Blake Scholl

For Overture to exist, it's going to take a heck of a lot more not giving up.

For me personally, this company has a near-death experience it seems like almost every year.

Something happens and it's like the startup equivalent of a cancer diagnosis.

We lost our way for a little while, and we were trying to outsource an engine.

Ultimately, we were working with Rolls-Royce, and it became clear that it just wasn't going to get there.

And we started working on our own engine.

And we were sort of baking that plan.

It wasn't fully baked yet.

We weren't ready to talk about it publicly.

And then American Airlines followed United, and they signed up for up to 60 of these airplanes.

And on paper, we were still working with Rolls-Royce.

Rolls and Boom knew that we were going to part ways.

And then Rolls freaked out and ran to the press.

and told them they didn't think there was a supersonic market and they weren't going to be involved.

Then to the world, suddenly boom went from high-flying, United's ordering, American's ordering, Japan Airlines is ordering, to like, ha-ha, they don't have an engine.

Instantly, no supplier wanted to work with us.

Instantly, we were trash in the press.

I was personally called a fraud.

We were unfundable.

And I remember thinking, if we don't find our way out of this, we're toast.