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Is the Future of Flight Supersonic? · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin, the first airline ever, the first airline in the
0:22
Speaker 1: history of the world, started in nineteen fourteen. It flew
0:26
Speaker 1: passengers just a short hop across the Bay from Saint
0:28
Speaker 1: Petersburg to Tampa, and its maximum speed was about sixty
0:32
Speaker 1: miles an hour. By the nineteen sixties, just fifty years later,
0:37
Speaker 1: passenger jets were flying ten times as fast as that,
0:40
Speaker 1: and that increase in speed transformed the meaning of travel.
0:44
Speaker 1: But then after the sixties, air travel just stopped getting faster.
0:50
Speaker 1: A flight today takes about as long as a flight
0:52
Speaker 1: took sixty years ago. We've gone from a ten x
0:56
Speaker 1: improvement to no improvement at all. What happened? I'm Jacob
1:07
Speaker 1: Bolgstein and this is What's Your Problem? The show where
1:09
Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
1:12
Speaker 1: My guest today is Blake Shoal, the founder and CEO
1:15
Speaker 1: of Boom Supersonic. Blake's problem is this, can you build
1:20
Speaker 1: a commercial airplane that flies faster than the speed of
1:22
Speaker 1: sound and that can turn a profit. Blake started the
1:27
Speaker 1: company in twenty fourteen. Since then, he's secured pre orders
1:31
Speaker 1: from japan Airlines, United and American Airlines, and he and
1:36
Speaker 1: his team built a test plane that flew faster than
1:39
Speaker 1: the speed of sound. Now they're working on a full
1:42
Speaker 1: size commercial jet that Blake hopes will fly at mock
1:45
Speaker 1: one point seven one point seven times the speed of sound,
1:49
Speaker 1: or roughly twice as fast as commercial jets fly today.
1:53
Speaker 1: To start, I asked Blake about the Concord. The Concord,
1:56
Speaker 1: of course, is the only supersonic commercial passenger jet ever built,
2:01
Speaker 1: ever flown with passengers on it. But the Concord stopped
2:04
Speaker 1: flying more than twenty years ago, and today it's widely
2:08
Speaker 1: viewed as a fail.
2:09
Speaker 2: I think Concord killed supersonic flight and Apollo killed space exploration.
2:14
Speaker 2: And yet at nineteen sixty nine, we had that first
2:17
Speaker 2: moon landing and we had that first flight of Concord,
2:21
Speaker 2: and at the time it looked like both of these
2:23
Speaker 2: were harbingers of huge technological progress for humanity. And I
2:27
Speaker 2: think if you stop somebody in the street nineteen sixty
2:30
Speaker 2: nine and said, in twenty twenty five, what do you
2:32
Speaker 2: think space exploration will be like? What do you think
2:34
Speaker 2: flight will be like? No one would have predicted that
2:36
Speaker 2: supersonic would be gone and moon landings will be gone.
2:39
Speaker 1: Right, But that was the peak, it wasn't going to
2:42
Speaker 1: get any better, and in fact, in terms of commercial
2:44
Speaker 1: air air travel, it was going to get worse.
2:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything got worse. Everything got worse. And I think
2:51
Speaker 2: that Concord and Apollo are actually brethren. Both were technologically
2:58
Speaker 2: extremely impressive, like what we did in the nineteen sixties
3:01
Speaker 2: with rockets and airplanes, with slide rolls, drafting paper wind
3:06
Speaker 2: tunnels is extremely totonal, logically impressive. Yet that the motivation
3:12
Speaker 2: as what was killer and both Concored and Apollo were
3:16
Speaker 2: Cold War era glory projects led by governments who are
3:20
Speaker 2: competing for prestige.
3:22
Speaker 1: Basically to show up the Soviet Union right, to show
3:25
Speaker 1: the superiority of Western capitalism over Soviet communism.
3:30
Speaker 2: Yes, except the deep irony is we did at the
3:32
Speaker 2: communist way, right.
3:33
Speaker 1: They were command and control projects that made no economic sense.
3:36
Speaker 2: They were command and control projects with no economic sense.
3:39
Speaker 2: And it turns out when the West copied effectively the
3:42
Speaker 2: communist approach for a little while we had technological superiority
3:46
Speaker 2: because of the momentum that we had, but then we
3:50
Speaker 2: destroyed ourselves. And so you know, Apollo didn't even pretend
3:53
Speaker 2: to have anything commercial right, like it was operating on
3:56
Speaker 2: it like a percentage of GDP, right, which is to say,
4:00
Speaker 2: an incredibly large amount of money relative to the overall
4:03
Speaker 2: economy went into getting.
4:04
Speaker 1: A very small number of people to the moon a
4:06
Speaker 1: few times.
4:06
Speaker 2: That's that's right, yeah, And you know, and and the
4:09
Speaker 2: knock on effect of that, you know, for the entire
4:12
Speaker 2: airspace supply chain, it was basically, you know, land on
4:15
Speaker 2: the mood at all costs, are at any cost, And
4:19
Speaker 2: the result was the entire space side of the supply
4:22
Speaker 2: chain got drunk on these incredibly lucrative contracts were costs
4:26
Speaker 2: was no object, right, And then after the Cold War
4:29
Speaker 2: it only got worse and we put all of the
4:31
Speaker 2: like defense industrial base on corporate welfare and they got
4:35
Speaker 2: fat and dumb. And then and then on the concord side,
4:39
Speaker 2: it at least looked better because on paper, this was
4:43
Speaker 2: a commercial airplane where people could buy tickets and airlines
4:46
Speaker 2: would buy the airplanes, and you know, the airlines would
4:50
Speaker 2: make money. But in reality it wasn't that. Here here's
4:53
Speaker 2: a hundred seat airplane, by the way, one hundred like
4:57
Speaker 2: actually pretty uncomfortable seats, and what you know, ejected for
5:00
Speaker 2: inflation was a twenty thousand dollars ticket, and you just
5:04
Speaker 2: can't find one hundred people that want to pay twenty
5:07
Speaker 2: grand to go somewhere really fast. I mean this, this
5:09
Speaker 2: is for royalty and rock stars, and especially with like
5:13
Speaker 2: eighties and nineties kind of travel demand. The thing flew
5:16
Speaker 2: half empty on the best route in the world, which
5:20
Speaker 2: is New York to London. You know, if you want
5:21
Speaker 2: to find people who want to pay a lot of
5:22
Speaker 2: money to go fast, New York London, it's the best
5:24
Speaker 2: city pair you could pick.
