Robots, Rockets, and Air Taxis w/ BLADE CEO (Rob Wiesenthal)

26:21Now, Robert, before we jump to our interview with Rob Wiesenthal, please, everybody, do us a major favor. Our friends at ETF Central are running their annual global ETF survey for both retail and professional investors. They're looking for feedback specifically from the Rich Habits community. The survey takes a couple of minutes, helps capture how investors are using ETFs, what they're looking for next, and where the ETF market may be headed. So please, please, please do us a favor. Click the link in the show notes. Fill it out. Just a couple minutes. Thank you so much. We don't ask for much from you guys.

26:54ETF Central is a great partner of ours, and all it takes is a couple minutes. So do us a solid. We give a lot of value here. Go check it out. Fill out the survey and help us out with this so we can give better information and ETF Central can better serve you. Thanks, everyone. And let's now jump to our conversation with Rob Wiesenthal. All right. So a few weeks ago on the Rich Habits Radar, we covered Joby Aviation's demonstration flight from JFK Airport into Manhattan. It was one of those moments where the future suddenly feels very real. Because for years, air taxis sounded like science fiction.

27:29Then all of a sudden, you're now watching someone fly from the airport into Manhattan in a fraction of the time it would take if they were just sitting in traffic. But the harder question is, how do you build an actual business around that? How do you create customer demand, operating infrastructure, terminals, routes, and trust, most importantly, trust, before the next generation of aircraft is even ready? Well, today's guest has spent the last decade doing exactly that. We're joined by Rob Wiesenthal, founder and CEO of Blade, which is now a Joby company. And I want to give a lay of the land here because before launching Blade in 2014, Rob had an incredible career spanning finance, media, and technology.

28:14He served as CFO of Sony Corporation of America, led global corporate development and M &A for Sony, served as COO of Warner Music Group, and before that was a managing director of Credit Suisse, focused on digital media and entertainment, then he did something most executives in those positions probably wouldn't do. He left and started an aviation company. Over the last decade, Blade has grown into one of the world's leading short-distance aviation platforms. In 2024 alone, Blade flew nearly 100 ,000 passengers through a network of 12 urban terminals spanning New York City and Southern Europe.

28:52And perhaps most importantly, Blade figured out how to build the customer base, infrastructure, and operating footprint for urban air mobility before electric air taxis ever arrived. And that's one of the reasons Joby acquired Blade's passenger business in 2025. Rob, welcome to the show. We're definitely excited about this. We've been talking about this sector, this emerging trend and where it's going and how it's real now for quite some time. And we're really excited to have you. Thank you for having me. It is an exciting time, to say the least. Well, Rob, I want to start with your founder story because it's not exactly a traditional path.

29:30You were successful in finance. You were successful at Sony. You were successful at Warner Music. What made you leave those worlds behind and decide that short-distance aviation was the opportunity worth spending the next decade of your life building? A couple of things. I never viewed the vision that I have for Blade to be really completely just about aviation. I viewed it as much more experiential and building a brand and a level of hospitality in a business that previously had none. uh helicopters were always like a b2b business you'd see ads to be the helicopter landing in front of the office building with two you know white guys with gray hair shaking hands and like handing like a document to the briefcase um you know no livery on the aircraft with with brands you know you go to what we call an fbo these terminals that are for private jets and they have elementary school lighting and bad coffee and like lazy boys like none of it made any sense to me.

30:34And most importantly, what didn't make sense was the fact that no one disaggregated the seats in an aircraft that were only available for charter. And when I was CFO of Sony, aviation reported into me and they had two jets in New York, two jets in Europe, and a jet in Japan, in addition to a helicopter in New York, the helicopter didn't get a lot of use. So in order to have it made more money, decided to put it in a 135 certificate to allow it to be out there for charter. And watching the charter company manage the aircraft, try to sell it, market it. And it was$6 ,000 to fly to the airport. Back then you had a fax in your wiring details and you went somewhere in the pile, come out and read a slip of paper where you were going.

31:22I mean, it made no sense. So the thought was if I could use mobile technology to aggregate people going to the same place at the same time. There might be a business there. And the first thing that came to mind was the friction that you would have in the summer with people going to resort areas out on the island in the East Ends, particularly the Hamptons. And the ability to take a three to five hour drive and turn into a then 35 minute flight. And that was the birth of Blade. It started for$50 ,000. We incubated it while I was at Warner Music. And then after a tremendous first summer where it was profitable that first summer, that next year, I really wasn't happy on the trajectory of the company.

