Future of flying? JetZero CEO takes on Airbus and Boeing with jet that aims to cut emissions in half

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This means it couldn't turn cut fuel burn and emissions in half, making it cheaper and greener for airlines to operate. Unlike your typical tube in the sky, the Z4 is shaped like a manta ray, and unlike anything currently in service, it's being called the widest body commercial plane to take to the sky's this decade. The company is backed by the U.S. Air Force and airlines like United and Delta. It was a pinch me moment. Before Jet Zero, Tom held leadership roles at Tesla, as well as electric aviation startup Beta Technologies. You were there right before Elon took over. Is there anything from seeing how he operated Tesla that really gave you inspiration? What he's best in the world at has been taking really big structural problems in big, hard to disrupt industries and just breaking it down to first principles. What is the way we're going to get after this problem? There's just an amazing unlock there that really every entrepreneur, every investor is looking for. Tom, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. Great to be here with you. Let's start with some context. Can you walk us through your background, where you grew up, and what shaped your ambitions early on? Great. Well, I grew up in the Northeast. I was born in Connecticut and lived in Boston, Rhode Island, basically everywhere in New England. What shaped my early development, I think, as a person was being not a great student, but very attentive, so I paid a lot of attention in class, but I didn't read a lot of books. People know that as ADHD, which is not uncommon for a lot of people who get into startup business. It's that drive, go hard, go fast, but sports really, so what engaged me was just that live action and played pretty much every sport you can think of. That was really a lot of my upbringing and even my early career. Wow. Growing up, did you always have that edge to do something different, something entrepreneurial? Yeah, absolutely. Was thinking about just products of the future, was always thinking about future, future, future. I think that's pretty, it's a sort of a genx thing, because we were in this amazing time, where we were sort of pre-technology, but coming of age with the technology, I find it to be not unique, but very common amongst peers. I know a lot of people who were in this sort of expansive, right? I was born right when we were landing on the moon and then off we go, right? Everything has changed in this lifetime that I've lived and it's amazing to think about what the future will bring even now. Wow. So that's what you were focused on as you were growing up. You were already thinking what will the world look like 20, 30 years from now? Absolutely. It's funny. One of the early memories was just thinking about the environment. That was something that from an early age, all the way through my college studies and into my professional career. I remember writing a letter to President Jimmy Carter at the time suggesting that he should urge people to ride their bike more because I rode my bike a lot and I thought it was great. It was kind of a naive. Like why don't people ride their bike to work more? Not really a cultural fit in the United States, but I got a response that he sent me the transportation policy. I thought that was an interesting response to a nine-year-old boy, but sure. Go ahead. Well, I love that. So already thinking about ways you can get around in a more sustainable way, I think I like see the inklings of, you know, obviously where you are now back then already. Yeah. Very civically engaged, it sounds like. That's really fascinating. Well, Tom, looking at your resume, you've had quite a range of experiences, right? Across industries before obviously getting to where you are today. Before aviation, as I noted, you worked at both Tesla, which at the time was a new market enderant. That's right. And Ford, which of course was an incumbent, what aspects from these experiences kind of influenced you the most in the way that you've now built your company? Yeah, so they were all sort of cutting-edge learning experiences. When I went to Ford, it was to work on the internet and at that time, the dealer locator was the internet for Ford. It was sort of like, you go to Ford.com and you type in your zip code and you get a list of dealers and their fax numbers. That was early early days, late '90s. And so it was breaking new ground. And I worked for eBay Motors after that, and that again was new ground. So online auctions, it was responsible for that, how do we put car dealers on to this platform where people are buying or selling in this live real-time virtual marketplace? With Tesla, it was also about how do we do something new, right? It's groundbreaking. How do you go into the market with this new product and really focus on go-to-market strategy? How do you go direct to the consumer, set up your own stores, your own sales process, back through the website as opposed to going through the traditional retail network? That's what I find engaging and the thing, right? How do you go to market with something that's, you know, in a whole new space, right? You're trailblazing. It's fun, it's engaging, and that's really what's been a consistent thing. Yeah, constantly seeking reinvention, whether it's with a bona fide startup or a player that's been around for ages. Yeah, for sure. And that was certainly the case with Ford. We covered a lot of ground in a