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

24:16Therefore, you can't do any of this. and like every single thing in there is some qualitative claim about a thing that's actually measurable. Well, okay, supersonic flight costs more. Well, how much? What would the fares have to be? How many people are already paying those fares? I mean, like obviously people it's paid to save time. Well, how much do they have to pay and how much time is saved? And, you know, okay, is there a market without supersonic flight over land? I don't know. Go get the traffic data, build a freaking database and like start to make some assumptions about costs and time savings and look at how big the market is.

24:49That's what I did in 2014. I had a spreadsheet and 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, he's an Indian dad. He likes to ask for discounts and somebody would say no and he would ask again. And I'd be like, they said no, dad. And he'd be like - Didn't you say your dad just goes, no, you're going to give me this. Well, yeah. Sometimes he'll just be like, so we'll get a discount, right? And he'll do that type of thing instead of even asking for the discount.

25:21But when somebody says no, he would ask again or he'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. Right. That's a great phrase. She couldn't have said yes, so why do I care if she said no? Like she didn't have the authority to give me the discount. So I'm just going to 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 be there. And I see this all the time in my companies.

25:49It's like, yeah, those didn't perform well. Well, how well? How bad was it? What is that? How does that compare? Are we sure that, you know, and 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 tell you how I did, but I would like to hear maybe Blake do it because it sounds like he's probably a little further ahead on the curve there. Go ahead. I just get very blunt about it, but go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I ask a lot of questions.

26:18Like 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 other thing is – That was Sean's answers. That was his answer too. I got a C in physics, by the way. I had to retake it during the summer at Duke. So I'll give you two little tips that have worked for me, and I stole these from – when I worked at Twitch, Emmett, the founder of Twitch, and now the CEO, Dan. They both have these great ways of doing this. So both of them, I think, wanted this. They wanted people to give more substantiated, dug in, detailed answers that were based on fact rather than either opinion or hearsay or just narratives in the company, whatever.

26:59And so what they would do is 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 of tax. Hang on, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, I need to ask you this question because I want to make sure I understand this. Yes. You said this. Is that because blah, blah, blah? And so then they would break it down that way. They would take them off the defensive. And Dan did this great thing. He would say, oh, you said something interesting there. What he really meant was you said some bullshit. And then he would say, you said that this didn't work.

27:30Now, 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 it could be B. Is it A or B? And then 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, I'd have to go look it up. And then 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'd be like, because if we just continue talking without that data, then I guess the data didn't really matter.

28:03Or he'd say, let's come back 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 do. And 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 going to 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.

28:34Like my favorite interview question is teach me something. and it starts a conversation exactly like what you're describing. I was like, hang on, I didn't understand what you said. Why is that? Can you walk me through that? Like a story about this. At one point I was interviewing for like a head aerodynamicist and like aerodynamics is like the super hard, very mathy, very techy end of aerospace. It's the hardest, technically the hardest part. And this guy shows up and he's got this star-studded resume and he claims to be an expert in hypersonic engine intakes. And I'm like, teach me something.

29:12He's like, oh, like what? I'm like, I don't know. Your resume says you know about hypersonic intakes. Like I barely know what hypersonic is. Teach me. And he launches into this thing and he's like, oh yeah, you really want to use a stream trace design because that minimizes the cowlip angle. And I'm like, hang on, slow down. You went way over my head. What's the cowl? What's the cowlip? What angle are you talking about? And why does any of that matter? And it turned out the answer was, I don't know. Right. But he had a soundbite 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.

29:46It was very obvious he didn't have it. And the thing I love about that question is, even if you know it's, I don't mind sharing this on the podcast, 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 back when you were getting going in like 14 and 16 and 18, I don't know about Sean, but I was definitely up and coming and I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have enough money to make angel investments. And for some reason, I got sent your deal. Not like I wasn't in anybody. It was just like, this crazy guy has started this thing.

30:20And it was almost as if I'm like, well, if I'm seeing this, then that must mean that all the cool guys have passed on this. Right. And I remember reading about this company, Boom, and I'm like, oh, this person is insane. How has anyone taken this seriously? And obviously, that's how a lot of great ideas start. But it didn't seem like you had an easy going when it came to the fundraising if a guy like me was even able to come across the deck. Oh, it was definitely not easy. But by the way, notice – unpack the thinking there. That's an example of bystander thinking implied to investing. Sure. That's why I'm not, that's why I didn't invest in it.

