Shawn Ryan Show

Intro

Advice for future innovators: Work on something that you would be proud to fail at
“There’s a whole generation or two that did not go into aviation because the door was closed to innovation.” – Blake Scholl
Great people do not want to work for bosses who do not know what they are doing: There is no substitute for actually knowing what you are talking about and doing the work
The world does not need more of what it has already got; the world needs more of what you can uniquely bring
The incentives of government regulation agencies create an asymmetric bias towards conservatism, a reality that ultimately stifles progress and innovation; this centralizes and monopolizes risk decisions into the hands of government regulators
The smaller the team, the easier it is to keep the talent bar high; the number one thing great people want is to work with other great people
- Using AI to create a talent engine: Have the AI handle the boring and rudimentary tasks so that human talent can work on the most interesting problems; this creates a flywheel of talent retention and magnetism
- Be unafraid to deploy inexperienced, high-aptitude talent – but phone somebody who has some gray hair
The Speed Dividend from supersonic: If the flight is twice as fast, then you need half the number of pilots, half as many airplanes, and can get twice as many flights from the same number of airplanes and crew
Work on what you love because you will learn so much about: You will learn 99% new stuff along the way, so why not learn 99.5% new stuff while working on something you really love?
Go work on the thing that your five-year-old self would have been dazzled by

Blake Scholl is the Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, a company he started in 2014 to revive commercial supersonic flight with the Overture airliner, designed to fly at Mach 1.7 and carry 64–80 passengers.

A Carnegie Mellon University computer science graduate (BS, 2001), Scholl began his career as a software engineer at Amazon, later owning a $300 million P&L at age 24, and co-founded Kima Labs, acquired by Groupon in 2012.

Inspired by seeing Concorde in a museum, he self-taught aerospace engineering to launch Boom, which achieved the first privately developed supersonic flight with the XB-1 demonstrator in January 2025. With orders from United, American, and Japan Airlines, Scholl aims to make sustainable supersonic travel mainstream using 100% sustainable aviation fuel, targeting passenger flights by 2030.

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#225 Blake Scholl - Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic

Podcast Notes Playlist: Startup