5:26
Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 2: And it doesn't work at all economically beyond that, and
5:30
Speaker 2: so and then the world drew all the wrong conclusions,
5:32
Speaker 2: you know, they concluded like supersonic flight had to be expensive,
5:36
Speaker 2: it had to be cramped and uncomfortable, it had to
5:39
Speaker 2: be noisy, it had to be uneconomic. And it's like, imagine,
5:44
Speaker 2: imagine if we built like the Univac, you know, like
5:47
Speaker 2: one of the first mainframe computers it which is like
5:49
Speaker 2: the size of the room, and you have to be
5:51
Speaker 2: like a bank to afford it. And then we stopped.
5:55
Speaker 2: And then and then fifty years later people would swear
5:58
Speaker 2: up and down that you could never possibly have a
5:59
Speaker 2: pocket computer that every day people could have could afford
6:05
Speaker 2: but yet you know, Concord is like the UNIVAC.
6:09
Speaker 1: Uh huh, it's a design from the nineteen sixties.
6:12
Speaker 2: Basically, that's right, that's right. And I say this with
6:15
Speaker 2: like deep admiration for the incredible technical work that went
6:19
Speaker 2: into it. A lot of people worked really hard. They
6:22
Speaker 2: did amazing things. Now that we are you know now
6:25
Speaker 2: that at Boom we have like built and flown a
6:27
Speaker 2: supersonic jet, what we can see is they did really
6:30
Speaker 2: really well given the tech was available in the nineteen sixties.
6:34
Speaker 2: It's extremely impressive. You know, in Britain and France, people
6:37
Speaker 2: are incredibly proud of Concord, and from a technological level,
6:40
Speaker 2: like they deserve to be.
6:42
Speaker 1: So. So, okay, you were you were a software developer, right,
6:45
Speaker 1: You weren't a plane guy. You weren't an aerospace engineer.
6:48
Speaker 1: But like whatever, twelve years ago or something, you got
6:51
Speaker 1: interested in this idea of supersonic air travel. Why aren't
6:55
Speaker 1: there supersonic jets? So you have this question in your mind.
6:58
Speaker 1: You go try and figure it out. What do you find?
7:01
Speaker 2: The internet was full of all this conventional wisdom about
7:04
Speaker 2: why flights aren't faster. You can still find some of
7:07
Speaker 2: these YouTube videos and they say, is like supersonic flight
7:11
Speaker 2: is inherently more expensive. Passengers always buy the cheapest ticket,
7:14
Speaker 2: so supersonic flight will never be commercially viable. And hang on, Well,
7:19
Speaker 2: first off, that's a qualitative claim about a quantitative question,
7:22
Speaker 2: and it doesn't even really completely make sense, right, Like,
7:25
Speaker 2: the whole reason we have jet flights is because people
7:28
Speaker 2: wanted to go faster than not propeller flights. The reason
7:30
Speaker 2: people pay more for direct flights than connecting is they
7:34
Speaker 2: want to save time and hassle. Time is the one
7:37
Speaker 2: resource it's not ever renewable, So the idea that people
7:40
Speaker 2: wouldn't pay for time savings didn't completely make sense.
7:43
Speaker 1: Sure, plainly, at some margins, some people will pay some
7:46
Speaker 1: amount more to go some amount faster. Right, exactly what
7:49
Speaker 1: are all the margins?
7:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, You're totally right. It's a quantitative question, not
7:53
Speaker 2: a qualitative one. And I think one of the lessons
7:56
Speaker 2: of I think the Boom story is never accept a
7:58
Speaker 2: qualitative answer to a quantitative question. Go run the math. Okay,
8:01
Speaker 2: what is the actual cost of supersonic flight and what
8:04
Speaker 2: is people's actual willingness to pay to go faster? So
8:08
Speaker 2: it turned out it took two weeks to find the
8:09
Speaker 2: key idea, which is I mean, today there is a
8:13
Speaker 2: huge market for international business class. It's roughly twenty percent
8:18
Speaker 2: of passengers and eighty percent of international airline profits on
8:22
Speaker 2: business class, which is flying beds for people who so
8:27
Speaker 2: hate that flights are along that they want to try
8:29
Speaker 2: and sleep through them on the airplane. And so that
8:33
Speaker 2: the original boom idea was, well, what if we could
8:36
Speaker 2: make a supersonic seat with the economics of a flying
8:39
Speaker 2: bed and business class, but on an airplane sufficiently fast
8:42
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't need to sleep on it. You could
8:44
Speaker 2: sleep at home instead. And so the first question I
8:47
Speaker 2: asked is, well, how much would you have to beat
8:49
Speaker 2: Concord by on just basic airplane efficiency in order to
8:53
Speaker 2: create a seat with the economics of a flying bed.
8:57
Speaker 2: And the answer was less than ten percent.
9:00
Speaker 1: Uh huh, So like Concord was almost there by your reckoning.
9:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. If you could improve on the gas
9:09
Speaker 2: dileage basically of Concord by less than ten percent, that
9:14
Speaker 2: you would tip over to this happy point where you
9:15
Speaker 2: could have a supersonic seat with the economics of a
9:18
Speaker 2: flatbed and business class and instead of being this like
9:20
Speaker 2: stratospheric airplane that like flies mostly empty, a whole bunch
9:26
Speaker 2: of modern demand would be there, the seats would fill
9:28
Speaker 2: at a high rate, and the market would be gigantic.
9:31
Speaker 2: And so that that took two weeks, and I was
9:34
Speaker 2: like that, well, I don't know anything about airplanes, Like
9:36
Speaker 2: all I had at that point was my pilot's license.
9:40
Speaker 2: But ten percent versus nineteen sixties technology didn't seem crazy.
9:44
Speaker 2: So at that point I was like, Okay, if I'm
9:47
Speaker 2: going to go do this, I need to know a
9:48
Speaker 2: heck of a lot more. And it sort of kicked
9:50
Speaker 2: off what was really a twelve month journey for me
9:55
Speaker 2: getting educated in aerospace.
9:57
Speaker 1: So when you're when you say ten percent, I mean,
9:59
Speaker 1: is that sort of a marginal cost calculation like that?
10:02
Speaker 1: That is that basically setting aside the fixed cost of
10:07
Speaker 1: building the first plane and then build well of building
10:10
Speaker 1: the first plane like that seems like the big unknown
10:13
Speaker 1: in the math there is how much is it going
10:14
Speaker 1: to cost to make plane number one? Yeah?
10:16
Speaker 2: I mean, so there are a few things that matter, right.
10:19
Speaker 2: The first thing is if we could manage to produce
10:22
Speaker 2: the airplane, would it be affordable for passengers, improfitable for airlines.
10:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of the first principles version is like,
10:30
Speaker 1: let's just look at the physics and like thinks, right,
10:33
Speaker 1: what we know, is it theoretically possible to build an
10:36
Speaker 1: airplane that can fly enough people from New York to
10:38
Speaker 1: London if they pay business class but sit upright at
10:43
Speaker 1: supersonic speeds? Does the first principles math pencil up? That's
10:46
Speaker 1: the math you're doing there, that's.
