[Music]
so long before I moved to Denver I grew
up in suburban Cincinnati Ohio and I was
lucky
my grandpa lived just an hour away in
rural Indiana we got to play together
almost every weekend building
sandcastles driving model trains and
tending his garden together he was an
integral part of my childhood a
self-made man and a World War two
veteran who taught me the value of
self-reliance and defining joy and
everyday moments fast-forward 30 years
and now I have a family of my own two
little boys and a little girl and they
too have a very special grandpa a
founder of a real estate empire with so
many lessons to share with his
grandchildren but tragically he lives 18
hours away in Hong Kong
the travel time is simply prohibitive
and they get to see each other only once
a year so they’ll never grow close but
it wasn’t always this way
amazingly the airplanes we have today
are no faster than the ones we had when
my parents were growing up we have
failed to conquer geography for most of
human history we lived and died no more
than 20 miles from our birthplace able
to go only as far as our feet could
carry us but in a tiny sliver of history
we’ve made incredible progress in the
1840s if you live in the eastern US and
thought of going west
you took a covered wagon the perilous
journey took months and you didn’t visit
you moved with no hope of ever coming
back in 1869 a breakthrough invention
came to market that the Transcontinental
Railroad the journey that previously
took months took just 83 hours by a
train and now I know that might not
sound like much by today’s standards but
remember this for the first time a New
Yorker could dream of going to
California and actually coming home
and progress continue to accelerate in
1903 the Wright brothers built the first
airplane and just three decades later we
had transcontinental Air Service the
journey that stretched out 83 hours on
the railroad shrink to just 20 hours on
the propeller aircraft but to really
understand the value of speed let’s look
closely at what happened
we went from propellers into the jet age
now in the 1950s if you lived in San
Francisco and you dreamed of a vacation
in Hawaii you’d have to get on one of
these that’s right it’s a flying boat
the journey would take 16 hours and once
you learned that you probably decided to
vacation somewhere closer to home but
the jet age changed all of this the
16-hour flight shrank to just six hours
and all of a sudden many more people
began to choose a vacation in Hawaii
travel to Hawaii skyrocketed six-fold in
the first decade of a jet age and it
kept on growing as we built hotels
tourist attractions and resorts this
distant far-off state Hawaii exotic
remote suddenly became accessible to the
whole world but it wasn’t just about
where you could go it was also about
what could come to you the Beatles yes
the Beatles took the first world tour in
1964 a tour that would not have been
practical just ten years earlier with
slower airplanes and the jet age changed
sports too before the jet age when a
trip across the country would take most
of a day sports teams had to be
clustered together in the East out of
practical necessity but when you could
get across the country in six hours
all of a sudden we could bring Major
League Baseball and Major League
football coast-to-coast so next time you
enjoy the big game remember to give
thanks to the jet it’s speed made it
possible and by the Year 1969 it seemed
like progress in aerospace was
accelerating in that year after having
been a decade behind in the space race
America landed a man on the moon for the
first time and brought him home safely
and that same year Concorde flew for the
first time the faster than the speed of
sound supersonic airliner it seemed like
we’re on the cusp of a new era of
progress that we could look forward to
space exploration an ultra high-speed
travel Concord and the SuperSonics were
supposed to be to the passenger jet what
it had been to the propeller aircraft
before it and what those aircraft had
been to the railroad still earlier
aboard Concorde the seven-hour journey
from New York to London would shrink to
just three and a half hours fast enough
that a New Yorker could do business in
London and be home in time for dinner
you could fall in love with someone from
another continent and it would no longer
matter if the relationship was
long-distance yet somehow 50 years later
moon rockets and supersonic airliners
are found only in museums Concorde did
fly for 27 years but its fares were
sky-high like $20,000 in New York to
London round trip few could afford to
fly it and it never changed mainstream
transportation and so in 2003 Concorde
retired with no plan to replace it and
somehow the supersonic age had ended
without ever really starting isn’t this
crazy or else in technology do we have
something lose it and actually go
backwards to make sense of this it helps
to turn to the history of progress in
aviation to see where big breakthroughs
came from now many of you know that the
first airplane was invented by bicycle
entrepreneurs who yearned to be in the
air and thought there could be
commercial potential for their invention
but what is less well-known is that the
first practical airliner the Douglas
dc-3 and the first jetliner the de
Havilland comet were also built by
relatively young founder led companies
ie these airplanes were built by
startups
now in envisioning the dc-3 Donald
Douglas wanted a new airplane which more
people could fly on which airlines could
use to offer regular passenger service
and for himself he thought he could sell
thousands that is the requirement of
commercial success necessitated the
creation of a sustainable economic model
these airplanes had to make sense for
