Apr 10, 2020 · 31m · 20vc
20VC: Why Venture Fund Life Cycles Do Not Align To Companies Today, Actionable Strategies To Separate Good From Great When Assessing and Hiring Multiple Candidates & Why We Need More Adventure in Venture Capital with Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO @ Boom Sup
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 20VC, host Harry Stebbings interviews Boom Supersonic founder and CEO Blake Scholl about his ambitious mission to restore supersonic commercial air travel. Scholl shares insights on deep tech fundraising, hiring top-tier talent without domain expertise, cultivating a culture of accountability, and navigating the psychological demands of leading long-horizon ventures.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 34.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.4 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 0.4 Harry pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 25:24 Critique of Valley Herd Mentality
Blake explicitly contrasts his approach with the Valley's herd mentality where founders flood into trendy sectors like crypto or video conferencing instead of solving ignored problems.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 15:14 Host Probing Interview FacilitationHarry interrupts Blake's hiring story to press on whether Blake personally drives the technical agenda or steps back to observe candidate group dynamics.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:13 Dismantling Aerospace Conventional WisdomBlake educates Harry on how industry conventional wisdom about supersonic flight was false and failed to survive quantitative analysis, demonstrating the power of an outsider mindset.
Harry holds his own ▶ 6:18 Framing the 50,000-Foot to Nitty-Gritty RangeHarry demonstrates venture capital expertise by sharing a key lesson on how elite startup founders must seamlessly alternate between macro vision and micro cash-flow execution.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blake Scholl's Career Origin and the Founding of Boom | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Harry asks standard biographical questions about Blake's transition from Amazon and Groupon to founding Boom. Blake contrasts Amazon's long-term thinking with Groupon's short-term focus, educating Harry on corporate culture design. Harry offers a light observation on founders operating at both 50,000 feet and ground level, which Blake validates. | |
| Fundraising Challenges for Deep Tech and Long-Term Horizon Startups | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry queries Blake on fundraising for deep tech and brings up investor questions from Josh Buckley. Blake gently critiques the VC asset class, explaining why 10-year fund lifecycles create an impedance mismatch for deep tech and urging VCs to take more real venture risk. Harry keeps the tone warm and lighthearted throughout. | |
| Building Culture and Recruiting World-Class Talent | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks about culture building and recruiting top talent to a long-horizon startup. Blake explains his strategy of screening strictly for mission passion and using a recursive networking method to find world-class talent. Harry listens receptively without pushing back. | |
| Evaluating Domain Expertise and Innovative Hiring Methods | 3 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Harry candidly shares his own difficulty evaluating technical candidates outside his domain expertise and asks for advice. Blake details two unique hiring techniques: hosting group candidate jam sessions and asking candidates to teach him something. Harry interjects with a targeted follow-up question regarding how to facilitate the session. | |
| CEO Psychology, Contingency Planning, and Outsider Advantages | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Harry asks about CEO psychology, crisis preparation, and whether domain expertise helps or hurts. Blake reframes the domain expertise question, noting that industry outsiders are free from false conventional wisdom that failed quantitative scrutiny in aerospace. Harry accepts the perspective completely. | |
| Cultivating Accountability: The 'Blade and the Nut' Culture | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks about balancing employee accountability with freedom to fail, as well as Blake's personal scaling challenges as a leader. Blake shares the origin of Boom's 'blade and the nut' trophy tradition and speaks openly about executive hiring mistakes and growth mindset. Harry shows strong empathy and agreement. | |
| Quick Fire Round: Philosophical Insights, Mentors, and Boom's Roadmap | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | In the quick fire round, Harry guides Blake through rapid questions on books, weaknesses, mentors, and roadmaps. Blake offers a mild critique of Silicon Valley herd mentality, encouraging founders to tackle neglected problems instead. The conversation remains smooth and supportive. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Founders must choose a mission they will never abandon
“If you want to be successful, you have to think about your personal motivation and pick a mission that you will never, ever give up on, no matter how hard it is.”
Groupon damaged its customer base by spamming emails for short-term targets
“Groupon honestly was very much the opposite. If a quarter was coming in soft, the response was often to, hey, send more email. You know, we'll pump up the short term, but it's a little bit like eating your stock seed because it burns up your core customer base…”
Boom Supersonic will take 10 to 15 years to carry commercial passengers
“Boom is a company that will probably be on the order of 10 to 15 years from founding to Carrying passengers in volume.”
15-year startup timelines create an impedance mismatch for early-stage VCs
“And that time horizon, even though the IRRs and the multiples will be great, makes it an impedance mismatch for most venture capital funds in the early stages.”
Boom's early capital came from high-net-worth individuals and personal VC checks
“A lot of our capital as the company was, particularly on the young side, has come from ultra high net worth individuals. Many cases, well-known VCs who are investing outside of their funds where they don't have those timing constraints.”
VC pattern matching rewards SpaceX copycats over broader aerospace innovation
“The industry as a whole pattern matches very strongly on exactly what successes have existed previously. So for example, for today, it's really easy to raise money for a rocket company because SpaceX is a success, but that doesn't strongly translate over into …”
Individual VC partners personally backed Boom after their funds passed
“It was very typical that we would make it to the full partnership stage, and the fund would end up passing, although individual investors in that group would come in personally.”
Boom Supersonic rejects top technical talent lacking mission passion
“If you're not excited enough, we don't hire you because it's too hard, and if you're sane, you're gonna give up somewhere along the way.”
Group jam sessions reveal technical candidates' depth and leadership capability
“If you get a group of smart people talking about your problem space together in a room, you can quickly tell who really knows what they're talking about, And also, who has the personality and ability to lead in a room that you really want to go get in the tren…”
Boom rejected early candidates who couldn't teach something in their interview
“And if you couldn't teach me something, you didn't get hired at Boom.”
Conventional wisdom that commercial supersonic flight is economically unviable is false
“Six years ago, when we were starting Boom, the conventional wisdom was no one would pay enough to be able to fly supersonic, that it would have to be really That the sonic boom was an insurmountable barrier that would take decades of R&D to solve. And it turns…”
Stripe co-founder John Collison was Boom Supersonic's very first investor
“It was John Collison, the co-founder of Stripe. And this was in the relatively early days of Stripe before it was the massive success that it was today. John was a pilot. I met him through a friend and we went out to dinner or talking about what we were doing …”
Senior aerospace leaders with startup fit are the hardest hires
“The hardest thing to hire for is big leadership roles that require aerospace background. And that is because the background is crucial for us to have. If you're going to go off and build Overture, which is probably one of the most complicated safety critical t…”
Boom's XB-1 prototype jet will fly and set records in 2021
“So that airplane will be finished this summer. They'll be flying and starting to set speed records next year.”
Boom's Overture airliner will fly New York to London in three hours
“And so that airplane will carry 75 passengers at business class fares on flights that are half as long as they are today. So think, you know, New York to London and three hours instead of seven, you know, fast enough, you can go across the pond, get business d…”