32:08And I thought it could be much bigger. And I decided to do it full time. And then we took off from there, raised money from people that I've worked with before, like Barry Diller and David Zazov, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, Eric Schmidt from Google and others, all people I worked with in business and technology who were super helpful. And we then expanded it to the medical business and became the largest air transporter of human organs in the United States. That business actually ended up getting larger than Blade itself with over$200 million of revenue and close to around$35 million, I believe, occurring or estimated by analysts at EBITDA.

32:51We took the company public. And then last year, as you said, we sold the passenger division to Joby. And the Blade that is just medical remains public and it's called Strata Critical and is doing really well. But right now I'm CEO of the Blade Division for Joe B. And I'm chairman of Old Blade, which is now called Stratocritical, which is that really terrific medical company that really saves lives and improves outcomes for people all over the country for heart, livers, and warm-cream explains. That is incredible. Thank you so much for walking us through that. I did not know all that backstory.

33:30That is so cool. So let's talk a little bit about the passenger side of it, because I think that's where a lot of our listeners get excited and they think that's sexy. You started with this conventional aircraft, you built the routes, you built the demand, you built the customer trust, you built the infrastructure before now Joby is thinking, okay, let's build some of these Evatols. And before they were even ready. So why was that such an important insight early on? Why not wait until the actual Evital or wait until the actual product exists and you see the demand coming for it before you build out the infrastructure to support it?

34:05Well, the infrastructure, you know, Blade is profitable today and the infrastructure we have accommodates helicopters, right? When I started the company, I specifically did not name the company Blade Helicopter. It was called Blade Air Mobility because we knew the battle on the ground was going to happen in the air. and the biggest impediment to growth is noise. With less noise, you have more places to land. That's why if you come to New York, where we're lucky enough to have Blade Lounge East, Blade Lounge West, Blade Lounge Wall Street, where helicopters land, they're all on the water and they used to be in areas where there weren't a lot of people.

34:42Now Hudson Yards is phenomenal, but basically this was a deserted area that eventually gentrification encroached to it. So the heliport is still there. So it really is a little bit like City 2.2 because on the west side we have 50 ,000 people that live and work and recreate in Hudson Yards. So we knew early on that there was going to be a point that in order to grow the business, we had to add to the convenience. because if you want to go somewhere and you can jump on any type of vertical aircraft across the street, you're more likely to do that than if you have to get into an Uber and go to a Blade Lounge 20 minutes away.

35:21So there are heat maps all around these different lounges. And one of our biggest routes, as you may know, is going from the west side or the east side to either JFK and Newark Airport. We do that six days a week, 12 hours a day for the price of an Uber Black, sometimes less. It's$195, even sometimes it's$95 if you purchase an annual airport pass. That is a four and a half minute to eight minute flight, depending if you're going to JFK or Newark. We know it probably could take a two hour drive. So that's a game changer and probably the very first use case for Joby's aircraft here. But we also knew that there was going to be a cohabitation phase.

36:02It's not like a light switch where the day that the Joby aircraft is certified and ready for commercial service, all the helicopters are going to go away. You know, obviously, the tolerance in terms of, you know, making sure the aircraft is right for people, safety issues. You don't have, obviously, the body of statistics in terms of the kind of operating conditions that can go in. You're now operating in the wild. So you're going to see people kind of going back and forth between using Joby aircraft and helicopters. And at some point, there will be a transition where the very short distance stuff, like the airports, will be Joby aircraft with maybe a longer distance, like the Hamptons or certain areas in the south of France, say Monaco to Saint-Tropez or Geneva to Courchevel will still be helicopters.

36:50And then over time, as you know, battery capacity and longevity is increasing exponentially all the time. there'll be a complete swap out. And that's why we were acid light. We never owned any aircraft ever at Blade. What we do is we enter into capacity use agreements with our operators. They have to meet our specifications on pilot hours, thousand hours for Blade pilot versus A-150, you know, for most people to be able to fly, use our livery, pass our safety, financial wherewithal tests. You know, we have a very deep safety team at Blade and even more so now with Joby. These are technology and softwares.

37:32They don't have to worry about accounting, marketing, credit card disputes. We handle it all. So we but we're deciding where those aircraft are going and how they're used. And they're also exclusive to us. And I'm jumping ahead here. But but why did you use and choose that asset light model? and what did it teach you about scaling a transportation business efficiently? You mentioned profitable first year. Why did you choose that? Why don't you just say, hey, I'm going to go buy a helicopter, put some people on payroll. Walk us through that. Yeah, there are a lot of reasons. In terms of getting to market quickly, super helpful.

