The insane story of Blake Scholl: the high school dropout who’s building supersonic jets

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Okay, I have an amazing story. If you're entrepreneurial, Sam, if you have a pulse in your body, if there is a single blood vessel in your body, you are going to be fired the fuck up after this. I don't know what you got. What do you have scheduled after this? Cancel it.

**Sam Parr** (0:22)
All right, let's hear it. What is it?

**Shaan Puri** (0:24)
All right, so you probably heard of this company, Boom Supersonic, yes?

**Sam Parr** (0:28)
Yeah, I had the opportunity to invest in this company years ago and I didn't have any money then, but also, even if I did, I would have passed on this. It's a ridiculous proposition.

**Shaan Puri** (0:39)
I didn't have any courage then either. That was the real problem.

**Sam Parr** (0:42)
Well, like a guy said that, a guy at Silicon Valley said he's gonna build a commercial airline, he's gonna build a jet that can be a supersonic commercial airplane, right? That sounds ridiculous.

**Shaan Puri** (0:54)
Exactly. So, the thing that's going viral right now is former like Groupon product manager, because he worked at Groupon, is LinkedIn literally goes Groupon product manager, then created the first supersonic jet in like, you know, whatever, 56 years. So, it's this insane jump on LinkedIn and that's kind of going viral right now. It got me curious because I remember back of the day, this was 2016

**Sam Parr** (1:19)
Did you see the deal?

**Shaan Puri** (1:21)
I wasn't, it's not like somebody sent it to me to invest. I could have if I chased it down and then actually several times since then, I could have invested, but I didn't.
Maybe not too late, maybe now is the time. But I remember watching Demo Day. Do you remember this story? Do you remember his Demo Day pitch at YC Demo Day?

**Sam Parr** (1:39)
I didn't know he went through YC. I didn't pay that close attention to it. So, he went through Y Combinator.

**Shaan Puri** (1:43)
Exactly, went through Y Combinator. Now, I remember at the time it stood out. Now, YC does a lot more like moonshot type of companies. Back then, it was all apps. It was all software. You're making an iPhone app. You're making like a B2B SaaS tool.

**Sam Parr** (1:57)
And this is 16?

**Shaan Puri** (1:58)
16 And there was this one guy there who was like, we're creating supersonic air travel. You're going to be able to fly from New York to London in three and a half hours. That's what we're doing. Remember the Concorde? We're going to do that again. And he gets on stage. And I remember thinking while he's pitching, I'm like, how is he going to have traction? Because every YC pitch ends the same.
Where they show their user growth. We're growing 30% week over week, but it's like going from like three to six to nine. Right? Like he's like, they have some crazy growth rate, but it's on a very small customer base. But that's always the pitch. So I remember wondering, what's this guy going to do? And at the very end of his pitch, he whips out a piece of paper and he goes, and as of last night, we have five billion in pre-orders thanks to Richard Branson and Virgin. And we were like, what? Five billion? And it was like, he had an LOI. It wasn't actually a purchase order, it was an LOI.

**Sam Parr** (2:55)
Which basically just says, one day, if you can actually build a safe supersonic jet, we will definitely buy it.

**Shaan Puri** (3:02)
We will maybe buy it. That's what it means, right? Like when somebody invites me to a party I don't want to go to, I'm going to start sending LOIs. Because an LOI just means I'm generally interested, but I'm probably not going to do it, right?
But still, it was impressive, five billion. Still, to this day, nobody's walked into YC Demo Day with five billion dollars worth of letter of intent. So, okay, I remember seeing that. Then he disappeared for a while. Then he actually had to go do the work.

**Sam Parr** (3:34)
Do you guys remember when marketing was fun? When you had time to be creative and connect with your customers? With HubSpot, marketing can be fun again. Turn one piece of content into everything you need. Know which prospects are ready to buy, and see all your campaign results in one place. Plus, it's easy to use. Helping HubSpot customers double their leads in just 12 months, which means you have more time to enjoy marketing again. Visit hubspot.com to get started for free.