How Did Blake Scholl Pursue Supersonic Flight?

TL;DR

Blake Scholl repeatedly chose learning and personal conviction over safer, conventional paths, moving from high school dropout to Carnegie Mellon graduate, Amazon manager, entrepreneur, and founder pursuing supersonic air travel. His story illustrates high agency: identifying an obstacle, finding an unconventional route around it, and acting without waiting for permission or certainty.

Transcript

okay I have an amazing story if you're if you're entrepreneurial Sam if you have a pulse in your body if there is a blood single blood vessel in your body you are going to be fired the [ __ ] up after this I don't know what you got what do you have scheduled after this cancel it all right let's hear it what is it all right so you probably heard of ... Read More

Key Insights

• High agency is the willingness to solve problems directly instead of waiting for rescue, illustrated by the contrast between a stranded person spelling “help” with wood and one who uses the same wood to build a boat and leave.
• Scholl’s educational turnaround began when he recognized that disliking his high school did not mean disliking learning. His growing interest in science, mathematics, and engineering motivated him to seek an unconventional path into college despite lacking a high school degree.
• Carnegie Mellon offered Scholl a route that accommodated his unusual background. He applied through a special program for high school dropouts, explained that high school had nothing left to teach him, earned admission and a merit scholarship, and completed a computer science degree.
• Scholl joined Amazon in 2001 to study entrepreneurship through direct experience with Jeff Bezos. Rather than waiting for informal access, he built a project important to Bezos: an automated system designed to place Amazon products prominently in Google search advertising.
• Scholl’s Amazon advertising system automated bids across the company’s product catalog. The system sought to bid enough for strong placement without paying too much, connecting Amazon’s extensive selection with people searching through Google and making the project strategically important.
• Scholl gained substantial operating responsibility early in his career. He delivered a report to Bezos every three months, and by age 24 he was the general manager of a business with a $300 million profit-and-loss responsibility inside Amazon.
• Scholl left Amazon despite a credible path to promotions and continuing stock options. The hosts argue that remaining could have produced enormous personal wealth, but he prioritized becoming an entrepreneur and accepted the uncertainty associated with building his own companies.
• Scholl’s interest in supersonic flight was rooted in a longstanding fascination with airplanes. He enjoyed model aircraft, remembered visits to an aviation museum, earned a pilot’s license, and placed traveling at Mach 2 on his personal bucket list.

Questions & Answers

Q: What does high agency mean in Blake Scholl’s story?

High agency means responding to obstacles by finding and executing a workable path rather than waiting for outside assistance. The episode illustrates it with a stranded person who can either arrange wood to spell “help” or build a boat from that wood. Scholl demonstrated this quality by finding a college program for dropouts, creating valuable work at Amazon, leaving a secure career, and pursuing his interest in flight.

Q: How did Blake Scholl attend college after dropping out of high school?

Scholl discovered that Carnegie Mellon had a special route for high school dropouts who wanted to attend the university. He applied as a junior and wrote an essay explaining why he had not finished high school, stating that it had nothing left to teach him. Carnegie Mellon admitted him, awarded him a merit scholarship, and he ultimately graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Q: Why did Blake Scholl join Amazon in 2001?

Scholl wanted to become an entrepreneur but had not yet identified the company he wanted to create. He therefore chose to work for the person he regarded as the greatest entrepreneur at the time, Jeff Bezos. Joining Amazon gave him an opportunity to learn within Bezos’s company, take responsibility for strategically important work, and observe how a major internet business was being built after the dot-com crash.

Q: What did Blake Scholl build while working at Amazon?

Scholl built an automated system for purchasing Google advertisements across Amazon’s product catalog. Its purpose was to help Amazon products appear at the top of relevant Google search results while controlling how much the company bid. The project became important enough that Scholl reported its performance to Jeff Bezos every three months and eventually managed the associated business operation.

Q: What responsibility did Blake Scholl have at Amazon by age 24?

By age 24, after roughly three years at Amazon, Scholl was running a $300 million profit-and-loss operation and serving as the general manager of that business. He also presented a performance report to Jeff Bezos every three months. These responsibilities show that he had become a rising employee with direct exposure to senior leadership before deciding to leave and pursue entrepreneurship.

Q: Why did Blake Scholl leave a promising career at Amazon?

Scholl left because his original goal was to become an entrepreneur, even though he was progressing rapidly at Amazon. The hosts contend that staying, earning promotions, and continuing to receive stock options could have made him extremely wealthy. He nevertheless chose the riskier path, started companies with a partner, experienced an initial failure, and later sold another startup to Groupon.

Q: How did working at Groupon influence Blake Scholl’s next move?

Scholl spent two years at Groupon after his startup was sold to the company. His LinkedIn description said that working on internet coupons made him yearn to do something he truly loved. He eventually quit without a settled company idea, then looked toward flight, an interest that had followed him since childhood and had already motivated personal goals such as earning a pilot’s license.

Q: How did Boom Supersonic stand out at Y Combinator Demo Day?

Boom Supersonic stood out because its proposal differed sharply from the software applications and business software companies common at Y Combinator in 2016. Scholl proposed restoring commercial supersonic air travel and flying from New York to London in three and a half hours. Instead of presenting conventional user growth, he displayed a letter of intent associated with $5 billion in potential pre-orders involving Virgin and Richard Branson.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Blake Scholl dropped out of a private high school after feeling disengaged, then rediscovered an interest in science, mathematics, engineering, and learning. He found a Carnegie Mellon program that accepted high school dropouts, applied with an essay explaining his decision, received a merit scholarship, and graduated with a computer science degree.

• Scholl joined Amazon in 2001 because he wanted to learn from Jeff Bezos before starting his own company. He built an automated advertising system for Amazon’s product catalog, reported progress to Bezos every three months, and by age 24 was managing a $300 million profit-and-loss operation within the company.

• Despite having a promising career at Amazon, Scholl left to pursue entrepreneurship. After an initial startup failed, another venture was sold to Groupon. Two years later, he departed because working on internet coupons intensified his desire to pursue something personally meaningful, eventually focusing on his lifelong fascination with flight and supersonic travel.