10:47
Speaker 2: Right, with technology that's available, is it possible to build
10:52
Speaker 2: an airplane that is affordable for passengers improfitable for airlines?
10:55
Speaker 2: And it turned out the answer was yes.
10:58
Speaker 1: Uh huh, And what is business class New York London?
11:00
Speaker 1: What is that five grand? Something like?
11:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah about that? I mean, actually people routinely pay
11:04
Speaker 2: more than five grand. The economics of our airplane. It
11:08
Speaker 2: turns out thirty five hundred is break even. So at
11:11
Speaker 2: five grand it's very profitable for airlines. And people pay
11:14
Speaker 2: five grand by the way round trip routinely.
11:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so you've got the kind of first principles
11:20
Speaker 1: back of the envelope math that looks promising. So you
11:24
Speaker 1: started the company, yes, and and that was what about
11:28
Speaker 1: ten years ago, right?
11:30
Speaker 2: That was Yeah, it was about eleven years ago now
11:33
Speaker 2: that I was making that spreadsheet, and you know, we'll turn.
11:39
Speaker 2: We'll turn eleven on paper in September, because that was
11:41
Speaker 2: when I got to the point where, Okay, I'm actually
11:43
Speaker 2: really committed, it's time to go.
11:47
Speaker 1: I love that you called it boom leaning in like
11:51
Speaker 1: embracing the haters in some in some fashion. Tell me
11:56
Speaker 1: about the boom. Let's talk about supersonic booms.
11:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my belief from day one was that the
12:04
Speaker 2: boom would not be the blocker, and that that spreadsheet
12:07
Speaker 2: basically said there is a gigantic market for supersonic flight
12:12
Speaker 2: even if the boom is entirely unsolved, and you have
12:15
Speaker 2: to fly subsnic over land and supersonic over water and
12:20
Speaker 2: focus initially on on routes that were primarily transoceanic.
12:26
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, in the US right now, commercial
12:28
Speaker 1: flights are not allowed to fly supersonic, even if there
12:32
Speaker 1: were a plane that could do it by regulation, right
12:34
Speaker 1: because of the boom. Is that the starting point?
12:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that that's where we started, because the premise was, hey,
12:40
Speaker 2: it's pretty ambitious to start a brand new company from
12:42
Speaker 2: scratch where your goals to build a supersonic airliners. So
12:46
Speaker 2: let's not let's not push anything too far. Let's operate
12:50
Speaker 2: only with existing technology and only with existing regulations, and
12:54
Speaker 2: that would that would have some hope of making it
12:57
Speaker 2: tractable for a startup to go do.
13:00
Speaker 1: So I want to talk a little bit about the
13:03
Speaker 1: last ten years and building XB one, your test plane,
13:08
Speaker 1: And I'm curious in particular sort of unsurprisingly it has
13:13
Speaker 1: taken longer than you thought, which it would be shocking
13:15
Speaker 1: if it didn't, rightly given the nature of the project.
13:18
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, like, what were some of the things
13:20
Speaker 1: you thought at the jump that turned out to be wrong,
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, things where you went down the wrong path
13:25
Speaker 1: and had to do something different.
13:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when we started out with XB one, we
13:29
Speaker 2: gave it some really really aggressive goals. So we wanted
13:33
Speaker 2: to go ten percent faster than Concord, We wanted to
13:36
Speaker 2: do it with a passenger on board. We wanted to
13:39
Speaker 2: not need an after burner. Like. We gave it all
13:41
Speaker 2: these you know, fairly aggressive goals that were actually well
13:44
Speaker 2: beyond what was really necessary. But we thought we didn't
13:48
Speaker 2: appreciate all of the challenges that would would come with that,
13:52
Speaker 2: and so we actually made the job a lot harder
13:54
Speaker 2: than it needed to be. And the biggest thing that
13:57
Speaker 2: we learned on XB one in this context is is pragmatism, like,
14:03
Speaker 2: it doesn't need to go mock two point two. At
14:06
Speaker 2: mock one point seven. Is it totally fine, minimum viable
14:09
Speaker 2: supersonic chat and it's dramatically easier. So part of what
14:12
Speaker 2: we learned from XP one is how to make the
14:14
Speaker 2: overture airliner a lot easier to do, and it was
14:18
Speaker 2: things like, if you want to go mock two point two,
14:21
Speaker 2: the wings have to be really skinny, and if the
14:25
Speaker 2: wings are really skinny, it's very hard to fly takeoff
14:28
Speaker 2: and landing. And so we ended up spending two years
14:31
Speaker 2: on low speed aerodynamics for takeoff and landing with a
14:37
Speaker 2: wing that was really designed to go super super fast,
14:40
Speaker 2: and then with a long, skinny airplane to go mock
14:43
Speaker 2: two point two. It's really hard to fit the landing
14:46
Speaker 2: gear in. And so we ended up I remember in
14:48
Speaker 2: like twenty nineteen when we're like finishing the design of
14:51
Speaker 2: this thing and kind of in the process of building it,
14:54
Speaker 2: and so wait a minute, how did we end up
14:55
Speaker 2: in a corner of the universe where we have to
14:57
Speaker 2: design the most efficient shock absorber ever made like that
15:01
Speaker 2: was a bizarre like and we literally we had to
15:03
Speaker 2: design the most efficient shock absorber ever made for a
15:06
Speaker 2: landing gear. Why, well, we given ourselves this like unnecessarily
15:10
Speaker 2: challenging top speed goal, which it made the airplane log
15:13
Speaker 2: and skinny, which made the landing gear need to fit
15:15
Speaker 2: in a very tight space, which meant the shock absorbers
15:17
Speaker 2: had to be really really good.
15:19
Speaker 1: Uh huh, Well, why had you? I mean, it's easy
15:21
Speaker 1: from this point of view to say, like why it
15:24
Speaker 1: was foolish to try and go so fast? Which is
15:25
Speaker 1: sort of what you're saying. But presumably when you picked
15:28
Speaker 1: that speed, you picked it for a reason. Why did
15:31
Speaker 1: you pick that speed?
15:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we there was sort of a scientific reason,
15:36
Speaker 2: and then there was probably an emotional reason. And the
15:39
Speaker 2: scientific reason was we thought we were on the happy
15:42
Speaker 2: side of a lot of market opportunity and on the
15:44
Speaker 2: happy side of the step changes in technological challenge. Based
15:49
Speaker 2: on what we knew from textbooks.
15:50
Speaker 1: The market opportunity means the faster you go, the bigger
15:54
Speaker 1: the market.
