I dropped out of high school…Now I’m building a $1T dollar company

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/888223dfcf37719f

I look in the mirror and I'm like fat and dumb.
And I'm like, if I want to have any chance of doing this, I have to go to the startup CEO equivalent of the gym.
I don't at that point I don't think I could have sold a dollar bill for fifty cents.
And I didn't know Jack about airplanes and so I'm like okay, like I need to become that person
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to
I'll put my all in it like my days off. On a roll, less travel, never looking back. So how does a guy who's slanging coupons on the internet become the founder of a supersonic jet company? Which, by the way, the one liner of what you're making is a commercial jet that flies thirteen hundred miles an hour versus
Five hundred miles an hour.
Well it takes you from it it would take you from where to where and how much time, like just take it Yeah, that that's what actually matters, right? It take you from uh New York to London and just over three and a half hours, Tokyo to Seattle and four and a half, uh LA Sydney about eight and a half, and that that's version one. We wanna go faster after that. Amazing. So my my backstory was I've loved airplanes since I was a kid.
But because there was basically no innovation happening in in aerospace, it never occurred to me to have a career there. You know, so I sort of fell in love with computers, with the internet. My my first job out of school was Amazon.
In two thousand one
My my parents didn't understand it.
'Cause that was they were like, Hey, we got you a computer science degree. Why do you want to work at a bookstore?
But it was an amazing time to be there. After that, I was part of a um one of the ur very early uh mobile app companies.
And then I want to do my own startup. And so I I looked at my resume and said, I know e commerce and I know mobile.
So I should work on mobile e commerce.
And surely there'll be something there.
And and we we built this like
Barcode scanning game.
Which like if you make a list of like the most important thing in the universe the least important, you have to like dig a deeper hole.
To find where barcode scanning game goes. And I would get up in the morning work on that thing, and I was just like, I was super depressed.
And I would think I'm gonna screw this thing up. I'm all the investors are gonna lose their money.
No one's ever gonna hire me again.
I was like really afraid of failure.
And I'm looking at what we're building.
And it's like, wait a minute, I'm building an app for people who shop in stores and I'm an e commerce nerd. I don't even like stores.
What am I doing?
And so when we had a chance to kind of go acquire the company to group on and you know investors got a return.
And you know, I got a little money and I got to like get out of you know, I basically got my escape fantasy.
out of this business that I didn't love.
It was a huge win. And I kinda spent my couple years at Groupon.
Sort of reflecting on that and thinking about what I learned. And you know, one thing I knew was
You know, I I definitely wanted to found again. You know, I I started my first company in my parents' basement in high school.
And there's yeah, the the founder bug had bit me, but I I hated that.
Waking up in the morning.
thinking about, you know, what am I doing and wishing I'd never started.
And I never wanted to do that again.
And a thing I a thing I knew about myself
is no matter what I was doing as a founder, um
I was gonna push myself to my personal red line.
And that that red line is the max I'm capable of.
And it's gonna feel the same no matter what I'm doing.
But what won't feel the same is what I'm doing and how motivated I am by it.
And I wanted to pick a startup idea.
Where I would never regret starting, no matter how hard the day was.
And so it led me to sort of organize all my ideas by how happy I would be if they worked.
And I had had such a passion for flight. At this point I'd gotten my pilot's license. I'd you know, this is kind of all I knew about airplanes just to how to how to fly a single engine one for fun.
And I never understood why
No one had picked up her concord had left off.
And I felt like okay, I gotta look at that and get it out of my system.
And then move on to the next thing.
So before we tell that the boom story.
What were the other ideas on that brainstorm?
Of
Making a list of possible things to go do. We we asked Paul Merlucky this question before he started Anderal and he was talking about how
Who's gonna make like the food version of Diet Coke. He's just gonna make like calories you could just like
Calories that the things that tasted good but had no calories. And he was working on like synthetic food. He's like
Uh actually all right, never mind, I'm gonna make weapons.
Yeah, his h his other di idea was actually pretty amazing. It was a prison, it was a pr a private prison where you only get paid if the inmate gets out of prison and never comes back.
Right. And so it was like a good idea. I like that one. I'd invest on the cutting room floor is pretty good too. Yeah. So like it was like three and then then you know the third one was Andrew, but it was like three like pretty epic things.
And by the way, his brainstorm process, he said he had like a house where he
created like a padded room where he could just like build things that had like w would like explode. And he's like, Cool, this is just walls that can take explosions. So I'd love to hear you know, your process might not be quite as crazy, but
What were the other ideas and how did you actually brainstorm them?
Well, the um i looking back, I think the uh the alternate ideas I had then are not as good as the alternate ideas I have now.
Uh like I think I had something that was like a rental car company that would pick you up like an Uber.
Um
Yeah, I still sort of wish that existed, but but I don't you know, but I don't but I I don't think that thing has long legs, right? I don't think it's actually a good idea, even though the the small number of times I want to rental car, I really wish I had that.
Um
The uh you know, I think the the other th one of my general premise is
uh, especially having reflected on the boom story, is there are a lot of great unsolved problems.
That are hiding in plain sight that nobody's working on.
And I think it's I think it's an artifact of the bystander effect.
And so if i for for anybody who doesn't know that term
The the bystand effect is this effect that like uh let's say someone falls over having a heart attack on the street.
And you're the only one around.
You're highly likely to run over, call nine one one, take care of them, make sure it's okay, be there until the ambulance comes. That's what people do.
Uh but if the street's crowded
Everyone tends to think
I'm sure the people who need to know already know.
Mm-hmm. And it gets ignored.
And and the paradoxical effect is there can be a hundred people
And the guy having a heart attack is completely ignored.
And um
I think this plays out in in the business world. Like in the valley, like we tend to get told
If your idea's any good.
There are already other several other good teams working on it.
And it and if the no one else is working on it, there's probably something wrong with the idea.
But if you if you really play that thinking out.
What it what it means is you unique
Things. Um


And actually the more compelling they are, the more likely they are to be ignored because the more everybody assumes that somebody else would already be doing it if it were possible.
Like supersonic flight is like this.
Supersonic flight would obviously be good. Nobody's doing it.
It must be impossible or a bad idea.
You know, and there are other things in that category, like traffic.
I don't think i uh I am unaware of anybody attacking traffic in the right way.
And it's a very solvable problem. It can be a trillion dollar company.
It's funny'cause uh
The only other person the person who comes to mind who I think
a taxes problems hidden in play site is Elon. Yeah um you know I I was talking to an investor who knows Elon and he was like, you know, the thing I always admired about Elon
Was that
He
He just saw the trillion dollar idea on the floor that the rest of us were walking by. Very similar to what you just described at the p with the hip he goes
He goes any of us. A lot of people who grew up like
Fascinated with space.
The idea of s of rockets that go to Mars.
Was not a secret. It wasn't a something nobody had ever thought of.
But we all just sort of
We're blind to it. We assumed either must be somebody else must be doing it, you know, NASA must be doing it or it's too hard, it's too expensive.
either can't be done. He's like we all just ignored it.
And uh
Elon also has a a sort of bone to pick with traffic with the I think he's doing he's trying to do it with the boring company, which yeah sounds like you might disagree with the the approach there. How would how would you approach the traffic problem? I think boring company solves half the problem.
But there's an other half the problem.
And uh so imagine for a second if grocery stores work like roads do.
Meaning you pay for them with your taxes.
And once you've paid your taxes, you feel you're entitled to use it.
Whenever you want, as much as you want.
So what would happen to grocery stores?
There'd always be a line out the door and the shelves would always be empty.
Right.
That's what we've done with roads.
We pay for them once with our taxes.
And then we feel entitled to use them as much as we want whenever we want. So they're always oversubscribed.
What you need for roads is a price system.
