A former Groupon product manager set out to bring back supersonic passenger flight. Everyone told him it was a bad idea. He couldn't find a single reason they were right.
Blake Scholl is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, the company that built the first civil supersonic jet outside of a government or military, and then made the sonic boom disappear entirely.
He joins Jessica Neal and co-host Peter Clarke on Truth Works for an honest conversation about audacious goals, telling the truth inside a company, and the leadership lessons he learned the hard way.
Blake did not have the aerospace resume for this. He started his career at Amazon, spent years in startups, and was running internet coupons at Groupon when he decided to teach himself aerospace from textbooks and build a spreadsheet that said the whole world should be flying supersonic. A decade later, his airplane broke the sound barrier.
In this episode he breaks down why supersonic flight really disappeared (hint: it was not the noise), how he rebuilt Boom's culture after hiring the wrong senior people, and why he now says he has learned to "love the riff."
TOPICS COVERED → Organizing every idea by how happy you'd be if it worked → Choosing passion over resume, and why skills are more changeable than what you love → The real reason supersonic flight was banned in 1973 → Solving the sonic boom by accident, and going from breaking the sound barrier to a repeal of the ban in 115 days → Using supersonic technology to power AI data centers and bootstrap the company → The "talent distillery": how Boom grows its own senior leaders → Why he fired every direct report in one day, and what happened to morale → Learning to "love the riff" and saying goodbye without making it personal → The first-flight story and the safety rule: "I might say f**k, but I won't say f**k you" → Velocity over predictability, and why padding your timeline makes you later → Designing for tranquility, and the small details airlines ignore → The birthday his board told him to shut the company down
Whether you are building something people call impossible, leading a team through a hard call, or just trying to tell the truth at work, this one will stay with you.
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