very short period of time, basically rolled out the internet to Ford corporate and through the dealer network, it was great. But yeah, with the Tesla program, it's been a huge success, right? I mean, what Tesla has been able to do selling direct to the consumer is just a whole new way. That was amazing. Yeah, absolutely. You were there through late 2008, right as, like, right before basically Elon took over, he, like, took over right as you were leaving, I think, like, fully a CEO, is that right? Yeah, he was involved from the beginning, right? He was, he was there at the beginning, yeah, investor board member, basically helping that company formulate, but he wasn't CEO until, until that period. And that was a really tough period, if you remember, because we went through the financial crisis and then it was how to keep not just Tesla, but Tesla and SpaceX for him at that time was, that was, that was a critical piece. Um, seeing how he operated Tesla and kind of interacted with Tesla, um, that really gave you inspiration. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we hit what he's best in the world at and over the past couple of decades has been taking really big structural problems in big, hard to disrupt industries and just breaking it down to first principles. Let's go back to first principle physics. If you go to jet zero, like, why did we believe that this was a challenge accepted? You know, right? Why did we go after this? It's because we felt that it's root in first principles physics was undeniable. There's just an amazing unlock there that really every entrepreneur, every investor is looking for, well, how are you going to unlock this disruption? If you're tying all the way back to the, the basic, the absolute first principles in physics, then that's your best starting point and that's, that's really what he has done in each of his businesses that he's done. So that's the basics. Yeah. Yeah, really interesting. It's also fascinating to hear about how you describe yourself as not the best student because I think that oftentimes, by the way, I was the same. I was like a decidedly average student, um, but I was always like much better in the workplace and just like learning by doing, did you feel you were kind of the same? Yeah, learning by doing, um, engaging. I really, what I was there in school to do was to learn how to learn because you're, and I've found that as an adult, is that you're, you're really just constantly learning new things. And so you're learning how to learn. Being a student was, was an interesting thing, I think, to be an engineer or a doctor or these things where you really have to get straight A's all the way through. I had a different path, you know, I would, I would get A's, but it would sort of be on accident, you know, when, when things were, they just clicked. Yeah. Um, and, and so, but by and large, it was more just like paying attention. My first job actually out of college was as a school teacher and a coach. I learned more from that experience than a lot of other things I did professionally, being a coach above all. But being a teacher was really more of life. like, you know, learning something to take a test is one thing, but learning something to communicate it and, in part, wisdom, experience, knowledge, know how to another person. That's a whole different skill, and once you learn that, it accentuates your ability to absorb new information. Right. And what kind of teacher, what kind of coach? Well, everything from fourth grade students all the way up through high school. When I was in college, it was wild because when I was doing environmental studies degree that was in political science, but I admired environmental studies before there was such a thing, right? I sort of cobbled it together by taking geology and geography and different classes that became environmental studies, but I would end up giving lectures at the, you know, university level because there was so much interest in the topics that we were researching. It really just worked out that way. So really even up at the college level, and that was the most engaging thing. That's what keeps you on your toes. It wasn't, you know, studying for the test. It was how do you study to prepare to explain to people what you've been working on? Do you take that the principles that you learn there from your time in teaching as a coach to your approach to a corporate leadership now? Coaching absolutely, positively, I think the place where it comes out the most for me is just and people, people often will ask about like, okay, where are you at with manage? How do you lead a startup? And those are the two key words, right? It's management or leadership. What you're looking for in a startup situation is you're looking for a team of leaders. So it's different like in football, for example, when you're coaching football, the coach is, you know, every play effectively is a timeout where the coach puts in a new play. When basketball, you're constantly coaching in, you're running an offense. It may not look today if you're not a basketball aficionaire, you may not realize that every time down the court, the offense is running a pattern play in high school where I coached. It's every single play, every inbound's pass, it's all pattern play. Soccer though, I think, is the best analogy because there are no timeouts. There's no stoppages, you know, stoppages to play where the coach has an opportunity to all, okay, everybody set pieces, fine, that's the, that's the exception. But what I learned coaching soccer is, you as