And you need a dynamic price system. Like I think there's a there's a technology element of this, which I think is about smart traffic lights.
uh and the ability to actually do smart routing such that you know imagine you open up your phone
And you open you know, the maps app.
and uh you put in your destination and not not only are there sort of different routes
There's basically different times and different prices.
And you can have fast and expensive or slow and cheap.
And I think what we've seen uh New York did like a baby experiment with this. And like the you know the the simplest way where they put like a
you know, eight or nine dollar
Are you are you familiar with that, Sean?
I heard about I heard they were doing this was recent, right? It's pretty recent. It was super controversial.
I'm here right now. And so basically I think it's twelve dollars. So I think it's between the streets of sixtieth on down.
And it actually shows you the map on Google. So if you type in like, you know, if you're on seventieth street and you gotta get somewhere to fiftieth street, it would say, here's the threshold.
And right when you cross through, boom, your bill twelve dollars.
And I'm walking around here downtown right now.
It is so much quieter than it ever was. It's so much quieter and there's so much less traffic. Like the other day, like the day after it happened, I was downtown and I remember like standing in the middle of the street and I'm like, Where is everyone?
Right. So I feel like
This would be so effective, but also I would have guessed this is really unpopular to implement. But once it's implemented, maybe people
See the benefits of it.
Who got that through? That's kind of amazing to me that nobody's talking about this.
Really important experiment happening in New York, not some fringe like tier five city.
Was that unpopular?
Oh it's it's it what's hugely controversial. It's even Trump was like
You're not gonna do this. Dude, you're like the president. You get you you don't really I don't know why you're getting involved in New York City, but like Trump was like, We're we're ganking this. The governor got into involved in this. Yeah, it's a huge ordeal. That's right. And I think the I think the reason it's struggling is because they they kind of solved half the problem, but not the other half. And they also did it in very like
the most coarse grained way you could possibly do it.
Um
Mm me meaning
Uh th they put in place a usage fee, but they didn't rebate
The other taxes.
And so there's a whole argument that says, Hang on, I paid for the roads already. Why are you charging me twice? This is a tax increase.
And uh especially as the world kind of moves to EVs.
And some roads are paid for with like licensing fees and some roads are paid for with gas taxes. Like now is the perfect time to fix this.
to make you know to go to go to usage based pricing. But you gotta get rid of the other taxes. Otherwise you've given, you know, every populist in the world a good reason to say no to it.
And the the other the other sort of mindset, you know, I did think a bit about how you would sell this. I think the go to market challenges are way bigger than the
the product challenge. There's some fun, like AI things about how you build AI traffic lights and
How you optimize a network and don't need a bunch of traffic engineers to do it. It should be fun. I think it's way easier than self driving, way more impactful.
But the uh I think the go to market matters, you know,'cause it's like you know it's like there'll be this envy element of like, Oh, all the rich people are passing me.
But I I think what you could do
Is
Basically rebate money.
from the people who are paying for fast.
To the people who want cheap.
And so you know, so th th think of it as like that asshole Elon cut me off, but every time he does it, he has to pay me.
Right.
So so I I think there's a way to it effectively there's like cash flow
from the people who want who are willing to pay for the highest
access to the roads to the people who actually value the cheapest access.
To the roads.
And then there's a technology layer, there's an operating layer on this.
And then the you know, the the the whoever builds the system should get the ten percent off the top for building it and running it.
And that ends up being an enormous business.
By the way if somebody wants to start this
I will like be your advisor.
I will be your champion. I will help raise money for it. Like I desperately want someone to build this.
So you um so all right, so Boom has raised seven hundred million dollars. You guys are uh I think you just had a a flight
you know, in the past year where you built one of your one of your engines broke the soundbury, huge deal.
And so
You know, w we we've had a few people like you, but you're like a legend potentially in the making.
Take take us take us back to like what was the original question in your mind? Like why
W why isn't there a supersonic wha what was the actual initial question in the first couple weeks?
So it was like why did Concord fail and what would you have to do for it not to have failed?
But were you on Wikipedia and you just came across that or you're just a fine fan?
Well if I was a flying fan and then yeah, you know, I could go to Wikipedia and I read stuff
And you know, b the ostensibly it's okay, the the facts make it obvious. Here's here's a um hundred seat airplane.
with a hundred uncomfortable seats and adjusted for inflation at twenty thousand dollar fair.
And you can't fill the seat, you can't make any money.
Okay, that's obvious. Uh so but the next the next question was this this turned out to be like the key question. Why was Concord
So expensive. The answer is poor fuel economy.
And that kicked off a vicious cycle that led to high fares that led to the low utilization, the lower utilization, the higher the fares have to be. There's a whole vicious cycle to it. But uh but the the root of it was was poor fuel economy. And the next question was, well, how much would you have to beat Concord's 1960s technology buy
In order to match the fuel economy of a flatbed business class.
The the thought was
Well,
eventually it'd be great to do this for everybody. But as a starting point, business class is huge.
And you don't need the bed if the flights
Not long.
You can have a b better bed than one at home.
And so how much have to be?
Concord by.
And it turned out the answer was like less than ten percent.
To to match the total economics of a flatbedded business class.
And I was like what like
Can't explode emoji?
Like I don't really know anything about airplanes, but can we really not do ten percent better than nineteen sixties?
Give people a point of reference. How much did you know about
planes and calculating the fuel economy and and all of that.
When you started this idea.
Yeah. And ar aren't you a high school dropout?
Yeah, I'm a high school dropout. I did actually graduate from college.
But my degree's in computer science and the the closest thing I had to an aviation credential is a pilot's license.
But but this is
This stuff isn't actually that complicated at this level.
Like the fuel burn data's all on Wikipedia.
And you can calculate fuel burn per seat mile, which turns out to be like the key metric.
And and so okay, what was Concorde's fuel burn per seat mile? What's the fuel burn per seat mile of a flatbed in business class?
And again, you can just go pull on seat guru. You can see the map. You can like measure on your screen how much of it's business class, how many seats are there, how how much floor area is in their whole airplane, allocate it out.
And then and then it's like great, you'd have to you have to do about ten percent better than Concord to match the total economics. If you wanted to match the fuel burn per seat mile, it's a bit more than that.
But there are all these other
you know, utilization benefits from speed.
And and then the next question was well, how much better is Boeing's latest airplane?
Versus the one that came before it.
And the answer was something like twenty percent.
I'm like, wait a minute, you can't find you can't find ten percent over fifty years.
Like I don't you know, I don't know anything about the details of the technology at this point.
But it seemed
it seemed plausible in the face of it. And so at this point I was like, Okay, hang on.
You said there's a there's a fact here that c that has caught my attention. Uh I'm pro I'm gonna spend uh a bunch of sleepless nights w questioning this.
Yeah. Well actu uh or actually I'm gonna spend a lot of
Days trying to get smart on it. And so I was like, this this seems plausible in the face of it, but I I'm on the far left side of the Dunning Kruger curve. I don't even know what I don't know.
And uh and so I I I sort of imagined
Myself, I imagine in the future
It's twenty fifty. I I'm retired.
I'm sitting on the beach, I'm sipping my ties. I had nothing to do with supersonic flight, but I'm just reading the aviation history books. And what do I think they say?
Yeah, do th do they say, you know, we're still flying subsonic?
I really hope not.
Hopefully they say we're going supersonic now and they tell the story of how it happened.
And how do how do I think that story goes?
Does it go?
After a hundred fifty years of not building a super sign like Jeff Bowen finally did.
Like, no, business history never goes like that.
Right? Like this is big big companies don't suddenly get enlightened.
And build disruptive things. So what what's the more plausible history? More plausible history is it was a startup that did it.
or a bad idea. They have to be an outsider. And what would that outsider have to look like in order to be successful?