38:08In terms of focus, which is the entire ecosystem of the service, everything from customer acquisition to a consumer-facing app to lounges or creating an experience, flyer relations on the phone, flyer experience, people on the ground, marketing, both everything from digital to even linear TV, all these core competencies, root optimization, all the customer service, deciding where you go, how to price it, to now layer on maintenance, training, hangers, insurance, engine issues, FAA, we're managed by the DOT. That was a lot. But also when you think about the original thesis, which was to make this transition, much easier to make this transition when you don't own the iron, when we have to eventually be working with someone like Joey, which we're happy to do.

39:01So we did see that. If we were going to be a helicopter company forever, over the long term, it might have made sense. But given our trajectory, since we went public in 2021, Acid light felt and poured. But also remember this. In the beginning, it was all seasonal. So what happens to those helicopters when it's the fall and the winter and people aren't going to summer resort destinations? You're dealing with hangers, insurance, all this overhead, maybe lease expenses on an aircraft, all that stuff. And so we did as many of the companies that we work with, for instance, do news gathering. when they're not working with Blade.

39:44Some would do very high-end tours. They would have other businesses just to plant them when Blade wasn't giving them business. So really super worked out well until we became year-round because the airport product, as you'd imagine, and just general charter is a year-round product. But at the start, it was critical. That's fascinating. I appreciate you walking us through that. Yeah, so a lot of people, this really intrigues me because when they hear about helicopter travel, I immediately assume that they're going to be for celebrities and billionaires and athletes and all of that. But you've flown already over 100 ,000 passengers annually and have spent years studying this customer behavior.

40:29So who is actually a Blade customer today? And what have you learned about all of the demand for this short-distance travel? because I live my day fully. Everyone that works with me knows I don't like friction. So this is right in my wheelhouse. But walk our listeners through who is this for and who's the everyday customer? Because as this scales, it's not going to be just billionaires and celebrities. It's going to be businessmen and everybody alike. So walk us through that a little bit. It's interesting because it isn't all billionaires and celebrities. is it's actually quite a few of those.

41:10No company flies more people by helicopter in the world than Blade outside the military or on a gas, period, for A to B travel. So it's super big. And we're now at the price where we often break Uber black. So when you look at things like airport routes and such, you could probably take someone who says, whether it's a splurge or they do it quite often, I'm taking an Uber Black. So it isn't really as hyper rich as you may think. But what we do find, which is really interesting, which most people don't want to talk about, is this is obviously bladed and kind of invented a model of jump, you know, get on a nap and in 15 minutes, jump on a helicopter, have a great experience in a lounge and get somewhere.

42:05the early adopters of that the ones that either have the creativity to say hey I want to remove this friction or I want to have this experience they tend to be wealthier it's not unlike you know who were the first people buying some new technology even though it was affordable so from my perspective it's terrific you know you have it out you have these kind of early adopters and they're very opinionated and they have a great social presence and they talk about things they like and it kind of filters down. So it's a little bit of self-selection. So I've always been very surprised having a product that is so affordable, yet it still does skew pretty wealthy.

42:46We know there are a lot of people who can afford this who aren't using Blade. And I think that's for two reasons. It's that kind of I'm set of my ways. I know how open minded am I, which sometimes can create a need to reduce friction, which can be a little bit of the self-selecting process for people who time is money and want to make more of it. But also, I think as you, you know, more people hear about it and it's a lot of it's word of mouth, they're going to get more comfortable with it. But there's also, I think, a stigma we have to realize. Like there is an iconography of that helicopter in the sky and that wealthy person.

43:28So when we go, we spent a lot of money on marketing, but when you go to someone on the street, we've done our own service. How much do you think a helicopter JFK costs? They, people say a thousand dollars. I can spend millions marking 195. It's very difficult to get in people's heads, but it's happening. It's happening. I think we've given, we've gotten rid of a lot of the stigma in the, and definitely that was there before. We're not completely done. And I think when the Joby aircraft comes into service and it's quiet and it's emission free and the price starts to go down, I think that, you know, to use the overused term democratization, I think that path will really start, you know, to be visible.

