99.5 percent, and work on the thing you really want to exist, even if you don't know anything about it yet?”

Chapters:

(01:07) - Blake on Boom’s beginnings
(01:52) - Breaking the sound barrier
(05:23) - Concorde’s legacy
(09:36) - Navigating regulations
(12:08) - Boomless supersonic flight
(16:48) - The test flight
(20:11) - Day-of nervousness
(24:26) - Carrying passengers
(26:55) - Cost & wi-fi
(30:19) - “No middle seats”
(32:35) - Hard tech
(36:48) - What if Apple made a plane?
(39:08) - Blake’s career journey
(43:29) - The risk of failure
(49:12) - Finding the courage
(52:49) - Balancing life with Boom
(56:42) - Learning how to build a jet
(01:00:20) - The power of LinkedIn
(01:02:38) - Y Combinator Demo Day
(01:08:24) - Richard Branson
(01:11:38) - Dividing yourself
(01:14:19) - Being a focused dad
(01:20:05) - Exuberance vs. fear
(01:24:15) - Hiring slowly
(01:27:17) - What “grit” means to Blake

Mentioned in this episode: Chuck Yeager, ChatGPT, the Apollo program, Elon Musk, SpaceX and Falcon 1, Boom Overture, Starlink, Boeing, Airbus, iPhone, Jony Ive, Uber, Airbnb, Anduril, United Airlines, American Airlines, Eclipse Aviation, Tesla, Scott Kirby, Mike Leskinen, Inktomi, Yahoo!, Amazon, Pelago, Google Ads, Kima Labs, Barcode Hero, Groupon, iPad, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, Khan Academy, Sam Altman, Loopt, Virgin Atlantic, Paul Graham, Michael Seibel, Ashlee Vance, Bloomberg, Hacker News, Jared Friedman, Sen. Mark Kelly, SV Angel, Ron Conway, Virgin Galactic, Lockheed Martin, Gulfstream, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Holden, and How It’s Made.

Links:

Connect with Blake

Connect with Joubin

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(293)

Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood

What kind of founder walks away from a multi-billion-dollar fintech company to start building rockets?Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, joins Joubin Mirzadegan to talk about life after one of the ...

24 Aug 1h 12min

Booking.com CEO on AI and the Future of Travel

"Our mission is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world."From the dot-com crash to AI, Glenn Fogel has spent nearly three decades helping Booking Holdings evolve through every major te...

10 Aug 50min

Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal

"The answer to every problem is a model."Parag Agrawal shares the ideas behind Parallel: products that continuously learn, and teams designed around versatile problem solvers.He also shares why he bui...

27 Juli 1h 1min

The Sales Framework Every Founder Needs | Mark Roberge

"There's 20 fires going on at every moment in the office and you have enough water to put out four."Mark Roberge shares what it takes to build and scale a company, from finding product-market fit to k...

13 Juli 1h 22min

Airwallex's Jack Zhang on Fintech, Failure, and Growth

In 2020, Airwallex lost nearly half its revenue overnight. Today it's worth $11 billion.Jack Zhang reflects on the decisions that kept the company alive, raising capital during uncertainty, and leadin...

29 Juni 1h 11min

Why 80% of the Fortune 100 Chose Qualtrics | Ryan Smith

AI may change software overnight, but company building still takes time.Ryan Smith explains why, despite the pace of AI, “the race is going to be way longer than anyone thinks.”He reflects on Qualtric...

15 Juni 1h 12min

What It Takes to Build Software for 171,000+ Restaurants | Aman Narang

Great software companies often come from understanding pain points at a very deep level.On Grit, Aman Narang shares how Toast built trust with 171,000+ restaurant operators by helping restaurants mana...

1 Juni 1h 17min

What It Takes to Build a Generational Company | Anduril’s Trae Stephens

Founder quality becomes more important as startups become easier to build.Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril and partner at Founders Fund, has spent years backing founders with strong conviction, in...

18 Maj 56min