Boom Supersonic

Boom Supersonic is on a mission to reboot supersonic travel with smarter design and modern engineering. Founder Blake Scholl plans to not only revive supersonic commercial flight, but to make it accessible to all passengers. Founded in 2014 and based in Colorado, Boom’s Overture flagship airliner is planning to carry 60–80 passengers across the Atlantic at Mach 1.7 by 2030.

The previous supersonic airliner, the Concorde, was designed in the 1960’s and last flew in the early 2000’s. It was expensive to operate and was prevented from flying over land due to the notorious sonic boom it caused. Boom aims to deliver faster travel in more comfort to places where supersonic flight has never been considered.

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Boom is well on their way to delivering on that goal. The XB-1, their one-third scale prototype, became the first privately developed jet to break the sound barrier in early 2025. It reached Mach 1.18 without creating an audible sonic boom at ground level.

This breakthrough caused the United States government to repeal their ban on supersonic flight and clear the way for the Overture to serve even more destinations. That full-scale airliner is designed to fly twice as fast as current jets, powered by Boom’s Symphony. The Overture Superfactory in Greensboro, NC has a planned assembly capacity for up to 33 aircraft per year, working through 130 pre-orders from major airlines including United, American, and Japan Airlines. Boom was founded by Blake Scholl to achieve his lifetime goal of flying supersonic. Blake, a Carnegie Mellon-trained computer scientist, early Amazon employee and startup cofounder, had a pilot’s license and a burning question: Why are the Concorde and the SR-71 Blackbird (“the most amazing aircraft ever made”) in a museum instead of the sky? After a deep dive on why supersonic air travel failed, he pulled together public data that said it could work and tried to find people to prove him wrong.

Having the pleasure of being a Boom investor since 2023, we observed what sets Blake apart as an entrepreneur is his extraordinary resilience and unwavering focus on the end goal. Throughout Boom's journey, Blake has faced countless setbacks that would have derailed most founders: insurmountable technical challenges, regulatory hurdles that appeared immovable, and the skepticism of an entire industry convinced that supersonic flight was relegated to history. Yet each time he was knocked down, Blake got back up with remarkable speed and continued driving toward his vision – making supersonic travel accessible to everyone. He understands that the path to revolutionary change is never linear, and that success lies not in avoiding failure but in flying steady through the storm.

This is precisely why E15 invests in people as much as ideas. The most transformative companies aren't built on perfect business plans, but by entrepreneurs who can navigate the chaos of turning the impossible into the inevitable. When we partner with entrepreneurs like Blake, our role extends far beyond capital. We form deep relationships with founders to ensure they are supported not just as executives, but as individuals navigating high-pressure and volatile environments. In Blake and Boom, E15 saw two things we couldn’t ignore: an idea that can change the world and a founder who was passionate enough to undertake the impossible. For a startup company with the audacious goal to disrupt the global airliner duopoly they need to “nail it before they scale it”, and in Boom we saw a group on the verge of doing just that. We share Blake’s conviction that people connecting face to face brings the best outcomes for understanding, innovation and trust. Boom’s goal is to get us all to where we are going in half the time, making it that much easier to connect.

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