They they they'd have to have built a dream team.
So that to be really good at attracting great people.
They'd have to be able to be a great storyteller. They'd be great at persuasion.
They'd have to be technically deep in order to be credible with all the audiences that would matter.
And I sort of look in the mirror and like Is that me?
I I got the like outside the industry box, but like the rest of it's no.
Um and You're like what would it take to attract this like ten out of ten like just smoke show? Like they probably need to be good looking, probably need to have a great personality, they need to be funny, they probably should have like really nice teeth.
That's that's me. I can do that. So I I I I look in the mirror and I'm like fat and dumb.
And I'm like, if I want to have any chance of doing this, I have to go to the startup CEO equivalent of the gym.
I at that point I don't think I could have sold a dollar bill for fifty cents.
And I didn't know Jack about airplanes. And so I'm like, okay, like I need to become that person. And my mental model for myself is
You know, we've probably seen those like how it's made videos with pasta.
And then these like pasta extruders and there's this like big mound of dough in this gigantic like press.
that's pushing the dough through this tiny little hole and this like noodle, it gets extruded out the other side of the hole. I'm like, okay, I'm the dough. There's this hole and I need to like extrude myself into the right shape to actually be able to do this.
And and so I went back and I started taking remedial calculus and physics'cause I hadn't had any since high school.
And I and I didn't know how to get through an aerodynamics textbook without
Way more math and physics.
And then I read the aerodynamics textbooks and I did the problem sets. And if I couldn't figure them out, I threw them out and I got a different book.
You were you were not working at this point, is that right? You had left Groupon?
How h how long was that not working time and how much money were you able to save up in order to kinda do it? Were you like rich, rich, or you're like I got two years where I don't have to have a job?
I had one year where I didn't have to have a job.
Okay, so you had what, like two hundred fifty thousand dollars?
Uh it was a little bit better than that. I had sort of in my mind I had budgeted
Um for like two failed startups before I would have to go
get a big company job. I was like, let me get I I've got two shots on goal before I'm working for the man again.
You're like cool. So I'll definitely fail on the plane thing and then I'll try to do that that mobile app. And then I'll go give back give up and go back and a job. So it was the that was kind of the thought process. I budgeted like here's, you know, here's my salary replacement money and
Um, here's here's the the seed money that I put in the company myself.
And I had I had I had enough savings to do that twice.
Before I needed a job.
And you know, at at the time I was married
I had three young kids.
Um, like three under eighteen months.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
I gotta do some math. Some twins? What are you doing? And then do you would you like kiss your kids goodbye in the morning and you're like all right, I gotta go read. And you just go go into the other room and you're just you just go with them to school. You just go to the library with them. No, I mean you you you say that tongue in cheek, that's kinda how it went. Like, you know, I had a

Office in the basement.
And I I'd I'd give'em hugs and kisses and I go downstairs and I'd sit at my desk and I'd and I'd read and do problem sets all day.
And you're you were tell your friends for that year, they're like, What are you working on? And you're like
I'm kinda toy with this idea of launching a commercial jet company.
Right. And you could just watch the eyeballs roll back.
And my this was twenty fourteen. My my wife said, Okay, honey, you've got a year to screw around with this, and then I expect you to get a job.
Yeah. Um
And this is like before startups were cool. Like now, if you say you're working on like that, you can just go on Twitter and post about it and people are like
Oh, that's awesome. In twenty fourteen, but it still was a little bit uh Startups were cool then, but but not hard tech startups. Like there were no there were no hard tech startups to a first order. Like there was SpaceX and that was it.
That was like the era of like Airbnb for blank. Uber for this.
That's right.
That's right. Yeah. And the the only the only thing that was out there as a reference point for anything like this was SpaceX. And it was still pretty early. Like SpaceX had got into orbit.
And they were working on the Falcon Nine.
And I remember thinking like wow, you know, that guy went from PayPal to rockets. Rockets, you know, rockets sound harder than airplanes.
So this must be possible.
Uh tur turns out I I it turns out I think actually airplanes are harder than rockets.
Uh because of because of s y you have to have
I guess safety is an issue from day one.
Versus rockets you can blow'em up.
And iterate. And you can't you can't do that to an airplane with a person on board.
So but I did I didn't I I was, you know, what what's that old phrase like I'm not doing this because it was easy.
But because I thought it would be easy. Yeah, the best motivational poster of all time. Right. And I didn't actually think it was going to be easy, but um
And people people often ask me, like, if I knew how hard it was gonna be, would I still start? And they assume the answer is no. The answer is definitely yes.
Uh, I still would have started even knowing how hard it turned out to be.
So how do you describe this way of thinking? Because you know, you you talked about this
The pasta dough.
And the hole and you're like what kinda what noodle do I need to I need to shove myself through that hole to make myself the noodle that I wanna be.
Um it is so there's y you have that and you talked about like
I I just imagined I work backwards from the end. I'm retired. I'm reading a book about the history of flight.
And what does that say? Does it say nobody m invented fast planes? No. Uh does it say that Boeing invented the fast plane after showing no evidence of wanting to do so? No.
What do you call this like?
I I guess like do you have a f a frame or phrase for that way of thinking? Because I think that's very
Sounds simple, but it's very rare. I don't do that and I wanna do more of that. So I'll teach me about that. It's it's first principle thinking.
Um, and it's super, super important. And it's like the most I think there are two mental skills that are really valuable. One is first principle thinking, and the other is knowing when you're confused versus when you're clear.
If you have if you have both of those, you can do anything.
Explain both of them.
Yeah, so so first principle's thinking is
Like looking to get um it it it
Let's take a math analogy here.
You know, are there a bunch of data points
And I'm gonna like draw a line through them and extrapolate.
Or am I going to go understand the equation that led to those data points being where they are?
Am I pattern matching or am I understanding causality?
And uh and going to causality is really important.
And most people don't do it.
They operate on rules of thumb.
And rules of thumb are fine so long as you're like doing things that have already been done before or not too far from them.
Uh, but if you want to do anything new or different, or if you want to break from conventional wisdom, you have to understand what's really happening. You know, you know, so for example, the pattern matching is
Concorde failed, people weren't willing to pay more for supersonic flight like on Concorde.
Therefore it doesn't work. It was an economic failure. And you could find that in a zillion articles on the internet.
And but like hang on, what was really going on?
What were the actual economics? What's the actual passenger preference?
Um what you know, what would pe it there's a whole like don't accept a qualitative answer to a quantitative question here.
And and and so it along as I was doing this. I saw you say that quote, by the way. I actually think that that quote is kinda more profound than the time that you just gave it.
Wha what exactly does that mean?
People make all kinds of claims about issues that are measurable without measuring anything.
Like
It with t to pull on this example.
P uh supersonic flight costs more.
Passengers prefer cheaper flights.
You have to solve Sonic Boom to be able to fly over land in order for the market to be big enough. Therefore you can't do any of this.
And like every single thing in there is some qualitative
Claims.
About a thing that's actually measurable. Well, okay, supersonic flight costs more. Well, how much?
What would the fairs have to be?
How many people are already paying those fares? I mean like obviously people pay to save time. Well, how much do they have to pay and how much time is saved?
And y you know, okay, can is there a market without supertonic flight over land?
I don't know. Go get the traffic data. Build a freaking database.
And like start start to make some assumptions about cost and time savings and look at how big the market is. That's what I did in twenty fourteen. I had a
Spreadsheet some JavaScript code that went and did all that.
And it turned out the actual answers were not what anybody claimed they were, because nobody else had done the math.
Yeah, it seems like my dad taught me this thing, he goes, uh Indian dad. He likes to ask for discounts and somebody would say no and he would ask again.
Yeah, and I'd be like they said no, Dad.