44:10Yeah, I definitely agree because Austin and I, I believe we were together in New York late for an event stuck in traffic and we were discussing when all of this was you know at scale what's it going to cost us to do that instead of being this car stuck in traffic for two hours so that is just an incredible situation to think about for the price of an uber black that we can just be like boom and just be there and save an hour and a half stuck in traffic so that's incredible very few ways in life you can buy time yeah so true it's fascinating you say that because i remember that conversation Robert we're in the car we're asking ourselves because one I'm so I didn't know now that the 195 I'm gonna go do this like I'm I'm definitely gonna do this Rob so thanks for calling that out and hope everyone listening right now also now kind of makes that flip that switch in their brain to try that as well but I remember like it was um I think it was JFK and we were in traffic for two hours that we like between our our aircraft landing and getting our luggage and getting to the hotel was like two and a half hours and it was unbelievable yeah and a lot of that was sitting in a car.

45:16And I remember Robert and I having this conversation of like, how much would you pay right now if we were not in this car and we were on one of these helicopters or one of these Jobys and we were just at our hotel in five or 10 minutes. We were going, I'd pay 400. Oh, I'd paid 600. Right. And it's just 195, baby. 195. So good. And I think what it is, and you're right, Rob, as the education gets out there more and people get used to it and lose that stigma that a helicopter is for rich people only and Joby, these EVTOLs become at scale, I think people will really start to latch onto this. And it's going to be incredible because we will not need to lose all that time stuck in traffic anymore.

45:57And I can't wait for those days and to have it here in Florida near me and everywhere around the country. I'm so excited for that. You know, it's interesting because one of the things that people don't think about when you think about what a city 2.0 look like. And, you know, we're really dealing with, you know, streets that have been, you know, largely the same from anywhere from the 16th to the 1800s. And when we ran out of space for people to live, we started building up. So now that we're running out of space in terms of transport on the grounds, we have underground, we have the ground with everything from, you know, Ubers to maybe soon railroad taxis, you know, city bikes.

46:34Then we have that kind of second layer. Then we have the fourth layer, which is that kind of the high altitude aircraft and the commercial aircraft. And you have that middle layer, which I believe is Blade and Joby. And to really make ourselves much more efficient and productive, we need to take advantage of that layer. And what I would say is that Blade has a joint venture in Mumbai, in India. It's in Mumbai, Shardin Mahalakshmi, actually, sorry, Pune. And the roads are so difficult, the traffic's so crazy. I've had executives say, you know, I used to come to India and do three meetings over five days.

47:12I now do that in one day. And in New York City, you're going to see the same thing. People are going to plan their day and they say, well, I got to go to the dentist uptown and I have to go a meeting over here. And their biggest transportation is going to be going, waiting for the elevator and going through security. And I think, you know, just think about the idea of people having five meetings instead of three in one day because they're using intra-city urban air mobility. That will be a reality. And what does that economically do to a city? It's pretty massive. It's going to change a lot of things.

47:46And the value of real estate. Jobin and I have spoken a lot about this in the past. You're going to have areas that are within distance for these aircraft. where isn't convenient to Metro North, isn't convenient to Long Island Railroad, not great roads, lots of traffic coming in, where all of a sudden it could change the architecture of how we value property. So it's a very big platform and a very large shift that you're going to see that has impacts that we haven't really completely understood yet. I want to talk a little bit more about that sort of, you know, how you guys were acquired by Joby and getting kind of pulled into all this right from the passenger side of it.

48:28Because Joby wasn't just acquiring the brand of Blade. They were acquiring customers and terminals and operational expertise and decades worth of trust in some of the most valuable urban transportation markets, like you just mentioned, all around the world. So from your perspective, what made the combination of Joby and Blade so strategically powerful? I think that to really grow, as we said before, you need more landing zones. To get more landing zones, you need quiet aircraft. The quiet aircraft that can do these missions are eVTOL. When you take a look at the entire panorama of eVTOL companies, and as you can imagine, we had a first row seat for many, many years looking at every company out there, both public and non-public.

49:15but who should we be partnered with? Clearly, this is a transition. We need to have a partner to help us transition to this. Without question, we found Joby to be the most advanced aircraft out there, the closest to certification, the best financial wherewithal, the highest level of technology. They've been doing it, working it since 2009. Blade has only started in 2014. And when I look at the other companies, it was a lot of rush to kind of come up with this idea to go public with a SPAC or it kind of they reverse into it. And what I always tell people is we've done demos all over the world with with Joby.

