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Blake Scholl Looks to the Skies for Inspiration
The Entrepreneur of 2019 finalist wants to take air travel to the next level
Eric Peterson //May 9, 2019//
Blake Scholl Looks to the Skies for Inspiration
The Entrepreneur of 2019 finalist wants to take air travel to the next level
Eric Peterson //May 9, 2019//
Blake Scholl
Founder and CEO, Boom Supersonic/Centennial
Scholl launched Boom Supersonic in 2014 with the aim to take high-speed air travel to the next frontier.
He’d worked for Amazon, Groupon and smaller tech startups, then looked to the sky. Scholl has been an aviation buff since he was a kid in Ohio, then started flying in college and accumulated the hours for his pilot license.
After announcing a $100 million Series B financing round in early 2019, the next step is XB-1, Boom’s subscale demonstrator airplane. “We recently moved out of the development stage and into the build stage, which has been very exciting,” Scholl says. “We will roll out at the end of this year and fly in early 2020.” XB-1 “will prove key technologies for supersonic travel,” he adds.
In March, Boom partnered with Alabama-based HPM to start the search for a manufacturing site for its commercial airliner, Overture. It will top out at Mach-2.2—about 1,700 miles an hour—translating to an eight-hour flight from New York to Dubai.
Overture should take to the skies within a decade, Scholl says, noting, “This accomplishment will have a profound impact on air travel, enabling U.S. passengers to make day trips to Europe and 24-hour trips to Asia.”
