Blake Scholl

speaker

562 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 29 Jul

Blake Scholl’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Y Combinator Startup Podcast · Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic Ban · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

And he cited airliners as one of these.

So an even more laughable idea was what if I could do this?

I was a software engineer by training.

We spent time at early Amazon.

I founded an apps company that got acquired by Groupon.

Could I do this?

My knowledge about airplanes was limited to a pilot's license.

I could fly a Cessna.

But one of the things I learned from that time was I didn't think I could really know what I was capable of, except by picking a mission that inspired me, something that I wanted to create in the world, and giving it everything I could.

Only that way could I find my limits.

So in 2014, we got started, and it wasn't a very auspicious start.

That's right.

This is a supersonic airliner mock-up made of cardboard, plywood, and seats from Office Depot.

That was before YC.

And by the end of YC batch, this is what Boom looked like.

Now we had a cardboard mock-up of our first airliner prototype and people laughed.

Who would name an airplane startup after the sound of an explosion?

But we didn't let this deter us and we kept going.

We started building our first prototype airliner, XB-1, which started life as baby boom.

We didn't know what it would really take to build a supersonic passenger plane.

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