their passengers for the airlines
and for their manufacturers okay well
what about SuperSonics well Concord
didn’t come from a start-up or even from
an established company it was a joint
venture of two governments France and
Britain after all most joint ventures
between the French and British have been
Wars
so what was their goal
well it wasn’t commercial success the
year was 1962 it was the height of the
Cold War and supersonic development was
about beating the other guy is into the
supersonic age indeed in the 1960s
supersonic projects were launched by
governments in the US and Europe and in
the Soviet Union
the Soviets actually made it into the
air first but their airplane had all
kinds of problems and after hauling
around a couple loads of mail they shut
it down
in 1971 the American supersonic
competitor just funded by taxpayers and
built by Boeing was over-budget and
badly behind schedule so Congress pulled
the plug leaving just Concorde still
come in now in America rather than
embrace Concorde we chose to block it
and the FAA imposed a literal speed
limit over land in the US a speed limit
really
so Concorde finally did arrive in 1976
but it was stillborn
we’d rushed into the age of SuperSonics
built it out of 1960s technology which
wasn’t yet good enough for economical or
efficient supersonic travel the fares
were too high the aircraft were mostly
empty and with transcontinental flights
in the u.s. banned it had limited use
only 14 were ever built and entered
service so there was no economy of scale
and in 2003 the fleet was retired mainly
for economic reasons it become expensive
to maintain an air bus stop making spare
parts forcing both British Airways and
Air France to ground their Conchords now
as we stand here half a century later
the FAA speed limit still stands and
it’s had a crushing impact on progress
you might think that a supersonic
renaissance would start with a small
private jet for people who can afford to
pay for speed whose time is incredibly
valuable
but the problem is motion those people
wonderful.i over land and so developers
of private jets couldn’t see a big
enough market to justify the development
costs
so that’s we’ve had half a century of no
progress and speed
looking back Concord and Apollo share a
common narrative both were amazing
inspiring technological achievements but
they were done in the pursuit of glory
not a commercial success and thus but we
quite literally planted flags we were
free from the obligation to produce
something of enduring value these
remarkable inventions look like progress
but their actual result was decades of
stagnation and regression so in 2007
after concord have retired i was working
at a start-up an internet startup in
seattle remember that year the iphone
had just come out and we were living in
a world where our phones our computers
and our communications were all getting
faster one day
my girlfriend was stuck on a slow
horrific Lee delayed flight and while I
waited for her I started to wonder
whatever happened to faster travel that
day I set a Google Alert on supersonic
jet because I figured a breakthrough had
to be right around the corner and I
wanted to be the first to know when I
could break the sound barrier but it was
crickets there was no credible effort to
build a supersonic jet that I could ever
fly on just some crazy sci-fi concepts
that wouldn’t work and some talk of a
private jet for billionaires nothing I
could use so I started to think could
one start a company to build supersonic
jets could I start a company to build
supersonic jets I thought the answer
would be no the challenge seemed so
daunting
after all the American speed limit was
still on the books limiting the market
and intercontinental airplanes are
amongst the most complicated things ever
built by humanity they take years to
develop
billions to come to fruition and only a
handful of gigantic multinational
corporations can build them but about
three years ago I decided I got a look
at it anyway and I thought I would do a
couple of weeks of research and get this
supersonic craziness out of my system
but what I found instead was something
really surprising and very exciting it
turns out that well we haven’t had a
speed-up in 50 years we have had half a
century of progress in basic technology
for building airplanes today we have
dramatically better methods for
optimizing aerodynamics we have new
materials like carbon fiber composites
and we’ve completely changed the way we
build jet engines now there are more
fuel-efficient and quieter and it turns
out if you take all these other
technologies and put them together you
can build a new generation supersonic
airliner one that it costs 75% less to
operate than Concorde that means you
could buy a ticket new york to london
round trip for about five thousand
dollars now I know what you’re probably
thinking that still sounds really
expensive and it is but it’s about what
we pay in business class today which is
a very large market and I looked at this
and thought man that’s a foothold that
could be a jumping-off point for a more
mainstream Renaissance and speed so what
would we have to do to do this well we’d
have to create the first new commercial
aircraft startup in 50 years excuse me
in 95 years sounds easy right but the
reality is that’s what it takes so
that’s what we decided to take on at my
company boom we started working on this
seriously about three years ago on the
first new supersonic airliner in 50
years and I’m so proud we’ve completed
the design of the first prototype and
we’re about eighteen months away from
flying it right here in Denver
so the prototype is little but here’s
the first production aircraft the boom
jet it seats 55 people it will take you
