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Blake Scholl

Founder & CEO, Boom Supersonic · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveengineer@bscholl ↗LinkedIn ↗boomsupersonic.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Blake Scholl is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, an aerospace company building commercial supersonic aircraft. He previously worked as a software engineer at Amazon and co-founded Kima Labs, which was acquired by Groupon.

15statements → 6claims → 1claims resolved → 4.13/5average certainty → 2.13/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 3said about them ↓

0 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 2 assertions · 2 opinions · 4 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Blake argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 28:54 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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

267 words/min while actually speaking · 0.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Blake Scholl: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 28 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,951 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Blake Scholl is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 1/10
pushed back at the host 1/10
setup questions received 35%

Everything Blake Scholl said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 18:35 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
Opinion
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 …”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 10:27 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
Opinion
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…”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 6:07 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
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2029
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 8:23 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
Disclosure
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 11:03 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
Prediction Didn’t hold up
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 28:54 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
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2025
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…”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 29:02 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
Insight
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 3:55 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
Insight
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 8:34 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
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 12:43 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
Insight
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…”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 14:31 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
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 16:34 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
Disclosure
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 …”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 26:28 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
Insight
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…”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 27:31 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
Disclosure
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.”
Blake Scholl Apr 10, 2020 ▶ 8:43 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

The other half of the tape: Blake Scholl's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Josh Buckley 2Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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01120192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
0010.52120192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Why Venture Fund Life Cycles Do Not Align To Companies Today, Actionable Strategies Apr 10, 2020 20m
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