15:54
Speaker 2: I mean, that's right, Like, you know, if you speed
15:57
Speaker 2: a flight up. I'll pick an extreme example. Let's let's
16:00
Speaker 2: say you speed up New York London by like half
16:01
Speaker 2: an hour. You actually make the flight worse. It's still
16:05
Speaker 2: going to be scheduled as a red eye, right, but
16:07
Speaker 2: you don't get as much sleep, that's right, So it's
16:10
Speaker 2: actually it's actually worse.
16:11
Speaker 1: And then presumably if you can go fast enough, you
16:13
Speaker 1: can like fly the same crew to London and back
16:17
Speaker 1: without having to change the crew, and your economics get
16:19
Speaker 1: better or something bingo.
16:20
Speaker 2: That's one of the ways the economics in this work
16:22
Speaker 2: when you go faster. Lots of things actually get cheaper.
16:25
Speaker 2: You need less crews, you don't you don't spend money
16:28
Speaker 2: putting people up in Marriotts like that. We call that
16:31
Speaker 2: the speed dividend. There's a lot of cost that comes
16:33
Speaker 2: down with speed.
16:34
Speaker 1: Basically, the cost the benefits of going two point two
16:37
Speaker 1: are the same, but the cost of the marginal cost
16:39
Speaker 1: of going that much faster was higher than you thought.
16:42
Speaker 2: That's that's right. Like and fuel burn. You know, once
16:44
Speaker 2: we committed to meeting the same most stringent noise rules
16:48
Speaker 2: that apply to subsonic airplanes that actually puts a big
16:51
Speaker 2: penalty on high speed, and we found that it mocked
16:54
Speaker 2: two point two. We'll be burning forty percent more fuel
16:57
Speaker 2: than at one point seven, and yet and what that
17:00
Speaker 2: meant in flight times was actually just a fifteen minute difference.
17:03
Speaker 1: Huh.
17:03
Speaker 2: So it made no sense, and we got more pragmatic.
17:07
Speaker 2: And the other thing that, you know, it was the
17:09
Speaker 2: kind of the emotional piece of this was, you know,
17:11
Speaker 2: I sort of booted up, you know, pounding my fist
17:14
Speaker 2: on the table and saying, fifty years later, we should
17:16
Speaker 2: do better than concords, that we should be faster, and
17:19
Speaker 2: d da DA and all these other things. Yeah, And
17:22
Speaker 2: the reality was that wasn't actually necessary. What we needed
17:25
Speaker 2: was a pragmatic starting point that we could then continue
17:28
Speaker 2: to iterate and innovate, you know. And overture is not
17:31
Speaker 2: the be all end all of supersonic airplanes. It's the
17:33
Speaker 2: version one. And we can do a version one point one,
17:36
Speaker 2: and we can do a version two. And the thing
17:39
Speaker 2: that matters is ensure ensuring that version one is sufficiently
17:46
Speaker 2: pragmatic that we can we can birth it. Yeah. So,
17:50
Speaker 2: how fast did concord go? Two point zero? Actually two
17:55
Speaker 2: point oh two actually is the precise number.
17:57
Speaker 1: And you've you've made your piece with building a first
18:00
Speaker 1: plane that goes slower than the Concord.
18:03
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess officially we've made our piece
18:06
Speaker 2: with it not in your heart on the spread, not
18:09
Speaker 2: in my heart like because you know, mock one point
18:12
Speaker 2: seven just doesn't roll off the tongue like mock two.
18:14
Speaker 1: No two, Mock two sounds way cooler.
18:16
Speaker 2: Mock two sounds way cooler, you know, And for a while,
18:18
Speaker 2: by license, TAG said mock two point two, and I
18:22
Speaker 2: learned that I should really never put a technical design
18:24
Speaker 2: parameter on a vanity plate. That was a That was
18:26
Speaker 2: a That was a bad decision because it made it hard.
18:28
Speaker 2: It made it harder for me to admit the difficult
18:30
Speaker 2: truth when every.
18:32
Speaker 1: Day when you went out and thought your car, you
18:34
Speaker 1: were getting mocked by your failure in relatively.
18:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, m A h E D yes, oh very good,
18:41
Speaker 2: very good.
18:42
Speaker 1: That should be your new vanity plate to keep you humble.
18:46
Speaker 2: No, now it just says supersonic because so long as
18:48
Speaker 2: I bust mock one, I'm good.
18:53
Speaker 1: Still to come on the show. How much more time
18:55
Speaker 1: and money will it take to build a supersonic plane
18:58
Speaker 1: that can carry paying passengers? Also, what might go wrong?
19:12
Speaker 1: So you're building the airliner, you're also sort of building
19:16
Speaker 1: the jets, right, I know, you were working with Rolls
19:19
Speaker 1: Royce and then which makes a lot of jets for
19:21
Speaker 1: airplanes now, and then you stopped working with Rolls Royce.
19:26
Speaker 1: Tell me, tell me about what you've got to do,
19:30
Speaker 1: Like what's the next big step in terms of the
19:33
Speaker 1: airplane the jets, Like what do you got to do next?
19:35
Speaker 1: And when do you?
19:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, so step one, scalop those jet engines. Step two,
19:39
Speaker 2: scalop the airplanes. Step three, put it all together, prove
19:43
Speaker 2: to ourselves and to our regulator in the public that
19:47
Speaker 2: it's safe, and then go carry passengers. And so you
19:51
Speaker 2: mentioned you mentioned the whole jet engine thing. Yeah, we
19:55
Speaker 2: actually when I started, our plan was to go build
19:58
Speaker 2: our own jet engines, just the same way SpaceX builds
20:02
Speaker 2: their own engines. And then we got, uh distracted. I
20:05
Speaker 2: let us get distracted by this sort of sexy notion
20:09
Speaker 2: that would be able to take Rolls Race engine and
20:11
Speaker 2: just modify it working with Rolls Royce, and that turned
20:15
Speaker 2: out to be just a terrible idea.
20:17
Speaker 1: Huh. Most companies that build airplanes don't build their own jets. Right,
20:22
Speaker 1: It's not a crazy idea to say we're going to
20:24
Speaker 1: build airplanes and we're going to let people who are
20:26
Speaker 1: really good at building jets, build the jets.
20:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you look back far enough in time,
20:30
Speaker 2: it turned out Boeing, United Airlines, and Pratt and Whitney
20:35
Speaker 2: the jet engine company, were actually all the same company.
20:38
Speaker 2: H they were all they were vertically integrated from the
20:41
Speaker 2: airline through to the jet engine or I guess back
20:44
Speaker 2: that it wasn't jet engines, it was Piston engines. But
20:47
Speaker 2: I think that was actually the national state of the industry.