from New York to London in time to make
an afternoon meeting and home and time
to tuck your children into bed it will
save you a whole day
round trip across the Atlantic two days
across the Pacific and thanks to
globalization there’s been an explosion
and international travel so that means
we can focus on routes like New York to
London San Francisco to Tokyo Seattle to
Shanghai that are mostly overwater and
we need not be blocked by the speed
limit and thanks to progress and fuel
efficiency there’s no environmental
downside either the carbon impact is
about the same as flying business class
subsonic today so I would like to invite
you to imagine with me in a world where
the red-eye flights shrink to just three
to four hours and those excruciating 15
16 17 hour hauls become simple
overnights where will you choose to go
there will be new opportunities to
experience the people places and
cultures our planet has to offer and the
supersonic age the world will quite
literally feel smaller a donor heart
could find its way to a recipient 5,000
miles away Sydney Australia will feel as
accessible as Hawaii is today world
leaders when they have differences could
gather in the same room to resolve them
my children might get to know their
grandpa now
I must hasten to say this is hard and we
still have many challenges ahead but I’m
inspired to go to work every day
precisely because the mission is big
that we were working on something that
will add to the sum of human progress
something that governments and
multinational corporations haven’t been
able to do we are often told as
entrepreneurs as individuals to think
globally but to act locally to find a
small piece of a big problem which is
possible for us to take on but what if
this is bad advice what if the truth is
that individuals and startups can take
on big missions and actually succeed
what if that bigger the more audacious
the more inspiring the mission actually
the greater the odds of six
and a key idea Big Ideas attract great
people at boom we’ve been able to build
an amazing team from places like SpaceX
Virgin Galactic and Gulfstream precisely
because we’re working on something big
and inspiring and with those kinds of
people a challenge that might seem
intractable suddenly becomes possible
even likely internally at boom we call
our first airplane Model A because it’s
the first step in a long series of
aircraft over time we’re going to build
larger airplanes that are more advanced
and more fuel-efficient further driving
down the cost of speed I believe in a
future where we can get anywhere in the
world in four hours $400
now this is hard
but we don’t need to break the laws of
physics it’s possible and it’s possible
in our lifetimes and when that happens
we will no longer be citizens of a city
or country but we can all simply live on
earth thank you very much
you
so long before I moved to Denver I grew
up in suburban Cincinnati Ohio and I was
lucky
my grandpa lived just an hour away in
rural Indiana we got to play together
almost every weekend building
sandcastles driving model trains and
tending his garden together he was an
integral part of my childhood a
self-made man and a World War two
veteran who taught me the value of
self-reliance and defining joy and
everyday moments fast-forward 30 years
and now I have a family of my own two
little boys and a little girl and they
too have a very special grandpa a
founder of a real estate empire with so
many lessons to share with his
grandchildren but tragically he lives 18
hours away in Hong Kong
the travel time is simply prohibitive
and they get to see each other only once
a year so they’ll never grow close but
it wasn’t always this way
amazingly the airplanes we have today
are no faster than the ones we had when
my parents were growing up we have
failed to conquer geography for most of
human history we lived and died no more
than 20 miles from our birthplace able
to go only as far as our feet could
carry us but in a tiny sliver of history
we’ve made incredible progress in the
1840s if you live in the eastern US and
thought of going west
you took a covered wagon the perilous
journey took months and you didn’t visit
you moved with no hope of ever coming
back in 1869 a breakthrough invention
came to market that the Transcontinental
Railroad the journey that previously
took months took just 83 hours by a
train and now I know that might not
sound like much by today’s standards but
remember this for the first time a New
Yorker could dream of going to
California and actually coming home
and progress continue to accelerate in
1903 the Wright brothers built the first
airplane and just three decades later we
had transcontinental Air Service the
journey that stretched out 83 hours on
the railroad shrink to just 20 hours on
the propeller aircraft but to really
understand the value of speed let’s look
closely at what happened
we went from propellers into the jet age
now in the 1950s if you lived in San
Francisco and you dreamed of a vacation
in Hawaii you’d have to get on one of
these that’s right it’s a flying boat
the journey would take 16 hours and once
you learned that you probably decided to
vacation somewhere closer to home but
the jet age changed all of this the
16-hour flight shrank to just six hours
and all of a sudden many more people
began to choose a vacation in Hawaii
travel to Hawaii skyrocketed six-fold in
the first decade of a jet age and it
kept on growing as we built hotels
tourist attractions and resorts this
distant far-off state Hawaii exotic
remote suddenly became accessible to the
whole world but it wasn’t just about
where you could go it was also about
what could come to you the Beatles yes
the Beatles took the first world tour in
1964 a tour that would not have been