And he's been a little bit more than I've been.
No, you're going to give me this. Well, yeah. Sometimes he'll just be like, So we'll get a discount, right? He'll do that type of thing um instead of even asking for the discount. But when he's when somebody says no, he would ask again or we'd ask somebody else.
And he would tell me, he would say, Don't take no from a person who didn't have the power to say yes in the first place.
She couldn't have said yes, so why do I care if she said no? Like she didn't have the authority to say to give me the discount. So I'm just gonna keep asking until I get to the person who at least could say yes. Let's start that.
And what you're saying is like
Don't accept a qualitative answer. Don't take a narrative when numbers would would be would be there.
That's right. I see this all the time in my companies. It's like
Yeah, those didn't perform well. Well, how well?
How bad was it? What does that how does that compare?
Are we sure that that you know and you once you start to dig in, you realize
People are not operating from a place of fact, and definitely a team is not operating from the same set of facts.
But how do you get people, Sean, not to think like that though?
Well, I'll I'll tell you how I do, but I I would like to hear maybe Blake do it'cause it sounds like he's probably a a little further ahead on the curve there. Go go ahead. I'm a I just get very blunt about it, but go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, I ask a lot of questions. Like if it's a if it's an engineering thing, if someone's telling me something's not possible and they can't explain it in terms of Newtonian mechanics, I just don't believe it.
The the other the other thing that was Sean's answers. That was his answer too. Uh at Duke.
I'll give you two little tips that have worked for me, and I stole these from uh
When I worked at Twitch, Emmett, the founder of Twitch, and now the CEO, Dan, they both had these great ways of doing this. So both of them
I think
w wanted this. They wanted people to give more substantiated, dug in, detailed answers.
that were based on fact rather than either opinion or hair hearsay or just narratives in the company, whatever.
And so what they would do is they they would say things like
Hang on, I just want to make sure I understand this. Rather than saying
I don't think you understand this, which would make the person feel if tax. Hang on, wait, wait. Sorry, I need to ask you this question because I want to make sure I understand this.
Yeah.
Is that because blah blah blah and and so then they would break it down that way. They would kind them off the defensive. And Dan did this great thing. He would say
He said, Oh, you said something interesting there. When what he what he really meant was
You said some bullshit. And then he would say
You said
Uh this didn't work.
Explain this to me. It could be that this didn't work because A
Or it could be that we measured this and we saw this and there it could be B
Is it A or B? And then he really would people would have to walk through their logic and they would see where their own logic had potholes. Where they would take huge leaps of assumptions or they'd say we, I'd have to go look it up.
And then he would he would either
Pause and be like, let's see if we can get that data. Do you think you can get that data in the next two minutes? And he would he'd be like,'Cause if we just continue talking.
Without that data, then I guess the data didn't really matter.
Let's come back with that with that data. And what I'd be really curious of is A, B, C, D, and E. And it'd be the logic chain that he wants them to go to go do.
And if you do that two or three times, you undress people sort of two or three times this way.
They start to anticipate it and they come into the meeting now.
With that because they know
He's always gonna pause me. I can't just I can't get away with just saying some bullshit in here. I can't just say it well. It doesn't matter if you say it well. It's what are you actually saying. That's right. So I think that's brilliant. And we built it into our interview process.
Uh like my my favorite interview question
Is Teach me something.
And it it starts a conversation exactly like what you're describing.
So hang on, I I didn't understand what you said. Why is that? Can you walk me through that?
Like uh I c like a story about this.
At one point I was hi uh interviewing for like a head aerodynamicist and like air aerodynamics is like
Super hard, very mathy, very techy into aerospace.
Um it's the hardest yeah, d technically the hardest part.
And this guy shows up and he's got this star setted resume and he and he um
you know, claims to be an expert in hypersonic engine intakes.
And I'm like, teach me something. He's like, Oh, like what? Like, I don't know. Your resume says you know about hypersonic intakes like I barely know what hypersonic is. Teach me.
And he he launches into this thing.
And he's like
Oh yeah, you really want to use a stream trace design'cause that minimizes the cowlip angle.
And I'm like, hang on, slow down. You went way over my head. What's the cow? What's the cow lip? What angle are you talking about? And why does any of that matter?
And it and it turned out the answer was I don't know.
Right, but he had a sound bite that turned out to be true. And we had this whole conversation. And by the end of it, I felt like I had actually been able to reverse engineer some understanding. It was very obvious he didn't have it. And the the thing I love about that question is even if you know it's I don't mind sharing this on podcasts because you can't cheat on the question.
Even if you know it's coming, you have to actually understand something.
You know what's funny is uh back when you were getting going in like uh fourteen and sixteen and eighteen
I don't know about Sean, but like I was definitely up and coming and I didn't have like a lot of money. I didn't have like enough money to make angel investments.
And for some reason
Like I got sent your deal.
Not like
you know, I wasn't an anybody. It was just like, you know, this crazy guy has started this thing.
It was almost as if I'm like
Well, if I'm seeing this, then that must mean that all like the cool guys have passed on this. Right. And I remember like reading about this uh company Boom and I'm like
Oh, this guy this person is insane. Like why w on ear wha how is this how is anyone taking this seriously?
And
Obviously that's how a lot of great ideas start. Uh, but y it didn't seem like you had an easy going when it came to s the fundraising if like a a guy like me was even able to come across the deck.
Oh, it was definitely not easy, but but by the way, notice, you know, un unpack the thinking there. That's that's an example of bystander thinking implied to to investing.
Sure. That's part why I'm not that's why I didn't invest in it. And that's why a bunch of my really smart friends did. Yeah. No, I mean the the f the fundraising piece of this has been extremely difficult.
the you know, th I think this some people have said there's no venture in venture capital.
And it's it's kinda true. And
What didn't work for us is going to VCs and trying to raise money.
And um
I think there are a bunch of reasons for that. The superficial reasons are like oh the the timelines
For this or longer
It doesn't it's not a natural fit for um kind of fun life cycles where you want to show a mark quickly and then use that mark to raise the next fund.
Yeah, so anybody who's focused on that is gonna run from a
A business like Boom.
You know, but but I think the bigger dynamic
is like a principal agent type dynamic.
And it took me a long time to realize this because I it I I sort of naively thought V Cs are the people with money and their job is to invest it to make more money.
But that's actually not what VCs are.
VCs are money managers.
You remember that thing that would go around the valley like ten years ago about Facebook being free and p people would say
If the product is free
Then you're the product. But by the way, if the product gives you money
Then you are definitely the product.
Right. And like VCs are in the business of selling startups as an investment class to LPs.
And but and who are the LPs?
Many times there you're some if you're lucky, those are wealthy people who have their own money.
But many times it's like the endowment fund of Harvard.
And it's like by the by the time you trace that dollar back to anybody who actually owns it, you have to go many ch many levels back.
And uh and the dynamics.
Like the incentive dynamics in that money in that sort of like chain of money managers.
is to to be able to like raise the next fund and keep going.
Um relative yeah, w at a relatively short time period.
uh relative to the investment payoff of of most startups. And so what it does is it drives a
There's an incentive.
to to to go invest in things that look to L Ps like smart investments quickly.
And uh Boom might actually be an amazing investment. I think
You know, not there's no guarantee of this. We could totally
You know, im at this point we're big uh we we've done enough stuff that impact is guaranteed. You know, I just really don't want it to be a crater.
But you know, in in success, this is gonna be a trillion dollar company. Cause like people are gonna f fly more on flights or supersonic than subsonic. This has to be bigger than Boeing if it works.
So it could be a great return, but it will take a long time for it to be clear that it's going to be a great return.
Uh, which means any anybody who's
career is based on raising the next fund from their LPs isn't gonna like it.
