Silicon Valley GirlStarted from Zero at 33 — Now He’s Building a $1B Airline | Blake Scholl
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
From Amazon engineer to supersonic airline founder, defying conventional wisdom
- Blake Scholl recounts quitting a well-paid corporate role at 33—while raising a toddler and newborn twins—to start Boom, betting that supersonic passenger travel was economically and technically viable despite widespread skepticism.
- He describes how Amazon shaped his approach to opportunity: find overlooked “long tail” spaces, automate/scale what others do manually, and validate ideas with quantitative models rather than received wisdom.
- Scholl details Boom’s hardest battles: assembling an entrepreneurial-grade team in an industry without startup DNA, surviving repeated cash crises, and navigating regulations like the U.S./Canada supersonic overland ban framed as a “speed limit.”
- He shares Boom’s progress (a privately built civil supersonic demonstrator breaking the sound barrier “boomless”), the path to carrying passengers by 2029, expected business-class pricing, and a broader argument that speed unlocks new human and economic possibilities.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasBig outcomes start with declaring big intentions.
Scholl argues that historic change requires someone willing to say the “absurd” thing out loud (à la Gates, Wright brothers), accepting the risk of ending up in the unseen “dark matter” of failed attempts.
Don’t accept qualitative “expert” claims on quantitative questions.
He repeatedly returns to modeling: if critics say supersonic is too expensive or demand is too small, the response is “how much?” and “what threshold?”—then build the spreadsheet and verify assumptions.
Entering a new domain works best as rapid de-ignorance, not confident ignorance.
Scholl rejects “ignorance is my superpower,” advocating first-principles learning: textbooks, remedial physics, and interviewing with “Teach me something” to extract real understanding vs opinions.
Team is harder than tech—and financing is harder than it looks.
He ranks Boom’s difficulty as: team (hardest), financing (next), engineering (third). Aviation’s century without startups means fewer entrepreneurial veterans, forcing creative recruiting and “rescuing” talent early.
Startups usually fail when founders give up, not when cash hits zero.
Scholl describes recurring near-death moments (7 days cash, 3 weeks cash) and a mindset of enduring “whatever quantity of hell it takes,” including willingness to go through bankruptcy and restart rather than quit.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesPeople have to be willing to declare big things in order for the big things to actually happen.
— Blake Scholl
I’d rather be in the dark matter of entrepreneurs than in the… didn’t try.
— Blake Scholl
Quantify everything—and don’t accept other people’s conclusions about quantitative questions.
— Blake Scholl
Industry experts don’t know what they’re talking about.
— Blake Scholl
Companies fail when the founder gives up.
— Blake Scholl
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