31:01And that's why a bunch of my really smart friends did. Yeah. No, I mean, the fundraising piece of this has been extremely difficult. The, you know, I think some people have said there's no venture in venture capital. And it's kind of true. And what didn't work for us is going to VCs and trying to raise money. And I think there are a bunch of reasons for that. The superficial reasons are like, oh, the timelines for this are longer. It's not a natural fit for kind of fund life cycles where you want to show a mark quickly and then use that mark to raise the next fund. You know, so anybody who's focused on that is going to run from a business like Boom.

31:35You know, but I think the bigger dynamic is like a principal agent type dynamic. And it took me a long time to realize this. I sort of naively thought VCs 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 10 years ago about Facebook being free and 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 the VCs are in the business of selling startups as an investment class to LPs.

32:14And who are the LPs? Many times, 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 time you trace that dollar back to anybody who actually owns it, you have to go many, many levels back. And, 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 relative, you know, at a relatively short time period relative to the investment payoff of, of most startups. And so what it does is it drives a – there's an incentive to go invest in things that look to LPs like smart investments quickly.

32:59And boom might actually be an amazing investment. I think there's no guarantee of this. We could totally – at this point, we've done enough stuff that impact is guaranteed. I just really don't want it to be a crater. But in success, this is going to be a trillion-dollar company because people are going to 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, which means anybody whose career is based on raising the next fund from their LPs isn't going to like it.

33:34And I wish somebody had been in Oracle and whispered that to my ear in 2014. 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, a YC 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 going to build from, I think, Virgin and one other company. Yeah, it was actually five billion in LOIs. Five billion. It was five billion dollars. I still remember like Sam Altman's tweet.

34:08It's like, you know, Boom had$5 billion at LOIs at Demo Day as a record that probably won't be passed soon. Well, exactly. So how does that happen? Yeah. No. I mean, so I'll tell you the story. It involves a story about bullshit. So we do YC 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 YC 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.

34:44YC claims that they'll help with that. I'd rather try it and it wasn't useful than not try it and fail and not having given it every chance to succeed. So I did YC. And early on, the group partner's like, well, you need to show up with demo day with sales. and I'm like, this is like a 10 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 going to do? And so I was like, okay, there are two things that are possibilities here. One possibility is a startup airline.

35:22But 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 after both of those paths. And we actually got a startup airline to do it. We got them to, there was a startup called Odyssey, was going to do an all business class service from New York to London City Airport. And I was like, this is great. They're doing the, 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. And so I met with a guy and he was willing to like, give me an LOI on like actually a different corporate entity letterhead.

36:00And I'm like, woohoo. And now this LOI was for 15 airplanes at$200 million each. So it's a$3 billion LOI. Explain what an LOI means in this context. Because LOIs can range from non-binding. Hey, sure, sure. I'm interested in taking a look to a binding LOI with hard money. There's a range. That's what I was saying with bullshit. When you're talking LOI, what were you talking at this time? So this LOI was a piece of paper. Um, and you know, he started asking questions about it. It's from a startup airline, which by the way, hasn't flown any airplanes yet. Like, like this, you know, this was a PDF and it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

36:36This was the equivalent of, I have a girlfriend. She just goes to another school. Trust me. It's, it's, you know, basically. 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 YC where people just tell you what they really think. It's one of the best things about YC. 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.

37:08Um, and it, you know, it was bitter, it was 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 LOI 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 I did get to Branson. Well, tell us. We like the hustle stories. Give us one. So Mark Kelly, who is now Senator Mark Kelly, shuttle commander, you know, human extraordinaire in a bunch of ways.

37:42Astronaut Mark Kelly. Astronaut Mark Kelly, yes. Was on our advisory board. And he hung out with Richard. 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 2016. So Virgin Galactic is about to roll out their second generation spaceship. Branson's going to be in the Mojave Desert for that event. My chief engineer had actually got invited to go because he was connected to the circles. I hadn't been invited. And so the pitch to Branson from Mark was, hey, the boom guys are going to be in Mojave for your spaceship rollout.

38:29You should really meet with them while you're there. And he said, OK. And so we got a 15-minute meeting, and it was me and my chief engineer and Richard and Richard's mom. I actually never got invited to the rollout. I had to crash the rollout. But I managed to talk my way into it. And I had this 15 minutes with Richard. And he kind of, you know, he asked us if we want anything to drink. And I said, no, I've already had lots of coffee. And I realized a couple minutes into the pitch, he's drinking scotch. It's very early in the morning. I love Richard. You failed the cool guy test. Apparently. Maybe the pitch would have gotten better if I had more scotch.

