Revival of civil supersonic aviation

The world’s largest air carrier “United Airlines” purchased 15 supersonic civil aircraft Boom Supersonic. And they made a promise that if they liked it, they would buy another 35 pieces.

Boom Supersonic is a garage startup that has been accelerated by Y Combinator.

Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Technology, is a former programmer, desperate romantic, and dreamer. For several years he went to conferences with slides, renders and a model of an airplane printed on a 3D printer.

And then Blake Scholl entered Y Combinator.

Joining YCombinator is one of the best things I’ve ever done. I think if it weren’t for YC, Boom would not have become what it is now. At YC, we were given two important pieces of advice, and that’s exactly what we needed. First – Get out of the shadows, invisibility will not help you in any way. Second – go and sell some planes.

Blake Scholl obeyed the advice, started blog on Medium and then sold 10 supersonic civil aircraft to Richard Branson. Planes not yet built.

We showed Richard Branson what we were doing and said, “Look, we are not asking for your money, we want to ask – when our planes fly, do you want the Virgin logos on them?”

Here are some more facts about Blake Scholl and his project:

Worked as a programmer at Amazon since 2001
At 24, he ran a $ 300 million P&L division
First employee, director of product development at mobile startup Pelago
Founded mobile startup Kima Labs in 2010
In 2012, Kima Labs was acquired by Groupon
Founded Boom Supersonic in September 2014 in the basement
In winter 2016 I entered the Y Combinator accelerator
Sold 10 supersonic aircraft to Richard Branson
Raised $ 51 million in venture capital in 2017
In January 2019, attracted another $ 100 million in investments (total $ 151 million)
Introduced the first flight-ready test demonstrator in October 2020
Number of employees for 2021 – 150
Investment at the time of this post is $ 270 million

Boom Supersonic have shown in practice that they are able to start small MVPs and move forward with constant improvements. They started with a cardboard-plywood cockpit layout: