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Silicon Valley Girl

Started from Zero at 33 — Now He’s Building a $1B Airline | Blake Scholl

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Marina MogilkohostBlake Schollguest

Mar 21, 202540mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

From Amazon engineer to supersonic founder: the high-level leap
A fast-paced opening sets up Blake Scholl’s unconventional path: from tech (including Amazon) to founding Boom in an industry with almost no startup precedent. He frames the scale of the ambition, the investor backing, and the recent milestone of breaking the sound barrier—hinting at the speed and urgency of the mission.
- •Worked at Amazon; prior startup experience and a Groupon acqui-hire
- •Quit at 33 with very young kids at home
- •Boom raised major capital and attracted top-tier investors
- •Company achieved a civil, non-government supersonic breakthrough
- •Momentum accelerated quickly, including attention from the White House
Declaring “big things”: choosing to try vs. living with regret
Blake explains the mindset shift required to pursue something historically ambitious. He draws on icons like Apple’s “crazy ones,” Bill Gates’ audacious goal-setting, and the idea that history remembers those who declare and attempt big missions—while many sincere attempts remain unseen.
- •Big outcomes require people to publicly commit to big goals
- •Inspirations: Apple campaign, Bill Gates, Wright brothers
- •Reframing: better to be in the ‘dark matter’ of failed attempts than never try
- •Internal conflict: “Who am I to do this?” without the ‘right’ resume
- •Courage as the central ingredient for the decision
Amazon-era lessons: seeing a market differently and executing with automation
He recalls early Amazon culture: intense pace, low politics, and abundant work. A pivotal project—automating search ads—teaches him to challenge defaults, find underexploited opportunity, and build systems that scale, reinforcing confidence that ‘thinking different’ can win.
- •Early Amazon environment: high urgency and low bureaucracy
- •Built Amazon’s first Google ad-buy automation system (early SEM era)
- •Strategy: avoid crowded keywords; capture long-tail searches via automation
- •Impact anecdote: system tied to meaningful revenue for both Amazon and Google
- •Core lesson: look where everyone’s doing it one way and find a better way
Why aviation—and why now: the threads that led to Boom
Blake connects personal fascination (Concorde, product design curiosity) with professional dissatisfaction that pushed him out of a comfortable track. The idea sat on his list for years until the mismatch between his work and meaning became too strong to ignore.
- •Lifetime fascination with Concorde; desire to fly supersonic
- •Questioning airline UX: “What if Johnny Ive designed this?”
- •Original plan: get rich in internet, then start aerospace—then skipped step one
- •A decade-long ‘how to start aerospace’ curiosity turned into action
- •Demoralization at Groupon role became the catalyst to leave
Quitting at 33 with newborn twins: risk planning, savings, and family reality
He describes leaving stability with a toddler and newborn twins, supported by a time-box from his then-wife. Rather than a blind leap, he structured the risk: enough savings to fund multiple failures, plus an acceptance that time—not just money—would be strained.
- •Age 33; had a 14-month-old and newborn twins
- •Spousal agreement: one year to explore before returning to work
- •Saved enough to budget for ‘two failed startups’
- •Acknowledges startup time demands can be extreme
- •Frames it as calculated risk rather than impulsive jump
Work-life balance under pressure: presence, divorce, and forced efficiency
The conversation turns candid about parenting while building a company. Blake shares that divorce changed his approach: less time with kids, but higher intentionality, and an operational mindset of being fully present when he does have them.
- •Admits early struggle and reluctance as a father during intense startup years
- •Divorce led to splitting time and increasing focus when with kids
- •Presence over hours: quality of time becomes non-negotiable
- •Forced efficiency helped him as both father and CEO
- •Acknowledges tradeoffs rather than presenting a perfect balance story
No aerospace degree: first-principles learning and spreadsheet-driven validation
Blake rejects the Silicon Valley cliché that good ideas must have multiple teams already working on them. He explains how he turned qualitative ‘impossibility’ claims into quantitative models, then rapidly rebuilt his knowledge base (textbooks, physics, calculus) to test feasibility.
- •Calls out herd-mentality advice: “If it’s good, others are already doing it”
- •Treats industry objections as quantitative questions that should be modeled
- •Builds spreadsheets to estimate economics and market size
- •Finds small efficiency gains vs. Concorde could make business-class economics work
- •Self-education sprint: textbooks, remedial calculus/physics, deeper models
External reality check: Stanford feedback and the ‘choice of courage’ moment
He describes taking his assumptions to a Stanford supersonics expert to sanity-check key parameters. The professor’s response—his assumptions were conservative—turns a ‘maybe’ into a mandate: go assemble a team and push hard.
- •Seeks expert review to validate assumptions (aero efficiency, engine efficiency)
- •Professor says assumptions are conservative; opportunity may be real
- •Emotional shock: “How could I be the one to find this?”
- •Decision shifts from analysis to commitment
- •Courage becomes the deciding factor to proceed and recruit
The hardest problem isn’t engineering: building a team in a non-startup industry
Blake argues that team-building is Boom’s toughest challenge, even above financing and engineering. With almost no modern precedent for aviation startups, he describes the lack of an entrepreneurial ‘mafia’ pipeline and the need to recruit from unusual backgrounds or early-career talent before big-company culture sets in.
- •Ranks difficulty: team (hardest), financing, then engineering
- •Aviation hasn’t had a true startup pipeline for ~100 years
- •No ‘Boeing mafia’ equivalent to PayPal/Amazon alumni networks
- •Recruiting requires finding mission-driven outliers across industries
- •Early-career hires can be ‘rescued’ before big-company inertia