39:08But at any rate, he's like, guys, this is brilliant. Like, I love what you're doing. This all makes sense. And then he kind of leans back on 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 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. And that turned out to be the thing that worked.

39:42How did you think to say, instead of saying, 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 Lufthansa? Because the world is a lot cooler place if we write Virgin on the tail. It was really Virgin versus B.A. And if you know him with a history of Virgin. Oh, he hates B.A. He hates B.A., right? What is Richard? Richard cares about PR and he hates B.A. And when he tried to buy Concords, which he did, he tried to buy B.A.'s Concords. I mean, they were shutting it down and they wouldn't sell it to him because they want to get embarrassed.

40:12So 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 90s and early 2000s 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 and he like rolled over like a fake model plane? Like it was like a whole PR campaign of the little guy Virgin versus the big guy BA. Oh, it's great. The stories are great, right? And he very specifically tried to beat BA with Supersonic and he lost, right? And so he wants to do this and he cares about PR and he cares about his brand.

40:47And so I'm like, why don't I let you stick it to BA? So it turned out, you know, so then the meeting ends and there's no deal. And I'm sort of like working it through my friends at Virgin Galactic at this point, trying to get something done. At this point, YC, the way YC was structured is demo day was spread across two days. And the company might not exist if we hadn't been on day two. So what happened that week is, so Wednesday is our demo day, demo day two. Monday, we were like launching the company out of stealth mode. And we'd gotten Ashley Vance to write the launch article for Bloomberg. And if you don't know Ashley, he was like Elon's first biographer.

41:29We let him and the Bloomberg team come out to Denver and interview me and take all the pictures they wanted to take. And in my head, this is brilliant because the story is going to be boom is the SpaceX of airplanes. but I had no self-awareness about how darn early we were. And I let the photographers take a picture of me on a plastic orange chair climbing into a cardboard mock-up of an airplane. And 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.

42:06And so that's Monday. I know it's so bad so bad and it's and then it's at the top of Hacker News and the comment and the comment like photoshopped like a helmet on your head oh I mean it was so it was so awful the comments were like you know what an idiotic company don't they know airplanes aren't made out of cardboard and you know what what idiot runs marketing at that company because who would name a supersonic jet company boom um and it's brutal it just And I'm like, we are so screwed. Like, we're going to be the laughingstock at Demo Day. And so that's Monday. Tuesday, I'm sitting at my desk working on the slides.

42:46And up pops this email from Virgin that says, we're in for the first 10 airplanes. You can announce it tomorrow. And I, like, read the email, like, three times because I'm like, there is, there's, like, no way. There's, like, no way this says what I think it says. So we're, like, in San Jose in an Airbnb prepping for Demo Day, right? And so I'm like, I think I just went from the biggest loser to the biggest winner. And I called up the team at YC and I'm like, I need to relaunch my startup. How do I do this? And so I think I stayed up to midnight that night, redoing press pitches under embargo.

43:21We relaunched the morning of demo day with a$2 billion LOI from Virgin done on an email.

43:30And then we're back at the top of Hacker News again. and the comments are like, my favorite comments were like one, what genius runs marketing at boom? The one-two 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. And by the grace of Richard Branson, we would have died that week. You seem to have a lot of these stories that are what our buddy George Mack likes to call high agency. So you were a high school dropout, yet you got into college. And I think you high agencyed your way into college. As I understand it, you didn't just work at Amazon.

44:13I think you like kicked ass at Amazon and 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. 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 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.

44:58Yeah. Um, well, I want to understand, I guess a couple of things. One is I want to understand things for myself. And maybe that's the most important thing. Like I don't, um, funny side story. 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. I could tell, there were questions like, I think the experts are wrong and I know better. And I'm like, I think they're testing for delusions of grandeur.

45:33So I'm not going to answer this one honestly, but that's actually what I think. I think the experts are wrong all the time. Anybody who bothers to think about it can figure out differently. And so I have that premise, but 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 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 going to go build supersonic jets. It's like, I didn't look like the person to do it.