20:50
Speaker 2: And they got broken apart, not because they wanted to.
20:52
Speaker 2: But there was an airmail scandal in the early nineteen thirties,
20:55
Speaker 2: the outcome of which was the government split them up. Oh.
20:57
Speaker 1: Interesting, an airmail scandal. You don't hear about so many
21:00
Speaker 1: airmail scandals there.
21:02
Speaker 2: There was the airmail scandal of nineteen thirty two, where
21:04
Speaker 2: what was going on was basically the US government was
21:07
Speaker 2: subsidizing airmail because they wanted to get off the ground.
21:12
Speaker 1: So to speak.
21:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, it's it's so the the retail price
21:19
Speaker 2: of airmail was less than the airlines were getting paid. Yeah. Uh,
21:23
Speaker 2: And so the airlines found they could make more money
21:25
Speaker 2: by going to the post office and mailing bricks. Oh.
21:27
Speaker 2: I love that that's and so the you know, and
21:30
Speaker 2: that the Postmaster General was corrupt, like everybody was on
21:34
Speaker 2: the take. It was nasty. And then and then the
21:36
Speaker 2: the industry, everybody was kind of at fault here, and
21:38
Speaker 2: the industry took the blame.
21:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, in yours telling is why jets companies that make
21:44
Speaker 1: jets are different than the companies that make the airplanes
21:46
Speaker 1: they go on. It's a bull claim. Yeah, well, yeah,
21:49
Speaker 1: and I think there is.
21:50
Speaker 2: You know, industries tend to go through cycles where vertical
21:54
Speaker 2: integration is either a good strategy or a bad strategy.
21:57
Speaker 2: And there's a there's a great book on this called
21:59
Speaker 2: The Innovators Solution, But they talk about under what circumstances
22:04
Speaker 2: vertical integration is smart versus working with suppliers.
22:07
Speaker 1: What was it Jim Barksdale line in the nineties, there's
22:10
Speaker 1: two businesses, bundling and unbundling. It's like that.
22:13
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard that, but I think it's kind of true,
22:15
Speaker 2: and it's it's contextual. Yeah, And the long story short,
22:20
Speaker 2: when when the current state of the art technology is
22:23
Speaker 2: good enough for the in purpose, uh you, unbundling and
22:28
Speaker 2: not vertical integration tends to make sense when the when
22:31
Speaker 2: the components need to advance and the integration and the
22:34
Speaker 2: final product is important, then vertical integration really matters. And
22:38
Speaker 2: so I think they're kind of two threads of the story.
22:40
Speaker 2: One is, it's probably not a good idea for a
22:42
Speaker 2: brand new startup to put all of its eggs in
22:44
Speaker 2: the basket of a like one hundred year old company
22:47
Speaker 2: that like is a risk averse, doesn't want to make changes,
22:51
Speaker 2: isn't fast moving, maybe you know, it isn't sure what
22:54
Speaker 2: it really wants to be, right, so.
22:55
Speaker 1: You're putting all of your eggs in your own basket,
22:58
Speaker 1: which is strong, certainly. So uh so, what like what's
23:06
Speaker 1: the next mile post you got to hit? Like, what's
23:09
Speaker 1: the big, big next hurdle.
23:11
Speaker 2: We'll find we'll find out around the end of this
23:13
Speaker 2: year whether our jet engine's working. We're building the first
23:16
Speaker 2: one right now, and we'll see if it works. And
23:18
Speaker 2: so this this will be a very very large jet
23:22
Speaker 2: engine core. You know, like it'll be roughly four feet
23:24
Speaker 2: in diameter. This is not a small piece of hardware.
23:27
Speaker 2: You weigh well over ten thousand pounds. This is a
23:30
Speaker 2: very complex piece of turbomachinery. And we'll we'll we'll fire
23:33
Speaker 2: it up and we'll we'll see what's we'll see what's working,
23:36
Speaker 2: and then next next year. So that's the core of
23:38
Speaker 2: the engine, and a year later our goal is to
23:41
Speaker 2: have a you know, a full up engine, not just
23:43
Speaker 2: the core, but the fan and the what's called the
23:45
Speaker 2: low pressure system as well. Okay, but the core, the
23:49
Speaker 2: core is actually the really hard part. So we're starting.
23:51
Speaker 2: We're starting with the hardest part, and.
23:52
Speaker 1: Then in parallel you're building the plane or designing the plane.
23:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're actually done designing the plane. Okay, So we
24:01
Speaker 2: we froze, froze the design of the overture I think
24:06
Speaker 2: a week after XB one's final flight. Okay, And so
24:09
Speaker 2: that means, you know, I proverbally broke the engineer's pencils.
24:13
Speaker 1: So just now, just in the last several weeks, you
24:16
Speaker 1: froze the design of the plane. You said, this is it,
24:18
Speaker 1: this is the plane we're going to build. This is
24:20
Speaker 1: this is it?
24:21
Speaker 2: Right? You know, like it's it's very easy for ambitious
24:24
Speaker 2: engineers to want to optimize forever. Sure, and we said
24:27
Speaker 2: this is good enough for version one. It's time to
24:30
Speaker 2: it's time to stop tweaking the design and start doing
24:33
Speaker 2: the detailed engineering so we can start building this thing,
24:36
Speaker 2: tell me about what it's going to look like. So, Uh,
24:41
Speaker 2: supersonic jets fit in some ways sculpted by physics. They're
24:46
Speaker 2: going to be long and skinny, They're going to have
24:48
Speaker 2: a triangular kind of delta wing. So in a certain sense,
24:52
Speaker 2: overture is going to need to look concord like because
24:54
Speaker 2: physics says it needs to look concord like.
24:57
Speaker 1: Uh.
24:57
Speaker 2: But the details are the details that come so far forward. Uh.
25:01
Speaker 2: One of the one of the big aerodynamic advances versus
25:05
Speaker 2: concord is something called area ruling, which basically said the
25:09
Speaker 2: fuselage needs to be big in the front and small
25:11
Speaker 2: in the back. And uh. And so overture looks it
25:14
Speaker 2: looks a little bit like a concord in a seven
25:16
Speaker 2: forty seven had a love child. Okay, so it's it's
25:20
Speaker 2: not literally double deck in the front, but it's bigger
25:22
Speaker 2: in the front and it's skinnier in the back. And
25:26
Speaker 2: this leads for a very interesting canvas. And I can't
25:29
Speaker 2: tell you yet what exactly it's like at the front
25:32
Speaker 2: of the airplane, because we've got we've got something we
25:34
Speaker 2: invented that I'm incredibly excited about. That we haven't revealed yet,
25:38
Speaker 2: but I think it's gonna be. I think it's gonna
25:40
Speaker 2: be a big wow factor. People look at them, say,
25:42
Speaker 2: wait a minute, you got that to fit in a
25:45
Speaker 2: skinny supersonic chat an elephant?
