The Sonic Ego Boom Holding Humanity Hostage

So I'm getting a lot feedback to be more positive. I think there is merit to that feedback. LinkedIn does seem to reward people for supporting each other.

That's wonderful. But sometimes LinkedIn suffers from too much #toxicpositivity.

Is my focus on the fraud adjacent behavior of Boom Supersonic personal? Yes. It absolutely is. But I never worked there nor met any of the key players. I have no personal connection to its CEO Blake Scholl or its President Kathy Savitt - I can't tag her because she blocked me on LinkedIn.

Calm confidence, confidence rooted in self-knowledge and reality, makes it easier to see criticism. And I'll admit I'm conflicted about being a hater here on LinkedIn. Yet, I managed to get under this person's skin just a tiny bit. I should not have that power.

So what's going on here? The conflict of human ego vs. reality I think.

I have no certainty in what Kathy thinks about me or my arguments. I just know she doesn't want to see them. Now look into your own life. When you are insecure about something what do you usually do? If you're like me, you avoid reminders that you have a problem.

Boom has a reality problem. Kathy - if I had to guess (and I do) - knows it too.

I perhaps love aviation irrationally - So when I see the Boom CEO bash real airplanes to make a business case for his supersonic airliner - I get upset. He freely says things like "our airplanes are getting worse" or things like The Airbus A350 is the most overrated airplane.

There is simply no rational basis for either statement. That "overrated" plane is one of the most successful and most profitable aircraft ever built. Why? Well, for one the A350 actually flies. It's efficient. It's safe. It has real engines and it's quite versatile.

So who is the real hater here? Would Boom undermine its potential success if its CEO took this tone: "Commercial aviation is a world secretly brimming with genius and innovation. And while that lens traditionally focuses on pure efficiency and safety, we're going to build on this legacy by focusing on speed."

No. Boom's fate would not be hurt by this messaging. It might even help. However, is Blake confident enough in Boom to act this way? That is the question.

Right now Boom needs billions of dollars. People who really know airplanes like Richard Aboulafia think Boom needs $20B. Boom also needs an engine. That's perhaps another $10B if not much more. Boom has not raised a unitary $B. Though it apparently is a unicorn - An all too appropriate symbol. Mythical, flying, and not real are uniquely on brand for Boom.

What's truly a shame though is that Blake seems like a deeply capable person. His ability to get Boom to a point where Rolls-Royce seriously considered developing an engine for Blake is frankly incredible. This is more impressive than anything you or I will likely ever do by a good margin. Blake also raised funds on this partnership.

Then Rolls pulled out of Boom and no tried and true engine maker replacement stepped in. That was the end of this road sans 10s of $Bs. So what does Blake do? Does he make the responsible choice to end this endeavor? If you know something is not possible, is it not your fiduciary responsibility to unwind the project as best you can?

Yes!

But ego. It's a killer sometimes. Now I know startup CEOs are supposed to "do whatever it takes." But that's such a foolish concept. #ElizabethHolmes is in jail for taking things too far and most people would agree with that perspective. I don't think Blake is acting with the same legal severity as Holmes, but he speaks with a spirit far too close to her.

And in that spirit, what did Blake do after Rolls dumped him? Double down on a trendy theme like #sustainability. Nothing underscores Boom's similarity to Theranos more than its maniacal focus on sustainability... you know what I'm getting at. Stuff that sounds incredible because it turns out its literally too incredible to exist?

To answer that Boom orchestrated World Economic Forum PR headline -> Unequivocally, the fastest way to net-zero aviation is to fly subsonically. If Blake were under oath, would he cop to this? I don't know. But, this is physics. It takes more energy per unit of payload per unit of distance flown to fly supersonically. As such, any advancement in clean fuels for flight will reap exponentially more sustainability gains in subsonic applications - so long as commercial flight is powered by Jet Fuel/sustainable equivalents and turbofan engines.

Yet, Blake goes on podcast after podcast spewing sustainability laden marketing fluff. He repeats this drivel on Interview after interview and no one pushes back.

Man, would I love for Blake to chat with Richard Aboulafia at length publicly...

Anyway, market economies are generally wonderful places to live. However markets and their pleasantness depend on information. We keep seeing false-narrative fueled business catastrophes like WeWork 's original IPO attempt, FTX , and eventually Boom Supersonic. Perhaps there is no way to avoid this phenomenon?

I don't think that's true.

What's at play here is the very nature of what human ego is. Where ego comes from and why ego poses both opportunity and risk in the modern world - A world neither you, nor I, nor Blake evolved to live in. So in my mind, trying to figure out how to stop Blake style Boom hubris is one of the most optimistic endeavors humans could ever partake in.

Our egos push us forward in many good ways but they also hold us back with the pull of a thousand Suns. How to untether from that inward facing gravity well is a key element to tackling climate change, healthcare deficiencies, to all our various ills. Humans are brand new. We're 200,000 years old. - a nano second at the scale of existence - we're just barely beyond stepping out of the primordial goo.

Perhaps we should be humble and accept this reality?

I'm deeply optimistic about the possibilities and the fate of our species in learning how to stop talented people like Blake from taking things too far due to ego.