And I wish somebody had been an Oracle and whispered that to my ear in twenty fourteen. I could have saved myself an enormous amount of pain.
You did end up raising money and I remember the first time that I
Heard about you guys. It was
Hey, why see demo day some guy got on stage.
And he waved a piece of paper and basically said, We have a hundred million dollars or something of LOIs or pre-orders for our supersonic airplanes that we're gonna build.
From uh from I think Virgin and one other company.
Yeah. It was actually five billion in LOIs.
Um five billion.
Five five five billion dollars. I I still remember like Sam Altman's tweet. He's like, you know, Boop Boom had five billion dollars at LOIs at demo day as a record that probably won't be passed soon. Well exactly that bullshit.
Yeah. No.
The story about bullshit. Um the uh so we we do Y C and like Sam had been in our seed round.
And he had sort of like, you know, this is back when Sam was running YC. And he had sort of like been telling me I need to do YC. And I'm like, well, isn't Y C for like mobile social?
You know, I don't know that it's for supersonic jets. They kept saying you have to do it, you have to do it. And eventually I was like, Okay, my biggest risk is I never raised enough money to actually build anything.
Y C claims that they'll help with that.
I'd r I'd rather
Try it and it wasn't useful.
Than than not try it and fail and not have a given it.
every chance to succeed. So I d did did Y C
And early on the the group partners like Well you need to show up to with demo day at with sales.
And I'm like
This is like a ten person company that just moved out of my basement.
Like I'd be lucky to my customer pipeline is like Lufthansa United
I'd be lucky to sell airplanes in eight years, let alone eight weeks.
And what am I gonna do?
And says, Okay, there are two things that are possibilities here. One one possibility is a startup airline.
Uh, but if I look at an established airline, the only one that could conceivably do this quickly is Virgin.
And only if I get to Richard.
And so I went I went after both of those paths and we actually got a startup airline to do it.
Um we got them to uh the uh the there was a startup called Odyssey
was gonna do an all business class service from New York to London City airport.
And I was like, this is great. They're doing the but you know, flying to London City, which is like the little airport in the center of London. That's the best thing you can do short of being supersonic.
These guys probably get speed.
Uh and so I met with a guy and he was willing to like
give me an L O I on like
actually a different corporate entity letterhead.
And I'm like, woohoo. And now this this LOI was for fifteen airplanes at two hundred million dollars each. So it's a three billion dollar LOI.
Explain what an LOI means in this context. Because LOIs can range from
Non binding, hey sure.
Sure. I I'm interested in in taking a look to
A binding LOI with hard money. There's there's a range of people talking LOI. What were you talking at this time? So this LOI was a piece of paper.
Um, and you know, you start asking questions about it's from a startup airline, which by the way hasn't flown any airplanes yet.
Like like this, you know, it this is a PDF and it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. This is the equivalent of I have a girlfriend, she just goes to another school, trust me.
Basically. And and so I'm I'm I'm doing the practice demo day pitches and like Michael Siebel, bless his heart. That guy's got the I think one of the brilliant things about PG is he's built a culture at Y C where people just tell you what they really think. It's one of the best things about Y C.
Um, and so I'm doing practice demo day.
And uh Michael Siebel looks at my slides and my pitch and he's like, Blake, do you have anything that's real? Cause you sound like you're completely full of shit.
Um
And it you know, it was bitter yeah it's bitter tasting medicine, but it's what I needed.
And um and so I kept working on retooling the pitch to be focused on what hardware we really had at that point in time.
And also trying to figure out this customer thing'cause I knew that L O I was flimsy.
And so we've been working on Virgin and there's a whole other set of stories I could tell at length about how I got to Branson, but um but I did get to Branson.
Well tells we like the hustle stories. Give us one.
So so Mark Kelly, who is now Senator Mark Kelly
Um uh shuttle commander
Um and if you know human extraordinaire in a bunch of ways. Uh astronaut Mark Kelly. Astronaut Mark Kelly, yes.
Um
was on our advisory board.
And uh he hung out with Richard.
Um
And I sort of discovered I could ghostwrite emails from Mark Kelly to Richard Branson and he would send them.
And so I did.
And this was so this was like
February
March of um
twenty sixteen. So Virgin Galactic is about to roll out their second generation spaceship.
Branson's gonna be in the Mojave Desert for that event.
Uh, my chief engineer had actually got invited to go'cause he was connected to those circles. I hadn't been invited.
And uh and so the the the pitch to Branson from
Mark was
I the hey, the boom guys are gonna be in Mojave for your spaceship roll out. You should really meet with them while you're there.
And uh and he said, Okay.
And so we got a fifteen minute meeting and it was me and my chief engineer and Richard and Richard's mom.
Uh, I actually never got invited to the rollout. I had to crash the roll out.
Um
But I managed I managed to talk my way into it.
Uh, and and I had this fifteen minutes with Richard, and he kinda, you know, uh he he asked us if we want anything to drink, and I said no, I've already had lots of coffee.
And I realize a couple minutes into the pitch he's drinking scotch.
Um it's very early in the morning.
Um I love Richard. Apparently. I may may maybe maybe the pitch would have gotten better if I had more scotch.
But uh but any rate he's like, Guys, this is brilliant. Like I love what you're doing. This all makes sense.
And then he kinda leans back in his chair and he's like, Oh
But I'm already doing Virgin Galactic.
And that's a lot.
And I don't
I don't know if I've got two of these things in me.
And I and I said, Richard, we're not asking you
For money.
We're asking if when this works
If you'd like the first few airplanes to be for Virgin.
If you want them. Because if you'll raise your hand and say, I want these
The product makes sense, then I'll go get all the money elsewhere.
Uh
And that turned out to be the thing that worked.
How did you think to to say instead of saying uh you know, invest in us or advise us or whatever, just say, do you want the first ones to say virgin on the tail or do you want them to say
And if you know the name of the history of virgin, you know that Richard he hates BA, right? What does Richard want Richard cares about PR and he hates BA.
And when he tried to buy Concords, which he did, he tried to buy BA's Concorde when they were shutting it down and they wouldn't sell it to him because they want to get embarrassed. So what is this? Basically, Sean, I don't know if you ever read his book or the listener.
BA and Virgin, British Airlines, they had a battle in the nineties and early two thousands where BA was trying to shut down Virgin. And so he went on this whole campaign. I think he brought like is this when he brought a tank through London where and he like rolled over like a fake model plane? Like it was like a whole PR campaign.
Uh the little guy virgin versus the big guy BA.
Oh, it's great. The stories are great, right? And he he very specifically tried to beat BA with supersonic and he lost.
Right.
Um
And so uh so he wants to do this and he cares about PR and he cares about his brand.
And and so I'm like, Why don't I let you stick it to BA?
So it tur it turned out
You know, so the but then the meeting ends and there's no deal.
And I'm I'm sort of like working it through my friends at Virgin Galactic at this point, trying to get something done.
Um, at this point uh Y C the way Y C was structural is demo day was spread across two days.
And
The company might not exist if we hadn't been on day two.
'Cause it's so like what happened what happened that week is so so Wednesday is our demo day, demo day two. Monday, we were like launching the company out of stealth mode.
And we've gotten um
Ashley Vance to write the launch article for Bloomberg. And if you don't know Ashley, he was like Elon's first biographer.
We'd let him and the Bloomberg team come out to Denver and interview me and take all the pictures they wanted to take.
And it in my head this is brilliant because the story is gonna be boom as the SpaceX of airplanes.
But we I had no self awareness about how darn early we were.
I let the photographers take a picture of me.
On an plastic orange chair climbing into a cardboard mock up of an airplane.
And Ash Ashley actually wrote a nice story.
But his editor picked the picture and wrote the headline.
And the headline said something like, This Colorado company thinks it can build a supersonic jet.