practical just ten years earlier with
slower airplanes and the jet age changed
sports too before the jet age when a
trip across the country would take most
of a day sports teams had to be
clustered together in the East out of
practical necessity but when you could
get across the country in six hours
all of a sudden we could bring Major
League Baseball and Major League
football coast-to-coast so next time you
enjoy the big game remember to give
thanks to the jet it’s speed made it
possible and by the Year 1969 it seemed
like progress in aerospace was
accelerating in that year after having
been a decade behind in the space race
America landed a man on the moon for the
first time and brought him home safely
and that same year Concorde flew for the
first time the faster than the speed of
sound supersonic airliner it seemed like
we’re on the cusp of a new era of
progress that we could look forward to
space exploration an ultra high-speed
travel Concord and the SuperSonics were
supposed to be to the passenger jet what
it had been to the propeller aircraft
before it and what those aircraft had
been to the railroad still earlier
aboard Concorde the seven-hour journey
from New York to London would shrink to
just three and a half hours fast enough
that a New Yorker could do business in
London and be home in time for dinner
you could fall in love with someone from
another continent and it would no longer
matter if the relationship was
long-distance yet somehow 50 years later
moon rockets and supersonic airliners
are found only in museums Concorde did
fly for 27 years but its fares were
sky-high like $20,000 in New York to
London round trip few could afford to
fly it and it never changed mainstream
transportation and so in 2003 Concorde
retired with no plan to replace it and
somehow the supersonic age had ended
without ever really starting isn’t this
crazy or else in technology do we have
something lose it and actually go
backwards to make sense of this it helps
to turn to the history of progress in
aviation to see where big breakthroughs
came from now many of you know that the
first airplane was invented by bicycle
entrepreneurs who yearned to be in the
air and thought there could be
commercial potential for their invention
but what is less well-known is that the
first practical airliner the Douglas
dc-3 and the first jetliner the de
Havilland comet were also built by
relatively young founder led companies
ie these airplanes were built by
startups
now in envisioning the dc-3 Donald
Douglas wanted a new airplane which more
people could fly on which airlines could
use to offer regular passenger service
and for himself he thought he could sell
thousands that is the requirement of
commercial success necessitated the
creation of a sustainable economic model
these airplanes had to make sense for
their passengers for the airlines
and for their manufacturers okay well
what about SuperSonics well Concord
didn’t come from a start-up or even from
an established company it was a joint
venture of two governments France and
Britain after all most joint ventures
between the French and British have been
Wars
so what was their goal
well it wasn’t commercial success the
year was 1962 it was the height of the
Cold War and supersonic development was
about beating the other guy is into the
supersonic age indeed in the 1960s
supersonic projects were launched by
governments in the US and Europe and in
the Soviet Union
the Soviets actually made it into the
air first but their airplane had all
kinds of problems and after hauling
around a couple loads of mail they shut
it down
in 1971 the American supersonic
competitor just funded by taxpayers and
built by Boeing was over-budget and
badly behind schedule so Congress pulled
the plug leaving just Concorde still
come in now in America rather than
embrace Concorde we chose to block it
and the FAA imposed a literal speed
limit over land in the US a speed limit
really
so Concorde finally did arrive in 1976
but it was stillborn
we’d rushed into the age of SuperSonics
built it out of 1960s technology which
wasn’t yet good enough for economical or
efficient supersonic travel the fares
were too high the aircraft were mostly
empty and with transcontinental flights
in the u.s. banned it had limited use
only 14 were ever built and entered
service so there was no economy of scale
and in 2003 the fleet was retired mainly
for economic reasons it become expensive
to maintain an air bus stop making spare
parts forcing both British Airways and
Air France to ground their Conchords now
as we stand here half a century later
the FAA speed limit still stands and
it’s had a crushing impact on progress
you might think that a supersonic
renaissance would start with a small
private jet for people who can afford to
pay for speed whose time is incredibly
valuable
but the problem is motion those people
wonderful.i over land and so developers
of private jets couldn’t see a big
enough market to justify the development
costs
so that’s we’ve had half a century of no
progress and speed
looking back Concord and Apollo share a
common narrative both were amazing
inspiring technological achievements but
they were done in the pursuit of glory
not a commercial success and thus but we
quite literally planted flags we were
free from the obligation to produce
something of enduring value these
remarkable inventions look like progress
but their actual result was decades of
stagnation and regression so in 2007
after concord have retired i was working
at a start-up an internet startup in
seattle remember that year the iphone
had just come out and we were living in
a world where our phones our computers
and our communications were all getting
faster one day