46:05I didn't actually believe on the inside I was going to succeed. I just didn't want to not try. And I really struggled with that. And I remember thinking about, you know, who my business heroes were. And I thought of, I thought of a lot, but I especially thought of Bill Gates. Because Gates had said, I think during the 70s, that his goal for Microsoft was to put a personal computer in every home and on every desk running Microsoft software. And he said that in the 70s, right? And then he actually went and did it, and then some. And what was it like to be Bill when Bill said that? Like he didn't have a resume for it either.

46:46He 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 know, the greats of 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 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.

47:30And 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 had to be willing to lose. I mean, another turn of phrase here is, oh boy, I'll tell this through the story of my daughter. When she turned 10, which is a few years ago now, I took her out to ice cream. And it was one of these like low moments where I didn't know how the company was going to survive. And by the way, we have one of those like every year. Like with like regularity, there's like a life and death crisis every year. And I didn't know how we were going to get through this particular one.

48:07I was feeling pretty down about it. And like, you know, 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 going to build supersonic jets. And, you know, and it could totally, the first prototype might never fly. And, you know, what the hell is my identity to my children? And it's just not really a great question, but I had that question. 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 at Boom? And I'm going to tear up as I say this. She didn't miss a beat.

48:46And she said, I'd be proud of you for trying. And that speaks to me very deeply. And that's the view I try to have for myself. Do things I'd be proud to try. Do things I'd be proud 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 going to fail honestly. And we're going to fail having given it our all. And we're not going to give up. And when the, when XB1, which is, that's our prototype airplane, the, you know, the first startup to ever break the sound barrier with that airplane, you know, when it landed earlier this year for the last time, and I was standing outside the airplane with the team of 50 people that had built it and flown it.

49:34and I said to the team, the reason we get to be here today is we didn't give up. We got here because we're 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 over to our airliner flying, that's going to require a lot more not giving up. So pick something you'd be proud to fail at and don't give up. Hey, quick message here, because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works? No friction? Well, I've used Mercury for years now, and let me tell you, it just works.

50:09And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices, I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client. And the first I did? I sent them a clean, branded invoice. Boom. Deal closed. Cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want, and that's why I use Mercury. So, if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to Mercury.com and get started in minutes.

50:39Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. That's a great story. I also think that I'm not in your industry at all. Sean and I make internet stuff and I remember seeing this Elon Musk video where the rocket, 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 freaking out and he actually, I think he cries it looks like he's about to cry and he's looking up and he's like it almost felt like he was even in awe or impressed where he was like, I can't believe it.

51:24It worked. And the whole crew, you know, a thousand employees are just freaking out. And I remember thinking like, you know, I don't want to, something like that seems so challenging. Man, I couldn't do it. It took 15 years, 20 years to get there. And then you see that video and you're like, wow, that's totally worth it. And I'm a little envious. 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.

51:57And I'm very envious of that. And it's really cool that you had that. You know, recently it happened like six months ago. I forget that you guys like had your first flight. Yeah, 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 have this sense of pride just for you. 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. You know, they had nothing to, I don't know, there was no like patriotic.

52:30It's team ambition instead of team America, right? It's, 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? And when I was little, I wasn't a flight enthusiast. I didn't have my pilot senses. 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 probably fail and it'd probably be super hard and you could probably, if you're smart, you have a lot of easier options if you decided to choose them.

53:04And it could be small even. That's right. Like be a standup comedian or do a show all the way to go to space. 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 and saying, let me tell you, 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 pink? Like, wait a minute, I get to do that? Blake, have you ever read the Pixar rules of storytelling? They have this thing called the 22 rules. And the 22 rules, rule number one, the most important rule, this is Pixar.

53:39Pixar 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 the hallmark of every Pixar movie is not the happy ending, right? It's how the character approached the obstacles. And this sounds like super, super obvious, but the reality is like, that's also what moves founders. It's also what inspires people is not the success because yes, it's amazing. Like Elon's story with the rockets landing. Wow, that's so cool. the rockets landing on their synchronized in the middle of the ocean.

54:17That is amazing. But it's like 10 times more amazing when you know that the first three rockets blew up and that he went all in and that, you know, and that nobody was going to do this if he didn't push forward and continue on in the face of like almost certain failure. Right. So I think that's like one of the most important rules for founders because it's what will inspire your team. It'll inspire, you know, customers. It'll inspire the audience. It'll inspire investors. in the end is that you admire the character, how the character tries rather than their success. I think that's right. One of our OG boom people has a metaphor for this that I found really useful.