And then there's my like
Fat ass climbing into a cardboard mock-up.
I know. It's so bad.
And it's and then it's then it's the top of hacker news.
And the comments photoshopped like a helmet on your head. Oh I mean it was so it was so awful. The c the comments are like
You know, what an idiotic company. Don't they know airplanes made out of cardboard.
And you know, what idiot runs marketing at that company,'cause who would name a supersonic jet company boom?
Um and it's brutal. It just happened. And I'm like, we are so screwed.
Like we're just we're we're gonna be the laughing stock at demo day.
And so that's Monday.
Tuesday I'm sitting at my desk working on the slides.
And up pops this email from Virgin.
That says
We're in for the first ten airplanes, you can announce it tomorrow.
And I like read the email like three times'cause I'm like, there is
There's like no way
There's there's like no way this says what I think it says.
So we're like we're like in San Jose in an Airbnb prepping for demo day, right?
And uh and so I'm like I think
I think I just went from the biggest loser to the biggest winner.
And I called at the team at Y C and I'm like I need to relaunch my startup.
Um, how do I do this?
And so I think I stayed up to midnight that night.
redoing press pitches under embargo. We relaunched the morning of demo day.
Uh with a two billion dollar LOI from Virgin done on an email.
Um
And uh and it and then we're back at the top of hacker news again.
Yeah.
And the comments are like
Mun my my favorite comments were like one
What genius runs market in it, boom. The ones you punch, that's how you launch a company. And then there was another one that was like Monday colon, ha ha, Wednesday colon, oh shit.
Uh and uh but by by the grace of Richard Branson.
We would have died that week.
You seem to have a lot of these stories that are
uh what our buddy George Mack likes to call high agency. So you were a high school dropout.
Yeah, you got into college.
Yeah, I think you
high agency du way into college.
As I understand it, you didn't just work at Amazon. I think you like kicked ass at Amazon in some you got the job in an interesting way, and I think you kicked ass in an interesting way.
This whole idea of like
I
didn't take at face value why the Concord failed and I kind of like
taught myself the physics and calculus I needed to like
Diligence the idea initially.
Uh it seems like you have a lot of these. What's your favorite
Version of those stories.
That you think
You know, it's that I think
Your meter might be like you don't have the what's it called? Like the um
Like the thing that stops a car from going at a certain speed, like an artificial governor. A governor, yeah. You removed your governor and so you're willing to go further than the average person would when
It looks like the default answer is no, no no for you.
Yeah, um
Well, I wanna underst I guess a couple of things. One is I wanna understand things for myself.
Um and and maybe that's the most important thing. Like I don't um
Hm.
Funny s funny side story. As as I was like going through a divorce and like
Fighting with my ex wife.
Uh over like
custody and I had to go through this like weird psychological exam.
And uh I'm going through you know these like multi choice questions where they ask you, you know, this random thing like I could tell
Uh there were questions like
I I think the experts are wrong and I know better.
And I'm like
I think they're testing for delusions of grandeur. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna answer this one honestly, but y that's actually what I think. I think the experts are wrong all the time and anybody who bothers to think about it can figure out differently.
And and so so I have that premise, but I I also I don't know, I feel like I have a complicated relationship with my own ego.
It was a really weird decision for me psychologically to start this company. It's like I I look in the mirror and I'm like
Totally don't look like the guy to do this.
And it was very bizarre to tell my friends I'm gonna go build supersonic jets.
is like I didn't look like the person to do it. I didn't actually believe on the inside I was gonna succeed. I just didn't want to not try.
Um, and I and I really struggled with that. And I remember thinking about, you know, who my business heroes were. And I thought of
You know, I I especially I thought of a lot, but I especially thought of Bill Gates.
Because Gates had said, I think during the seventies.
That his goal for Microsoft
With to put a personal computer
In every home.
And on every desk.
Running Microsoft software.
And he said that in the seventies.
Right. And then he actually went and did it.
Uh and then some.
And and what was what was it like to be Bill?
When Bill said that.
Like he didn't have a resume for it either.
He could have flamed out and like because he didn't flame out
We know who Bill Gates is, and we have those computers.
But if you know so I'm like, okay, there must be a couple of categories of entrepreneurs. So the people who like go after these big missions.
And they succeed.
And we all know their names.
Because it is Bill.
And it's Steve, and back in the day it's Thomas Edison and you're the you're the greats are the great, right?
And then there's probably like the dark matter of founders.
And the dark matter of founders are the people who go for big things, who set big goals, but it doesn't work.
And um
Would I rather be
In the dark matter.
Of founders?
Or would I rather be in the like
I didn't try and I just had a job.
Or I started another mobile apps company.
And I m I made the conscious decision that I'd rather be a dark matter founder.
That's pretty badass.
Basically, you were willing to lose.
I I had to be willing to lose. I'm like another another turn of phrase here.
Is um
Oh boy, I'll tell this through my story of my daughter. Um she was uh when she turned ten, which is a few years ago now
Uh I took her out to ice cream and it was it was one of these like
low moments, Rick, I didn't know how the company was gonna survive.
And and by the way we have one of those like every year.
Um like with like regularity, there's like a life and death crisis every year.
Um, and I I didn't know I didn't know how we were gonna get through this particular one. And I was feeling pretty down about it. And like, you know, and my I had this self talk that was like, Man, my daughter for her entire conscious life
All her dad has been doing is saying he's gonna build supersonic chats.
And you know, and it could totally the the first prototype might never fly.
Um
And you know, what the hell is my identity to my children?
Uh and it it's just not really a great question, but I had that question.
Um, and I you know, so she's in the back of the car. We've just had ice cream.
And I said, Ada, like
What would you think if I failed?
Uh boom.
And uh I'm gonna tear up as I say this.
She didn't miss a beat.
And and uh she said I'd be proud of you for trying.
And uh that speaks to me very deeply. And uh
That's the view I try to have for my myself. Yeah. Do do things I'd be proud to try.
But do things I'd be pride to fail at.
And I've always told the team like there's no guarantee of success here. We might fail.
But if we fail, we're gonna fail honestly.
And we're gonna fail having given it our all.
And we're not gonna give up.
And when the uh
When when X B one which is that's our prototype airplane, the
Yeah, the first
Start up.
to ever break the sound barrier with that airplane. You know, when it landed earlier this year for the last time.
Um, and I was standing outside the airplane with a the team of fifty people that had built it and flown it.
Um
And I I said to the team the reason
The reason we get to be here today
We didn't give up.
We got here because
were the team that did not give up. It took a whole lot of not giving up. Other reasonable people would have given up. A bunch of reasonable people did give up.
And to get
To get over to our airliner.
Flying, that's gonna require a lot more not giving up.
So
Pick something you'd be proud to fail at.
Don't give up.
That's a great story.
You know, I'm not in your industry at all. Um
Sean's uh and I m make internet stuff.
And I remember seeing this Elon Musk video where his the rocket I don't I don't remember what it did, but it was some threshold that they had never accomplished before where it got to space something like that.
And you see him looking up.
And you hear the launch control cr like freaking out and he actually I think he like cries. It looks like he's about to cry.
And he's like looking up and he's like
It it it almost felt like he was even in awe or impressed, where he was like
I can't believe it. It worked. Yeah.
And the whole crew, you know
a thousand employees are just freaking out.
Yeah. And I remember thinking like I you know, I don't want to
Something like that seems so challenging.
Man, I couldn't do it. It took
Fifteen years, twenty years to get there, and then you see that video and you're like
Wow, that's totally worth it. And I and I'm a little envious. It's it's sort of like someone like running a marathon, and at the end of the marathon, their family is there and they're freaking out or doing some type of like crazy physical task where it takes
decades or years to work towards and then you have this like moment where it's like
you know, there's a very beginning and a middle and an end to the journey. And I'm very envious of that. And it's really cool that you had that. You know, recently uh it happened like six months ago, I forget, that you guys like had your first flight.