25:47
Speaker 1: What is it?
25:49
Speaker 2: Uh? It is some It is something that will be
25:55
Speaker 2: delightful for passengers.
25:56
Speaker 1: A waterfall. I'll stop guessing, but I'm curious.
26:02
Speaker 2: So it's I'll tell you right now. It's not a
26:05
Speaker 2: hot tub.
26:06
Speaker 1: Okay, cold plunge. Cold plunge is the new hot tub.
26:13
Speaker 2: That's right. There's a cold plunge in the front of
26:15
Speaker 2: the air airplane and the hot tub of the back
26:17
Speaker 2: of the airplane. You can actually have both.
26:20
Speaker 1: So what what do you got to do to get
26:22
Speaker 1: through the very non trivial regulatory hurdles to get from
26:27
Speaker 1: drawing up a plane into a plane that the FAA
26:29
Speaker 1: and analogous regulators say yes, this can fly with commercial passengers.
26:34
Speaker 2: Well, we just have to prove it safe.
26:37
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot in that.
26:38
Speaker 2: Just there is a lot of there's a lot of
26:40
Speaker 2: that just I mean that this will be one of
26:41
Speaker 2: the most complex safety critical machines ever built. But all
26:46
Speaker 2: of the rules are published, so we know exactly what
26:49
Speaker 2: we have to go do, and the certification is just
26:53
Speaker 2: proving that we did it. And so that that will
26:56
Speaker 2: involve about five thousand hours of flight testing and many
27:00
Speaker 2: more hours of ground testing. And so just to give
27:03
Speaker 2: you a concrete sense of what this is like on
27:06
Speaker 2: the ground, you know, we will we will build a
27:09
Speaker 2: a kind of a flightless bird, you know, a copy
27:12
Speaker 2: of the airplane that will never fly, and will load
27:15
Speaker 2: up the wings with hydraulic presses and we'll bend them
27:18
Speaker 2: until they break. It will make sure that they don't
27:21
Speaker 2: break before they're supposed to. Basically, you have to prove
27:26
Speaker 2: that they can take one point five times the load
27:30
Speaker 2: they will ever see under the most extreme case before failing.
27:33
Speaker 2: You know, that's one example. You do in the ground,
27:35
Speaker 2: and you and then the air you fly it through
27:37
Speaker 2: all the most extreme flight conditions. You make sure it
27:40
Speaker 2: can handle bad weather. You can make sure that it
27:42
Speaker 2: flies through, you know, a snowstorm, the deicne can keep
27:46
Speaker 2: up with the icing. You shoot a chicken at the
27:50
Speaker 2: jet engines and make sure that when you know, if
27:55
Speaker 2: you get a bird strike, that either the engine doesn't
27:58
Speaker 2: fail or it fails in a non catastrophic way. That's
28:01
Speaker 2: actually one of the most difficult tests.
28:04
Speaker 1: Uh. So okay, so you got to do all these things.
28:07
Speaker 1: What is your current target date for when I can
28:10
Speaker 1: buy a ticket?
28:11
Speaker 2: About four years, So our goal is to be ready
28:14
Speaker 2: for passengers by the end of twenty twenty nine, so
28:17
Speaker 2: about four four and a half to five years from
28:19
Speaker 2: where we are today.
28:20
Speaker 1: Like, playing XP one took longer than you thought, but
28:23
Speaker 1: you're still assuming overture is not going to take longer
28:26
Speaker 1: than you thought setting them in parallel.
28:28
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's mean, it's totally possible overture will
28:31
Speaker 2: be late. Yeah, I mean, the way these things go,
28:33
Speaker 2: it seems likely. Again, this is from ignorance, just looking
28:36
Speaker 2: at the nature of projects in many different companies, in
28:39
Speaker 2: many different settings. Like, plainly, what you're trying to do
28:41
Speaker 2: is very hard, and plainly you're only doing it because
28:44
Speaker 2: you have some amount of optimism which is required to
28:47
Speaker 2: do the job right. And so just from from that
28:50
Speaker 2: very small amount of data and for like, yeah, I mean,
28:53
Speaker 2: you're probably not gonna overestimate that long it will take it. Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah,
28:56
Speaker 2: it is. It is highly unlikely we will get done
28:59
Speaker 2: sooner than we're charge. You're not gonna be done early, right, yes,
29:02
Speaker 2: you know. But the one of one of the lessons
29:05
Speaker 2: I've learned along the way is is kind of how
29:07
Speaker 2: to think about schedules. And uh, I think schedules are
29:11
Speaker 2: actually misnamed because because nothing ever goes according to plan,
29:16
Speaker 2: and and what what, it's not a schedule, it's actually
29:18
Speaker 2: a work plan. And the point of the work plan
29:20
Speaker 2: is to allow the team to respond intelligently the moment
29:25
Speaker 2: something doesn't go according to plan, which is basically every day.
29:30
Speaker 2: And so what we do is we build what's called
29:33
Speaker 2: a success based schedule, meaning we don't pad it to
29:38
Speaker 2: assume that there's going to be failures. Uh, we kind
29:40
Speaker 2: of we kind of assume, ever, everything is going to
29:42
Speaker 2: go well, and we assume that we'll be able to
29:46
Speaker 2: do things, you know, slightly more efficiently than you know
29:49
Speaker 2: than like a Boeing Wood And so there's some optimism
29:52
Speaker 2: built into it, and and and many times we realize
29:54
Speaker 2: that optimism and and and and when we find oops,
29:58
Speaker 2: there's something we didn't know about or this was harder
30:00
Speaker 2: than we expected, then we react to it in the
30:03
Speaker 2: most efficient way possible. And uh, and that that's what
30:06
Speaker 2: actually results in the fastest possible deliver uh, because nothing,
30:10
Speaker 2: nothing ever gets done faster than the amount of time
30:13
Speaker 2: you give it. Right, But we'll just take all the
30:15
Speaker 2: time there, that's right, because they want to be the
30:17
Speaker 2: best job possible, exactly, And the kind of people who
30:20
Speaker 2: come join a supertonic jet startup are incredibly ambitious and
30:23
Speaker 2: have very very high standards. So you know, you know,
30:26
Speaker 2: if if I didn't say, the design is frozen and that's.
30:29
Speaker 1: It's a hard trade off, right, It's a hard trade
30:31
Speaker 1: off because like there's a million hard optimization problems that
30:34
Speaker 1: people are working on, and there's the kind of meta
30:36
Speaker 1: optimization problem of how long do you spend on each.