54:51He calls it the emotional piggy bank. And he's like, every time you're struggling with a problem and you push through, you're putting a quarter in the piggy bank. And when you finally succeed, you get to break open the emotional piggy bank. And the harder it was to get there, the more joyous the victory. And I think he used it. This guy's been at Boom for nine years. He's one of the few early people that stuck it out. Now he runs our engine program. And I think he was using that with himself a lot. But I've tried to broadcast it to the team. I think it's really true. When do you think you guys are going to be mainstream?

55:30When are people going to be flying? Because right now you're at this point in the company where it's like, all right, you've raised$700 million, so obviously you're a big deal. but you're not to the point where it's like, this is a thing, this is going to work. When do you think that that's going to cross this? I guess it's been 15 years or 12 years? Yeah. We'll turn 11 on paper in September. 11 years ago, I was in my basement reading textbooks. Wow. So not that long ago. And now 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 to, oh my God, he made a prototype.

56:11This is actually, this is actually potentially serious. Now the next chapter, what's that going to be? And when is it going to be, when are we going to read it? One way to look at this is like, you know, progressive overturning of the skeptics. That's not how I see it on the inside, but that's one way to look at it. You know, the skeptics said a startup could never sell airplanes to airlines. Oh, we did. United bought them, made a deposit. American did. Japan Airlines did a pre-order. Okay, that happened. A startup can never build a supersonic jet. Oh, we did that. Okay, the next thing skeptics say is we're never going to succeed at building our own jet engine.

56:50Like there's a whole class of people who are just like convinced that only big companies can build jet engines. And we're going to find out pretty soon who's right. Because at 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 goal is to roll the first one off the line in 27, fly it in 28, and be ready for passengers in 29. And there's a good chance that, like, it could take longer than that. But those are the goals. And I believe in – we've gotten a lot of learnings along the way about how you set goals and how you set schedules, which I can talk about.

57:29But my conclusion is ambitious schedules result in the fastest actual execution. And so those are our targets. You know, it's a cliche that I say this at the end of the podcast. You know, it gets to the point where someone says something amazing. I go, man, you're the man. And so I've overused that phrase. But I think that of the people who I look up to, it's almost you're potentially going to be an American hero. And I think that we're honored to talk to you. And I hope that you are because it would be really fun to have you win. It would give us all a huge sense of pride to watch you win. And I think the jet thing is cool.

58:11But the cooler thing is that you had a crazy vision and 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 think back to like my days in college and I was reading my favorite book, which is Atlas Shrugged. and my favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is this guy Hank Reardon, who is this sort of combination business technology hero who invented a new kind of metal.

58:44But I remember crying and thinking, man, I don't have it to be somebody like him. And I always wanted to be, but I didn't think I could be. And along the way, 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. But as I start to pattern match about it, like my own weaknesses are the things that annoy me the most in other people. And my own strengths are the things I admire most in other people. It's very paradoxical, but it seems to actually be true. And so there's this like weird thing where I think we could actually become our heroes.

59:23Um, and, and my, 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 where someone who I'd never met, never heard of compared me to Hank Reardon. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's amazing. I always say if you spot it, you got it both on the good and bad. If something bothers you about some other people, it's because there'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 I think that once you realize that, you start to get actually, you start to pay some attention to what you choose, what you're choosing to admire, because you're actually pointing your little compass in that direction.

1:00:02And, you know, then there's just a question of, are you going to remove the governor? Are you going to leave it in and not actually go chase it all the way? I love this. That's right. 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 dog with myself because 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 going to be somewhere between half a million and a million people who listen to this episode.

1:00:31Like, I guess if you were going to leave here making your case for that, for why founders should work on the most ambitious thing, what's your case? Can't lose. If you win, obviously it's great. But I think it's a mistake to start from your resume and it's a mistake to start from what you think you can do. Because I think the only way to find out what you can do is to pick the most motivating thing in the world 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 noodle of the right shape.

1:01:13That's the only way you find your limits. By the way, 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 you have any good Bezos stories? Oh, I've got a bunch. I did not report directly to Bezos. One of the most annoying things that happens as you go through these journeys is little bits of bio get turned into better soundbites. And then I feel embarrassed because people claim I was an executive at Amazon and I was not like, well, someone was like, what actually, oh, he, uh, he worked at Amazon. Oh, so he works for Jeff Bezos.