Yeah, it was three it was like three months ago. It was recent, yeah. Three months ago. And I remember having I'm like I have nothing to do with you, but I had this sense of pride just for you.
Uh and I remember seeing Paul Graham, who isn't like a very
Paul Graham doesn't seem like a very excitable person. And he seemed very excited about this. And I was like
This is amazing. And it almost felt
It felt very patriotic.
Uh you know that had nothing to I don't know if I'm gonna do it.
Th there was no like. Team ambition instead of team America, right? It's uh
I think there's a part of all of us.
That wonders what's the version of me?
If I did the most
ambitious thing. If I did my version
Of supersonic jets, right? When I was little, I wasn't a flight enthusiast. I didn't have my pilots. I
Y your thing is your thing.
But I think everybody has
A little
version of that in them. There's some version of that in you. The most ambitious thing, the most you thing you could possibly do.
And you'd probably fail, and it'd probably be super hard. And you could probably if you're smart, you you have a lot of easier options if you decided to choose them. And it could be small even, like be a stand up comedian or do a show all the way to go to space.
It it's the it's the biggest ambition relative to someone's actual frame and their actual values. Like imagine going back to your five year old self.
Insane. Let me tell ya.
I'm gonna tell you what you're gonna get to do.
Here it is.
And like what makes that five year old self just like tickled pig?
Like, wait a minute, I get to do that?
Blake, have you ever read the uh Pixar Rules of Storytelling?
They have this thing called the twenty two rules.
And the twenty two rules, uh rule number one.
The most important rule. This is Pixar. Pixar who
If anybody knows how to move people, they know how to move people emotionally.
Rule number one is you admire the character more for trying than for their successes.
And so you know the
The hallmark of every Pixar movie is not
The happy ending, right? It's
How the character
approach the obstacles. And this sounds like super, super obvious.
But the reality is like
That's also what you know moves founders. That's also what m what inspires people is
Not the success, because yes, it's amazing that the like Elon story.
With the rockets landing. Wow, that's so cool. The rockets landing on the on synchronized in the middle of the ocean. That is amazing.
But it's like
Ten times more amazing when you know that the first three rockets blew up and then he went all in and that, you know, and that nobody was gonna do this if he didn't that's if he didn't push forward and and continue on in the face of like almost certain failure, right?
Uh so I think that's like one of the most important rules for founders'cause it's what it will inspire
Your team, it'll inspire, you know, customers, it'll inspire the audience, it'll inspire investors if in in the end. You admire the character.
How the character tries rather than the success.
I think that's right. One of our OG boom people has a metaphor for this.
that I found really useful. He calls it the emotional piggyback.
And uh is it every time you're struggling with a problem.
And you push through, you're putting a quarter of the piggy bank.
And when you finally succeed.
You get to break open the emotional piggy bank.
Right. And the harder it was to get there, the more joyous the victory.
Right. And I think I think he used it uh this guy's been a boom for nine years. He's one of the few early people that stuck it out.
Uh now he runs our engine program.
And and uh I think he I think he was using that with himself a lot.
But I've you know, I've tried to broadcast it to the team.
I think it's really I think it's really true.
When do you think you guys are gonna be mainstream? When are you gonna be when are people gonna be flying?'Cause right now you're at this
point in the company where it's like all right, you've raised seven hundred million, so obviously you're
A a big deal.
But you're not to the point where it's like
Uh this is a thing. This is going to work.
Uh when do you think that that's gonna cross this or and uh I guess it's been fifteen years uh or twelve years? Yeah, eleven uh we'll turn eleven on paper in September. Yeah. Eleven years ago I was in my basement reading textbooks.
Wow, so not that long ago. And now when what's the next chapter of the story? So you got through a bunch of chapters. You got through the crazy guy in his bedroom to oh okay, this is kind of interesting.
Oh my God, he made a prototype. This is actually this is actually potentially serious.
Now the next chapter, what's that going to be and when is it gonna be uh when are we gonna read it?
You one way to look at this is like
You know, pr progressive overturning of the the skeptics.
Um
That's not how I see it on the inside, but that's one way to look at it.
You know, the skeptic said
A s a startup could never sell airplanes to airlines.
Oh we did. United.
Bought them, made a deposit, American dead, Japan Airlines did a pre order. Okay, that happened.
Uh a startup can never build a supersonic chat.
Um
Oh.
We did that.
Okay, the next thing skeptics say is um
We're never gonna succeed at building our own jet engine. Like there's a whole class of people who are just like convinced that only big companies can build jet engines.
And uh we're gonna find out pretty soon who's right.
Is the end of this year our full scale jet engine prototype
You know, should be running.
And then next year we'll start building the first airplane.
And our our goal is to roll the first one off the line in twenty seven.
Uh, fly it in twenty eight and be ready for passengers in twenty nine.
And
Yeah, there's a good chance that like
It could take longer than that. But those are those are the goals. And I and I I believe in
Uh, we've got a lot uh got gotten a lot of learnings along the way about how you set goals and how you set schedules, which I can talk about, but my my conclusion is
Ambitious schedules.
result in the fastest actual execution.
And so that's those are our targets.
You know, it's a cliche that I say this at uh at the end of the podcast. You know, it gets to the point where someone says something amazing, I go, Man, you're
You're the man.
Uh
It's so I've overused that phrase, but I think that um
of the people who I look up to or
It's almost
You're potentially going to be an American hero. And I and I think that like we're honored to talk to you. And I think that that um I I hope that you are, because it would be really fun to have you win. It would be it would give us all a huge sense of pride to watch you win. And and and I think the the jet thing is cool, the but the cooler thing is that you've had you had a crazy vision.
And it it it might actually
Come to fruition.
You know, I appreciate your saying that. It's a weird
And again, I have a weird relationship with my ego on this, but I I think back to like my days in college and I was reading my favorite book, which is Atlas Shrogged.
And my my favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is this guy Hank Reardon.
uh who is yeah this sort of combination business technology hero.
Um, who like invented a new kind of metal.
Um
And uh
And I but I remember crying thinking like man, I don't have it to be somebody like him.
And uh, you know, I always wanted to be, but I didn't think I could be. And al along the way
Someone
Someone told me that the things we admire in other people are actually our own strengths.
And at first that made no sense to me.
Uh, but as I start to pattern match about it, like like my own weaknesses are the things that pe annoy me the most in other people, and my own strengths are the things I admire most in other people. So very paradoxical, but it seems to actually be true.
And uh it and so there's this like
Weird thing where I think we could actually become our heroes.
Um.
And and my well, you know, of all the various random things that were said about me after we broke the sound barrier.
The one that spoke to me the most
was for s someone who I'd never met, never heard of
Compared me to Hick Reardon.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, that's amazing. I I always say if you spot it, you got it.
Both in the good and bad. If something bothers you about some other people, it's'cause it's a part of you.
That recognizes that behavior.
Um, and same thing, if something inspires you, there's a part of you that identifies with that behavior, right? You are what you admire. And and I think that that once you realize that.
You start to get actually.
you start to s pay some attention to what you choose what you're choosing to admire because you're actually pointing your little compass in that direction.
Um
Then there's just a question of are you gonna remove the governor or you're gonna leave it in and not actually go chase it all the way. I love that's the that's the happy side of it. And then the unhappy side of it is the things that drive me crazy and other people.
Holy shit, I need to have a talk with myself'cause I'm probably doing it too.
Right.
I like this quote that you have. You said if every founder worked on the most ambitious thing they could get their head around, everyone would be happier and more great things would get built.
You know, there's probably gonna be somewhere between half a million and a million people who listen to this episode.