30:38
Speaker 2: Thing that's that's right? That's right, And there's like you know,
30:41
Speaker 2: when when do you declare good enough?
30:42
Speaker 1: Yeah?
30:43
Speaker 2: Right? And that was I mean there are so many
30:47
Speaker 2: stories of you know, really, I think part of my
30:51
Speaker 2: role is helped the team decide when's good enough and
30:54
Speaker 2: you know, and what things have to be in one
30:56
Speaker 2: point zero versus what things we can save for one
31:00
Speaker 2: point one, and having good judgment about that makes it
31:04
Speaker 2: much easier to actually ship one point h Right.
31:08
Speaker 1: You don't need to build the most perfect supersonic jet ever.
31:12
Speaker 1: You just need to build on that is safe and reliable.
31:14
Speaker 2: That's that's right.
31:15
Speaker 1: So let's talk about money. How much have you raised
31:20
Speaker 1: and how much do you need to get the first
31:22
Speaker 1: one point zero overture flying with ye.
31:27
Speaker 2: So, a thing I've come to believe is that one
31:30
Speaker 2: of the most important things in pulling this off is
31:32
Speaker 2: being incredibly efficient with capital. We've raised about six hundred
31:36
Speaker 2: million dollars, We've spent less than five hundred million dollars,
31:42
Speaker 2: and with that we built and flew a supersonic jet
31:45
Speaker 2: with a human on board. We designed an airliner, we
31:48
Speaker 2: designed an engine, and we did all the other things
31:50
Speaker 2: that started a pass to do over a decade. So
31:53
Speaker 2: what does that mean going forward? We need less than
31:55
Speaker 2: a billion dollars of investor funding from where we are
31:58
Speaker 2: now to finish.
32:02
Speaker 1: When you say investor funding, like, are you assuming more
32:04
Speaker 1: pre orders or you think for less than a billion
32:06
Speaker 1: dollars you can actually or less a billion dollars more
32:10
Speaker 1: you can actually build a build a plane that's gonna
32:14
Speaker 1: take passengers across the ocean.
32:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. Part of it is being very smart with capital leverage.
32:19
Speaker 2: You know, you know, so for example, uh, you know,
32:22
Speaker 2: we will be able to go use debt to buy
32:25
Speaker 2: capital equipment, right, So, like a lot of production equipment
32:28
Speaker 2: will be financed without requiring you know, equity investment from investors, huh.
32:34
Speaker 2: And we've we've already been able to do some of that.
32:36
Speaker 2: So there's a lot smart financial engineering as part of
32:39
Speaker 2: the solution. The other part of the solution is being
32:42
Speaker 2: incredibly efficient in execution. You know. I still tell that
32:44
Speaker 2: by the way that this is in some ways the
32:46
Speaker 2: most difficult thing.
32:47
Speaker 1: Spending the money intelligently basically.
32:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the way I frame it for our team internally,
32:52
Speaker 2: and we're just very open about this. I say, our
32:54
Speaker 2: single biggest risk as a company is we don't get
32:57
Speaker 2: done for an obtainable amount of money.
32:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, because the physics. We've known the physics for
33:02
Speaker 1: whatever fifty years or more. Right, Like, plainly one can
33:06
Speaker 1: build a supersonic jet. But building it cheaply enough in
33:09
Speaker 1: your case to survive, right and then in the long
33:12
Speaker 1: run to have it be commercially viable is the hard part, right.
33:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one half of this is how do we
33:18
Speaker 2: execute really efficiently. How do we have a small team
33:22
Speaker 2: of world class engineers with incredibly good software tools, and
33:26
Speaker 2: we're using a lot of software, and we're using some
33:28
Speaker 2: ai uh such that one engineer can do the work
33:32
Speaker 2: of ten, and that allows us to be really efficient
33:36
Speaker 2: with our money. And we are just absolutely miserly about
33:38
Speaker 2: money on one hand. On the other hand, we need
33:41
Speaker 2: to have a capital structure that's very good for investors
33:45
Speaker 2: and that leverages non diluted financing sources, be it customer
33:49
Speaker 2: prepayments or plant and equipment debt, or public support to
33:53
Speaker 2: kind of lever up those investor dollars to make the
33:55
Speaker 2: whole thing economically viable.
33:57
Speaker 1: What's public support mean?
34:00
Speaker 2: So we're we had a fantastic package that we got
34:04
Speaker 2: from the state of North Carolina that funded the superfactory
34:08
Speaker 2: and Greensboro, where the state of North Carolina so wanted
34:12
Speaker 2: Boom to come and build the airplane there that just
34:15
Speaker 2: as they welcomed the Right Brothers one hundred years ago,
34:18
Speaker 2: they welcomed us, and and that that basically paid for
34:22
Speaker 2: the entire site prep and build out of the superfactory.
34:26
Speaker 2: So that way, and we were incredibly grateful for that,
34:29
Speaker 2: and I, you know, I want to make sure we
34:30
Speaker 2: pay it forward in North Carolina.
34:34
Speaker 1: I've heard you say on an interview you did in
34:37
Speaker 1: the last year or so that you underestimated how hard
34:40
Speaker 1: it was going to be to build the company to
34:43
Speaker 1: build a supersonic jet. And I'm curious, if you look
34:47
Speaker 1: forward now to going from here to you know, having
34:50
Speaker 1: passengers on a jet, do you think you're underestimating how
34:53
Speaker 1: hard that's going to be.
34:56
Speaker 2: I am sure there are problems that we will have
34:58
Speaker 2: that I don't know about today.
34:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a different I mean, it's a weird question
35:02
Speaker 1: because if you're underestimating it, then you would revise your estimation.
35:06
Speaker 1: It's like why is the stock market wrong?
35:07
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, I don't know.
35:09
Speaker 1: I mean maybe you have to underestimate it, Like I
35:13
Speaker 1: don't know. You know, people always sy if I knew
35:14
Speaker 1: how hard it was going to be, I wouldn't have
35:15
Speaker 1: done it.
