What makes Blake Scholl a global shaker?
If anyone is going to untangle the impossible challenge of making supersonic flight economically viable, it may very well be Blake Scholl, the former ad-buying software pioneer who is now CEO of Boom Supersonic.
Boom is the creator of Overture, a 55-seat concept jet that plans to offer supersonic flights in over 500 routes at prices comparable to subsonic business class travel – making “high-speed travel mainstream”.
The company says its flights – which it plans to make available from 2023 – could shorten a trip from San Francsico to Tokyo from 11 hours to 5 ½ hours, and a journey from New York to London from seven hours to 3 hours 15 minutes.
The jet will fly at Mach 2.2 (1,687 mph), and is confident that technological advancements, such as the lack of reliance on an afterburner, mean it will succeed where the Concorde – a British and French supersonic travel initiative that closed in 2003 — failed.
Scholl’s decision to set up Boom in 2014 follows a lifetime of interest in aviation, following childhood trips to the local airport to watch the Cessnas planes take off and land and the eventual awarding of a full pilot’s license.
Prior to Boom, he has held leadership roles at numerous global companies. At Amazon, he was directly responsible for the technology behind the company’s large scale search advertising, becoming P&L owner for over $300m in global revenue. Scholl later co-founded mobile ecommerce application creator Kima Labs, which received funding from senior figures at Google, Facebook and Zynga before being acquired by Groupon, then moved to Groupon for roles as Senior Director of Product Management and of SmartDeals.
“Speed isn’t about going really fast. It’s about closeness. It’s about making far away places feel like they’re right around the corner,” Scholl comments on Boom’s website.
“If we can fly twice as fast, the world becomes twice as small, turning far off lands into familiar neighbors,”
Last updated: May 21, 2019
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