1:01:43Yeah. He, he, he worked for Jeff Bezos. Right. So sort of every hourly worker in the warehouse. 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 him once a quarter and, you know, and if I screwed up really badly, like Jeff would hand my ass to me. And, and the, by the way, there's no better early career experience than to be like 22 working on something that Jeff happens to care about. And when I screw it up, he tells me. And so 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, and build the system that was, I think the first automated ad buying system on the internet.

1:02:27This was before 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 was, 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 kind of was along for the ride. Uh, but at some, at some point this thing was, was driving 7 % of Amazon sales and 7 % of Google sales all at the same time. Um, and, and somehow I just, you know, I, my experience of it was I was like on the precipice of failing and they were about to fire me and replace me with somebody who actually knew what they were doing.

1:03:06And I was like right at that line, I never quite crossed it. But it was a great first go build something from scratch gig. And I got to learn a lot from that experience. And I got to know Jeff a little bit, but like, I didn't work directly for him. I was like... What's he like? What'd you pick up from him? Oh, I really admire Jeff. The stories they get told about CEOs tend to be the ones about how they lose their cool and yell at people and fire people in elevators and whatnot. not. And one of my favorite things, and I would watch Jeff lose it from people a couple times, but what I found is he never lost it with me so long as I took accountability.

1:03:42And 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 because I'm like 22 or 23 presenting to like this God. And we get part of 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 he starts laughing. Yeah, good reason. 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.

1:04:18And so what I found was like, you know, whenever I just told Jeff the truth and took accountability, like there was another time I was in front of the old executive team and the temperatures going up in the room. I was like, why did we do this when this other thing was a higher priority? and everyone's getting progressively more pissed off that we've misprioritized. And I just spoke up and said, that was my call. I got it wrong. I misprioritized. I won't do it again. And the tone of the room was, okay. And the conversation moved on. And obviously I couldn't do that every single time on every single thing.

1:04:49But Jeff rewarded straight shooters. Jeff rewarded accountability. Jeff rewarded knowing your own business like the back of your hand. And he was tremendously forgiving for learning on the job. and I have huge respect for it. The other thing is like, I'd go in to talk to him once a quarter and he would have like, you know, and 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. As you go to first principles, you can actually get to novel insights quickly.

1:05:21That's exactly what Emmett said. Amazon bought Twitch for like a billion dollars, whatever. So he reported to Jeff and so he would go, I think twice a year, three times a year, go meet him. And he said 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 24 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.

1:05:52That is a, you know, that shows kind of the level that that guy's at. He's super smart and he's very first principles. And if you put those two things together, And that's what actually, I think that's what makes my experience and it makes experience possible. And it's the thing that enables other leaders to do the same thing. The 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 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.

1:06:21That's pretty brilliant. What's it, could you just give us an example of that? Like a situation where you, you asked that question and it shifted the convo? 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 insource and when to vertically integrate. And, you know, the conversation in the room started, I was like, oh, vertical integrations is a goal. So we'll eventually do all this things. And, uh, and I tried to take the conversation to like, no, it's not like what we, what we need is the winning strategy.

1:06:59what 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 started like trying 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 think we'll keep pulling on that thread and ultimately the answer to that question will be part of our success story as a company because we'll have understood how to think about it.

1:07:31And we've got the team on a set of principles that will then, if they won't need to bring every supplier decision to me, they'll understand the principles and make great independent decisions. Dude, Blake, you're awesome, man. You're a very unique founder. 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 hope my keyboard wasn't making too much noise because I kept writing down these little quotables that I I thought were pretty great for me. The best episodes, Blake, the best episodes, you'll see Sean and I do two things.

1:08:03You'll see us do this and we like are gazing or the other thing that we do is we just, you see us do this. You see us just lean back and cross our arms and like class is in session. Well, thank you. I had a lot of fun. Yeah. Where should people follow you or follow the journey? Where do you want to direct people who want to kind of stay in touch here? I'm pretty active on X. So I'm at B-Scholl, B-S-C-H-O-L-L. that's probably the best place to follow along. I try to give people like an inside view on what's going on at Boom and then I mouth off about other random things in the world. All right, man.

1:08:37Well, I look forward to flying everywhere in half the time. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for doing it. And all right, that's it. That's the pod.

1:08:59All right, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of, and then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

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