Pitching the impossible and filtering for real builders
He recounts early recruiting: the first reaction is always “Are you crazy?”, followed by “How can I help?” once feasibility is demonstrated. A story about hiring a chief engineer illustrates how rigorous thinking and evidence (spreadsheets) can convert skeptics into committed partners.
- •Common reaction to supersonic idea: skepticism bordering on disbelief
- •Persuasion hinges on showing concrete analysis, not hype
- •Chief engineer anecdote: subway meeting near SFO to review spreadsheets
- •Candidate independently builds a more sophisticated model—same conclusion
- •Founder stance: full-time commitment over casual consulting
Don’t outsource belief to ‘experts’: learning fast without collecting opinions
Blake criticizes industry experts for repeating lore instead of doing first-principles work. He distinguishes between ignorance and rapid learning, describing an interview approach—“Teach me something”—as both a hiring filter and a way to compress domain learning quickly.
- •Industry expertise can calcify into repeated conventional wisdom
- •First principles beats opinion aggregation
- •Counterpoint to “ignorance is a superpower”: eliminate ignorance quickly
- •Interview tactic: “Teach me something” reveals real mastery
- •Learning approach: ask people to teach fundamentals, not to give conclusions
Resilience under existential threat: cash crunches, board departures, and not giving up
Blake details annual ‘near-death’ moments: seven days of cash, bankruptcy planning, team attrition, and painful financing. He emphasizes a founder’s refusal to quit as the true determinant of survival, sharing a call with Paul Graham during a three-week cash crisis.
- •Hardest periods involved days-to-weeks of cash remaining
- •Bankruptcy planning became real; some employees and board members quit
- •Down round/recap described as among his most painful experiences
- •Paul Graham call: others shut down at 3 weeks cash; he refused
- •Belief: companies fail when founders give up, not merely when money runs out
Where Boom stands now: breaking the sound barrier and the path to passengers by 2029
He explains the current milestone: the first civil, non-government supersonic jet, using proven ‘airliner technology’ as a learning platform. With multiple boomless supersonic flights completed, the focus shifts to scaling lessons into a certifiable passenger aircraft with a concrete timeline.
- •~4 years from carrying passengers; target: first passenger by end of 2029
- •Built and flew first supersonic jet outside government/military
- •First American civil supersonic jet since Concorde era
- •Multiple supersonic crossings achieved without audible sonic boom
- •Strategy: prove capability on a smaller platform, then scale to airliner
Regulation, politics, and momentum: replacing the speed limit with a noise limit
Blake argues the US/Canada supersonic ban is an outdated ‘speed limit’ (Mach 1) rather than a rational noise standard. He suggests the rule historically protected incumbents, claims the political environment is shifting, and predicts change could happen unexpectedly fast.
- •Original company assumption: no regulatory change needed for v1
- •US/Canada ban described as stricter than many other regions
- •Frames rule as ‘stupid’ speed limit: “Thou shalt not exceed Mach 1”
- •Belief that moral narratives can mask incumbent protection
- •Regulatory change timing is uncertain—could move in weeks
Energy, emissions, pricing, and why speed matters for human progress
The conversation broadens to sustainability, economics, and the societal value of faster travel. Blake discusses sustainable aviation fuel and an ‘energy abundance’ worldview, then sets expectations: early supersonic fares like business class, and the larger thesis that speed enables entirely new behaviors and markets.
- •Supersonic uses more energy; design targets sustainable aviation fuel pathways
- •Argues for ‘energy abundance’ vs. post-1970 conservation mindset
- •Goal: minimize downsides over tech generations (analogy to fire→stoves→chimneys)
- •Expected fares: roughly business class (e.g., ~$5k round trip), not Concorde-level
- •Speed as a catalyst: enables travel, trade, relationships, and innovation that otherwise wouldn’t happen
Life as a founder now: four kids, no days off, and the White House photo story
Blake describes an intense operating tempo—months without a day off—balanced by intentional family time and shared aviation experiences. He then explains the rapid sequence from a boomless supersonic announcement to meetings in DC and the White House, driven by public momentum and networking rather than traditional lobbying.
- •Has four kids; tries to be fully present during family time
- •Personal hobby: flying small planes; integrates it into family trips
- •Workload varies but includes stretches of no days off for months
- •2024 survival mode → 2025 fundraising and major progress ($150M raised)
- •White House photo origin: boomless milestone, social media attention, fast-tracked invitations and meetings
Advice for stuck builders: make peace with failure and keep your integrity
Blake advises founders to mentally accept failure so fear doesn’t block action. He reframes his own ‘failed’ startup outcome as a net positive, and stresses a moral boundary: if you fail, fail honestly—while still committing to persistence and refusing to quit prematurely.
- •Failure is usually less catastrophic than imagined
- •His early startup ‘failure’ led to good compensation, learning, and respect
- •Practice: visualize failure, accept it, then act
- •Ethical line: fail honestly, not by deception (explicit Theranos reference)
- •Team mantra: the breakthrough happened because they didn’t give up
Looking back: advice to his younger self and the personal roots of aviation love
The closing turns personal: he would tell his younger self to spend more time talking with his grandfather, a WWII Pacific theater veteran who repaired propellers. He reflects on legacy, missed conversations, and gratitude—ending with optimism about a supersonic future.
- •Personal regret: not talking more with his grandfather
- •Grandfather’s aviation-adjacent work in WWII (propeller repair)
- •Recognizes how family history can shape passions indirectly
- •Gratitude for sharing ‘the real story’
- •Hopeful closing: ambition to make supersonic travel real soon

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