35:16
Speaker 2: And I don't know if they really mean that, but
35:18
Speaker 2: I think some people mean it and it's really and
35:19
Speaker 2: I find that really sad, and I don't I don't
35:24
Speaker 2: mean that in a sarcastic way. I mean like, actually,
35:26
Speaker 2: like boy, like this startup stuff is so hard. It
35:30
Speaker 2: just kills me that someone will put in all of
35:32
Speaker 2: the effort required to birth a new company and a
35:34
Speaker 2: new product from scratch, and it is really hard. It's
35:37
Speaker 2: like chewing on glass, and then to do it for
35:40
Speaker 2: something they're like, wow, I wish I hadn't, Like that
35:42
Speaker 2: is really sad. And by the way, I have my
35:45
Speaker 2: chewing on glass days for sure, and I'm sure I'll
35:47
Speaker 2: have more. And the worst of it, the worst of
35:51
Speaker 2: it is when I look in the mirror and I'm
35:52
Speaker 2: not sure whether I'm up for the job. Yeah, I mean,
35:55
Speaker 2: I think, like boys, someone better than me could have
35:57
Speaker 2: done this, But I don't know if I can, you know,
35:59
Speaker 2: Or I look at a problem we have and it's
36:01
Speaker 2: not you know, and it's it's very much my responsibility
36:04
Speaker 2: and my error. Like those are the hardest days, and
36:09
Speaker 2: and yet I care so darn much about this that
36:14
Speaker 2: that it's worth that personal hell to give it everything
36:19
Speaker 2: I've got, and I don't. I don't regret it, even
36:21
Speaker 2: the days where I'm like, boy, I don't know whether
36:23
Speaker 2: we're going to get through this. And We've had a
36:26
Speaker 2: bunch of those days, and I think I'd be foolish
36:28
Speaker 2: to think that we won't have them again.
36:30
Speaker 1: Why why is supersonic flight your thing? Like, why is
36:35
Speaker 1: that what you have devoted your professional life to?
36:39
Speaker 2: One of the principles I have for myself now is
36:42
Speaker 2: I only want to work on things that might not
36:46
Speaker 2: happen if I didn't work on them. And if the
36:48
Speaker 2: world followed that, we'd have a lot less photo sharing
36:50
Speaker 2: apps and fewer AI companies. But maybe things like traffic
36:52
Speaker 2: would be solved, huh. And you know, for me specifically
36:56
Speaker 2: with supersonic flight, my kids had a grandfather who lived
37:00
Speaker 2: in Hong Kong, you know, eighteen hours from us in
37:02
Speaker 2: Denver that they got to meet maybe three or four
37:04
Speaker 2: times their entire life, and so they never got to
37:07
Speaker 2: know him. And I grew up with my grandfather ninety
37:10
Speaker 2: minutes away, and I got to spend every weekend with him,
37:13
Speaker 2: and I'm a different person because of that. And so
37:15
Speaker 2: I've had a lot of personal experiences that basically say, hey,
37:19
Speaker 2: speed's not about saving time or being really cool, although
37:22
Speaker 2: it is about saving time and being really cool. Yeah,
37:25
Speaker 2: speed is about what you choose to do or not do,
37:27
Speaker 2: And there are all kinds of things in the world
37:29
Speaker 2: that don't happen because flights are too long.
37:37
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. Okay,
37:50
Speaker 1: let's finish with the lightning ground and then before you
37:54
Speaker 1: started the company. You made a list of things you
37:55
Speaker 1: wanted to work on, and you sort of rank ordered
37:58
Speaker 1: them and how happy it would make you to work
37:59
Speaker 1: on them. Obviously supersonic jet was one, but what was two?
38:04
Speaker 1: It fell off really quickly. It's a distant second.
38:10
Speaker 2: I had a rental car company idea. Huh, that would
38:14
Speaker 2: be like a like your rental car picks you up
38:17
Speaker 2: like an uber, then you get in and drive it
38:19
Speaker 2: like it's not I would love that product. I don't
38:21
Speaker 2: think it's a great business idea. What was the scariest
38:24
Speaker 2: part of getting your pilot's license. Oh, I remember that
38:29
Speaker 2: very first moment of takeoff and what turned out to
38:31
Speaker 2: be Larry Elson's old airplane, And there was this moment
38:37
Speaker 2: of like, holy crap, I'm scared because I got my
38:38
Speaker 2: life in my own hands.
38:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like when you learn to drive a car.
38:42
Speaker 2: I remember that.
38:42
Speaker 1: When I learned to drive a car, is like I
38:43
Speaker 1: could just swerve into the oncoming lane right now, right.
38:46
Speaker 2: It felt really fragile, like I've got my life in
38:48
Speaker 2: my own hands. But then there was the other side
38:51
Speaker 2: of that same coin, which is this is really cool,
38:54
Speaker 2: I've got my life in my own hands.
38:56
Speaker 1: Uh, Huh. What was the scariest part of working with
38:59
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos? Uh.
39:03
Speaker 2: Jeff was great to work with and I was incredibly
39:05
Speaker 2: privileged in my early twenties. I got to work on
39:07
Speaker 2: something he cared about. Uh uh. And Jeff one of
39:12
Speaker 2: one of the one of the best things about Jeff
39:14
Speaker 2: is he very fairly calls the balls and the strikes
39:17
Speaker 2: and he and he rewards honesty and accountability. So I
39:23
Speaker 2: remember at one point, this is actually my very first
39:25
Speaker 2: time presenting to him, and it's the presentations overall, going well,
39:30
Speaker 2: this is before he ban PowerPoint and I get to
39:32
Speaker 2: some slide and he says, well, why didn't you do X?
39:37
Speaker 2: And X was actually a pretty good idea, And I said, well,
39:41
Speaker 2: we didn't think of that and and and he starts
39:44
Speaker 2: laughing that like famous big Jeff Bezos laugh And he says,
39:48
Speaker 2: that's a great answer. It's true all the time, but
39:50
Speaker 2: no one will ever say it. He understands that anybody
39:53
Speaker 2: sufficiently ambitious is going to make mistakes, and what matters
39:56
Speaker 2: is to own him and learn from him. And he
39:58
Speaker 2: always rewarded that. And that's that's something I try to
40:01
Speaker 2: emulate myself as a as a leader.
40:03
Speaker 1: Okay, briefly, let's do a few overrated or underrated questions
40:09
Speaker 1: for jet travel checking luggage overrated or underrated?
40:14
Speaker 2: Underrated. The way this should work is you take your
40:17
Speaker 2: Uber to the airport, someone grabs your bag from the trunk.
40:20
Speaker 2: You go through the airport only with what you actually
40:22
Speaker 2: want with you on the airplane. When you arrive on
40:24
Speaker 2: the other side, you go to your Uber and your
40:26
Speaker 2: check bag is already in your trunk.
40:29
Speaker 1: That's a compelling dream. Rated or underrated.
40:33
Speaker 2: The window seat, I think it's highly rated and underrated.
40:37
Speaker 2: Like I am glued to that window.
40:39
Speaker 1: I love highly rated but still underrated things. So I
40:41
Speaker 1: feel about Bob Dylan neck pillows overrated or underrated.
40:46
Speaker 2: It's not for me under overrated.
40:49
Speaker 1: Same. Blake Schole is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic.
40:59
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Cheng. It was
41:02
Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy jeen Kott and engineered by Sarah Brugeer.
41:06
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot f M.
41:10
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Oldstein and we'll be back next week with
41:12
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Popula