49:57Take a look at your aircraft, an EVTOL. And is it transitioning from flying kind of like a helicopter and then transitioning props to flying on wing like a plane? Are they doing that with a pilot? and are they doing that in a city center? If the answer is yes, they're pretty far advanced. I have not found any companies doing that besides Joby. And as I said, we're doing demos all over the world. So I just think they're really far advanced. I think that spread is going to continue. A great team, Jobin is probably one of the best and most creative technologists and engineers that I've met in my career.

50:37and I can't think of a better partner for Blade. And I think what we're going to do is supercharge and de-risk their commercialization strategy. And I think that many aspects of Blade will become the service platform for Joby. I could not agree more. And I am fascinated every time I see something cool that Max and the Joby team shares with me that's posted somewhere. It's either in the US or it's somewhere around the world. Like the tech is unbelievable. So, Rob, before we wrap up, I want to zoom out. You spent your career helping build businesses across finance, media, technology, and now aviation.

51:15When you look back across all of those experiences, what lessons have remained true regardless of the industry? and specifically for all of the entrepreneurs listening today, what's the biggest lesson you've learned about building an entirely new category from scratch and how others can utilize that experience and that knowledge from you? I wish there was only one. There isn't. But what I would say is building a company from scratch, what I always try to do is take the best of big companies that I found and eliminate the weak parts, take the best of small companies that I found and eliminate the weak parts.

51:55So for big companies, lots of great financial diligence, really strong organization, really strong progress, really strong process, but lots of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, politics, multilayers. Small companies, a lot of radical transparency, not so much politics, maybe not as much financial rigor or process. Put those into a blender and take the best of both. I think that what's worked for me here and building Blade from scratch is the first employee. And again, I told you we started for$50 ,000, I lent the person at the company$400 ,000 to get through during COVID. So we've seen great days and not so great days.

52:51Fewer people working harder is much better than having an incredibly large team where you may have executives that either are not being trained or may not have a really well-defined responsibility. When you have an executive that doesn't have a true writ, they're really smart. They're going to try to create things to do. That creates a process, bureaucracy, politics. If people are working really hard, they're just focused on their work. And if you get to a point where you hit tilt and you need more people, you can always do that. But you can't always look at additional employees as an asset. Sometimes it can be a liability.

53:30So definitely lean, mean, work hard, and especially for young people, work out of an office. No remote. No remote. Wait, talk about that. Why do you believe that so much? Especially in our business where apprenticeship is so important. If you're dealing with whether it be selling a charter or dealing with an great customer who's doing a flight, hearing the person next to you is super important. And apprenticeship as well. Uh, so, you know, we've been five days in the office since the start. Uh, and there's no question a lot. It didn't work for a lot of people, but there is, I, without question, I think it is definitely create, help created some elements of the DNA, uh, and levels of collaboration that just do not happen over Zoom or Slack.

54:21Yeah, 100%, Rob, I agree with you. We have a struggle because we have so many remote employees around the country where where they just kind of call it in. And a lot of times they're overbooking and we know they're not doing as much work as they're claiming if they're hourly. And it's just really hard. And I think the most important takeaway for me out of what you just said is the collaboration aspect. When you're sitting next to someone and you're hearing them and you're vibing with them and you're going through projects, you get way more done than you're gonna get done in two or three Zoom meetings and calls.

54:55And so I really love that takeaway coming from someone like you with the experience you have. I appreciate it. It's what's worked for me. I'm not saying it's for everyone. Yeah. But definitely, I feel strongly about it. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Rich Habit Radar, Rob. We really appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. Take care, guys. What an awesome conversation with Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Blade. So excited he joined us here on this episode. I am so pumped to hopefully have him back in the future. Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Rich Habits Radar.

55:28Last thing I'll share with you here, Google Finance has now rolled out some incredible updates to their actual Google Finance platform. Beforehand, Google Finance was kind of clunky. It was in beta, but now there's some really cool portfolio updates, some really cool, interesting ways to get market updates for not just the stocks in your portfolio, but also your watch list. and they're rolling out a new app exclusively to Android all around the world. We've got a link in the show notes below to that blog post. Go check out the new Google Finance platform. We've got some really cool photos here on screen that you guys can see and partake in and get a better understanding what's going on over there.

56:07So shout out Google Finance and shout out all of you all for joining us on this week's episode of the Rich Habits Radar. As always, please, if you learned something, consider sharing this episode with a friend and consider joining the Rich Habits Network, our community for our biggest fans. We're still running a seven-day free trial. That's it from me, and we'll see you all on Monday.