Blake Scholl: "The Future Was Supposed to Be Faster"
In a Nutshell
Boom founder Blake Scholl built the first privately-developed supersonic jet, XB-1, proving Mach 1.1 flight is possible outside government programs and triggering the end of the U.S. supersonic flight ban. He shows that hardware iteration can match software speed through vertical integration, all-digital manufacturing, and tools that cut part production from weeks to 24 hours. The core lesson: pick what you love, ignore advice to stay in your lane, and start now—self-belief and capability are earned by doing the work, not waiting for permission.
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In 1969, the first moon landing and the first flight of Concorde, the supersonic airliner, both occurred. Half a century later, neither capability exists commercially. The Wall Street Journal reported Lockheed now takes more than two years to build a new Patriot missile interceptor.
The Boeing 707 brought the jet age, while the 787, launched more than 20 years ago, offers no speed improvement. Prior to Boom, America never progressed beyond a mockup of a supersonic airliner.
The experience of gathering speed down the runway, climbing into the sky, and viewing the natural world alongside humanity's creations is described as profoundly moving. Yet this experience has been turned into something most people dread.
The first jetliners doubled the speed of previous air travel. Hawaii became a mainstream tourist destination once reachable from the US in seven, eight, or nine hours. Phil Knight founded Nike in the 1960s after a trip to Japan inspired him to import Japanese running shoes. The Beatles' first world tour in the late 1960s would not have been practical with slower aircraft.
A supersonic age would make crossing the Atlantic possible in three and a half hours and Sydney as accessible as Honolulu is today.
In his mid-20s, Blake Scholl set a lifetime goal of breaking the sound barrier. A Google News alert on supersonic revealed more progress in supersonic music than flight. The obvious candidate appeared to be a private business jet, but the US ban on supersonic flight eliminated the business case for Gulfstream. Boeing is not building new airplanes. In 2015, Jeff Bezos passed on Boom's seed round and wrote in the Amazon shareholder letter that airliners are something only big companies can do. Scholl's background was software engineering at early Amazon and founding an apps company acquired by Groupon; his aviation knowledge was limited to a Cessna pilot's license.
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