Um
Like
I guess.
If you're gonna leave here making your case for that, for why th why founders should work on the most ambitious thing.
Um
What's your case?
Can't lose.
If you win, obviously it's great.
But I I think the
I think a m it's a mistake.
to start from your resume and it's a mistake to start from what you think you can do.
I think the only way to find out
What you can do.
Is to pick the most motivating thing in the world.
And and run at it. Something that's so motivating.
That
The goal matters more than your own insecurities, that you could do that thing where you extrude yourself.
Into the n noodle of the right shape.
That's the only way you find your limits.
Padre.
You were really young and I think I read that you reported directly to Jeff Bezos. I can't let you leave without asking you. Do do you have any good Bezos stories? Oh I've got a bunch. I did not report directly to Bezos. Yeah, the the one of the most annoying things that happens as the uh
as you as you go through these journeys, it's like little bits of bio get turned into better sound bites. And and then I feel embarrassed because like like people claim an executive at Amazon and I was not
Well someone was like Oh he uh he worked at Amazon. Oh so he worked for Jeff Bezos. Yeah he worked for Jeff Bezos. Oh you worked for Jeff Bezos? Right. So sort of every hourly worker in the warehouse. But I did get I did get able to do something that Jeff cared about. So I got to work with him a bit.
Um, but that meant that like I was updating them once a quarter and you know, and if I screwed up really badly
Like Jeff would hand my ass to me. And by the way, there's no no better early career experience than to be like twenty two working on something that Jeff happens to care about. And when I screw it up, he tells me.
And so I I found out later that I was the youngest ever
manager at Amazon, I don't think I knew that at the time.
But I got to build the um
Uh the thing I got to do was basically do Amazon's first ad buy from Google.
And this in it and and build the system that was I think the first automated ad buying system on the internet. This was before the like we were buying AdWords before there was an AdWords API with like screen scrapers that were like automatically clicking buttons in the background with Perl Scripts.
And uh it w my experience of it was it was like standing next to a rocket.
And then the rocket took off and like my like jacket got caught on the rocket and I kinda was along for the ride.
Uh, but at some at some point this thing was was driving seven percent of Amazon sales.
And seven percent of Google sales all at the same time.
Um
And and somehow I just, you know, I I m my experience of it was I was like on the precipice of failing and they're about to fire me and replace me with somebody who actually knew what they were doing.
Um, and and it was like right at that line it never quite crossed it.
Um but it was a
It was a great first
go build something from scratch gig and uh and I got to learn a lot.
for that experience and I got to know got to know Jeff a little bit, but like I didn't work directly for him. I was like
What what's he like and what'd you pick up from him?
Oh I really admire
Jeff, the stories that get told about CEOs tend to be the ones about how they lose their cool and yell at people and fire people in the elevators and whatnot.
And w one of my favorite things of and I I would watch Jeff lose it from people a kype a couple of times
But what I found is he never lost it with me so long as I took accountability.
And I remember the very first time I was presenting to Jeff.
We had just launched like the MVP of this thing I was describing.
And I'm like telling Jeff how he built it and why. And I'm like nervous AF'cause I'm like twenty two or twenty three, presenting to like
This God.
And we get part through the presentation.
And it's going well. And then he says, Well why didn't you do
X. And he's got this idea.
And I said, Well, we didn't think of that.
And and and he starts laughing.
Right. He starts laughing, the big famous Jeff Bezos laugh.
And he says that's a great answer.
It's true all the time, but nobody's willing to say it. And and so what I found was like
You know I
Whenever I just told Jeff the truth.
And took accountability. I think there was another time I was in front of the old executive team and
The temperature's going up in the room and it's like why did we do this when this other thing was a higher priority? And you can just you everyone's get progressively more pissed off that we've
Mis prioritized.
And I just spoke up and said that was my call.
I got it wrong. I misprioritized. I won't do it again.
And and the toilet was okay.
And the conversation moved on.
And I and obviously I couldn't do that every single time on every single thing.
But Jeff Jeff rewarded straight shooters.
Jeff rewarded accountability, Jeff rewarded knowing knowing your own business like the back of your hand.
And he was he was tremendously forgiving for learning on the job.
And I I I have huge respect for the other thing is like I'd go in to talk to him once a quarter and he would like you know, and I I felt like I knew my shit.
And he would hand me like a novel insight.
In five minutes.
On the thing that I did every day.
And I think that goes to like being really smart, but also that first principles thing. You go to first principles, you can actually get to novel insights quickly. That's exactly what Emmett said. Amazon bought Twitch for like a billion dollars or whatever. So he reported to Jeff. And so he would go, I think twice a year or three times a year, go meet him and he
He did the same thing. He's like
He wants you to know your business, he's like, but then within five minutes of sort of reading the document.
He's like without fail, he would give me one thing that I thought was kind of impossible. I think about this business twenty four seven.
And
He gives me an idea or an angle or perspective.
Like a novel perspective or novel idea that I didn't have. And he's like
That's amazing.
That is a you know, that shows kind of the level that that guy's at.
Mm-hmm.
He's super smart and he's very first principles. And but if you put those two things together
That's what actually I think what that's what makes my experience and it meant experience possible.
And it's the thing that enables other leaders to do the same thing.
thing I try to challenge myself to do is at any given like management review or working with a team, I try to ask myself, what's the most important question?
And and many many times what I find is no one's asked the most important question. It's actually not hard to find it and not hard to ask it.
That's pretty brilliant. What's an ex could you just give us an example of that? Like a situation where you
You asked that question and it shifted the the combo. I I got one from yesterday that's sort of an example.
Um
We I called the overture leadership team together.
On a Sunday.
My my spidey sense was firing that we weren't aligned about development philosophy.
And we start talking about when to in source and when to vertically integrate.
And you know, the conversation in the room started out was like, Oh, vertical integration's as uh is a goal. So we'll eventually do all those things.
And uh and I tried to get the conversation to like
No it's not.
Like
What we what we need is the winning strategy.
What we need to decide is when do we want suppliers and when do we want to do things ourselves. And what are the principles
by which we make those decisions.
And then so I went to the whiteboard and the room sort of like try to answer those questions, like, how do we know whether we should do something ourselves or outsource it?
And I don't think we've completely cracked the nut on that, but we at least brought the team's focus.
Not to like what are the answers.
But how are the principles by which we make those decisions?
And I think if we pull I I think we'll keep pulling on that thread and and ultimately the answer to that question will be part of our success story as a company.
'Cause we've understood how to think about it.
And we've got the team.
On a set of principles.
that well then if they won't need to make every bring every supplier decision to me.
They'll like they'll they'll like look understand the principles and make great independent decisions.
Dude, Blake, you're awesome, man. You're a you're a very unique founder. Um
Met a lot of founders. You're a very unique guy and what you're doing is awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and
I don't I hope I hope my keyboard wasn't making too much noise because I kept writing down
These little quotables that I thought were pretty pretty great for me. I'm not going to be able to do the best episodes, Blake. The best episode episodes you'll either you'll see Sean and I do two things. You'll see us do this.
And we like are gazing. Or the other thing that I that we do is we just you see us do this.
You see it.
Just to lean back and cross our arms and like class is in session.
Uh well thank you. I I had a lot of fun.
Yeah. Where should people follow you or follow the journey? Wh where do you wanna direct people who wanna
Kind of stay in touch here.
Um, I'm pretty active on X.
So I'm at B Shall B S C H O L L.
Um
That's the uh
That's probably the best place to follow along. I I try to give people like an inside view on what's going on at Boom and then I I mouth off about other random things in the world. So
All right, man. Well, I look forward to flying everywhere in half the time. Thank you for uh for coming on. Thank you for doing it. And uh all right, that's it. That's the pod.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to
I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back