my girlfriend was stuck on a slow
horrific Lee delayed flight and while I
waited for her I started to wonder
whatever happened to faster travel that
day I set a Google Alert on supersonic
jet because I figured a breakthrough had
to be right around the corner and I
wanted to be the first to know when I
could break the sound barrier but it was
crickets there was no credible effort to
build a supersonic jet that I could ever
fly on just some crazy sci-fi concepts
that wouldn’t work and some talk of a
private jet for billionaires nothing I
could use so I started to think could
one start a company to build supersonic
jets could I start a company to build
supersonic jets I thought the answer
would be no the challenge seemed so
daunting
after all the American speed limit was
still on the books limiting the market
and intercontinental airplanes are
amongst the most complicated things ever
built by humanity they take years to
develop
billions to come to fruition and only a
handful of gigantic multinational
corporations can build them but about
three years ago I decided I got a look
at it anyway and I thought I would do a
couple of weeks of research and get this
supersonic craziness out of my system
but what I found instead was something
really surprising and very exciting it
turns out that well we haven’t had a
speed-up in 50 years we have had half a
century of progress in basic technology
for building airplanes today we have
dramatically better methods for
optimizing aerodynamics we have new
materials like carbon fiber composites
and we’ve completely changed the way we
build jet engines now there are more
fuel-efficient and quieter and it turns
out if you take all these other
technologies and put them together you
can build a new generation supersonic
airliner one that it costs 75% less to
operate than Concorde that means you
could buy a ticket new york to london
round trip for about five thousand
dollars now I know what you’re probably
thinking that still sounds really
expensive and it is but it’s about what
we pay in business class today which is
a very large market and I looked at this
and thought man that’s a foothold that
could be a jumping-off point for a more
mainstream Renaissance and speed so what
would we have to do to do this well we’d
have to create the first new commercial
aircraft startup in 50 years excuse me
in 95 years sounds easy right but the
reality is that’s what it takes so
that’s what we decided to take on at my
company boom we started working on this
seriously about three years ago on the
first new supersonic airliner in 50
years and I’m so proud we’ve completed
the design of the first prototype and
we’re about eighteen months away from
flying it right here in Denver
so the prototype is little but here’s
the first production aircraft the boom
jet it seats 55 people it will take you
from New York to London in time to make
an afternoon meeting and home and time
to tuck your children into bed it will
save you a whole day
round trip across the Atlantic two days
across the Pacific and thanks to
globalization there’s been an explosion
and international travel so that means
we can focus on routes like New York to
London San Francisco to Tokyo Seattle to
Shanghai that are mostly overwater and
we need not be blocked by the speed
limit and thanks to progress and fuel
efficiency there’s no environmental
downside either the carbon impact is
about the same as flying business class
subsonic today so I would like to invite
you to imagine with me in a world where
the red-eye flights shrink to just three
to four hours and those excruciating 15
16 17 hour hauls become simple
overnights where will you choose to go
there will be new opportunities to
experience the people places and
cultures our planet has to offer and the
supersonic age the world will quite
literally feel smaller a donor heart
could find its way to a recipient 5,000
miles away Sydney Australia will feel as
accessible as Hawaii is today world
leaders when they have differences could
gather in the same room to resolve them
my children might get to know their
grandpa now
I must hasten to say this is hard and we
still have many challenges ahead but I’m
inspired to go to work every day
precisely because the mission is big
that we were working on something that
will add to the sum of human progress
something that governments and
multinational corporations haven’t been
able to do we are often told as
entrepreneurs as individuals to think
globally but to act locally to find a
small piece of a big problem which is
possible for us to take on but what if
this is bad advice what if the truth is
that individuals and startups can take
on big missions and actually succeed
what if that bigger the more audacious
the more inspiring the mission actually
the greater the odds of six
and a key idea Big Ideas attract great
people at boom we’ve been able to build
an amazing team from places like SpaceX
Virgin Galactic and Gulfstream precisely
because we’re working on something big
and inspiring and with those kinds of
people a challenge that might seem
intractable suddenly becomes possible
even likely internally at boom we call
our first airplane Model A because it’s
the first step in a long series of
aircraft over time we’re going to build
larger airplanes that are more advanced
and more fuel-efficient further driving
down the cost of speed I believe in a
future where we can get anywhere in the
world in four hours $400
now this is hard
but we don’t need to break the laws of
physics it’s possible and it’s possible
in our lifetimes and when that happens
we will no longer be citizens of a city
or country but we can all simply live on
earth thank you very much
you
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