a coach, you have to have your game plan understood. We have a system of principles. And then each player is, is challenged to be a leader on the field. You don't get to manage them. What you need is 11 leaders who all know the game plan and who are all executing and who are all actually also interacting and adapting. So having coached is a big thing because there's management of the players. It's also about strategy, but it really gets into like what you're doing in a startup ultimately is building a team. And the best teams are the ones that you're not micromanaging. They're the ones who look at their individual segment of the business as if they own that piece, right? As if they're, you know, they're approaching it the way you would approach that situation. So can one expect a pep talk or a lot of hurrah when it comes to sitting down with you and jet zero? Actually, no, I wasn't that type of coach in sports and I'm not that type of leader here at jet zero or in other places. Of course, we have our moments where we get together, but it's more the camaraderie. We did this as opposed to now the coach is going to do the victory speech. We've had some great victories. We just designed an airplane. So we had we have a four year program to build a full scale demonstrator. That's what the Air Force is involved in. That's what NASA is involved in now going back even further, but it was two years to design and two years to build. So happily, the team executed that design, read it out to the Air Force in NASA in our CDR critical design review. We executed that and it's really more of the team coming together and all feeling good about the sense of accomplishment as opposed to to big hurrah's. Right. I'm sure those will spontaneously erupt at various points of business as we achieve milestones. No, exactly. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness. No stickiness. No residue. Just plum. Newly hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to better help to try to look for therapists to help me with that. My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering, I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot, really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing. Discover what better help online therapy can do for you. Visit betterhelp.com today. Well more on that later, but you know, this takes us to Jet Zero, right? Yeah. Before we dive into them, can we break down some of the more technical terms reviewers that might not be familiar? Sure. Just to start off, what exactly is a blended wing body design and how does it differ from the traditional design? Yeah, so a blended wing body aircraft is generated from an all wing design. So you think about all wing aircrafts, it goes back to people's frame of reference would be the stealth bomber, right? The B2 spirit that North or produce late 80s, early 90s is where we first started to see these in use. And that was actually the genesis of the blended wing body, also in all wing design. So that just means lift across the entire wingspan. And effectively the entire plane is winged. So that's really what it means, lift across the entire wingspan and in all wing design. What's different between a B2, that's a flying wing versus, because there's really no fuselage. It's just winged. And then on the other side, we have a fuselage that's meant to hold around 250 passengers. So you have to blend that fuselage into the wing. And I know that you've mentioned that this plane that you're developing, it's intended to serve what you guys call the middle of the market. Correct? Tell us what that is again. Yeah, so an interesting thing that's even simpler than physics is geometry. The interesting thing about the airplane market, it's kind of staggering to think about and it's one of the reasons why I was so excited to get into this particular market with this particular technology. There are no planes from 200 to 250 passengers in the market today being sold. This is a staggering thing, can you imagine if there were no four passenger cars? We've got one, two, and three, and we've got six and seven, but we've got five, six and seven. We've got no four passenger cars. If somebody had then invented a four passenger car, you'd say, wow, that's in the middle of, you know, seat class, but you're probably going to do pretty well with that. That's really what's happening here. And when I say, okay, so you have to go Apple Stapples, right? You're talking about three class. Would you typically fly on, united across country, would be a three class, first class, a premium economy, coach class? So if you normalize for that, the single isles tap out at about 200 passengers. The wide body started about 250 passengers. And so in that gap, you know, there's single isles and twin isles, but there's no such thing as an aisle and a half aircraft. With this design, with a wider, shorter, and wider, you can specifically design a plane to hit that middle of the market more efficiently, and it's something that the airlines are really thirsty for. Yeah. And I've seen that these are basically usually, you know, things like long transcontinental flights, right? Like let's say like LA to New York would that be like an example of a route or like Boston to Dublin or something like that, where it's maybe too long for a narrow body. But it doesn't justify the wide body jets. Doesn't justify or it's just way more efficient to fly with this super aerodynamic shape. So we can get up to 50% based on multiple factors, right? So lift, weight, drag, and thrust. Those are the four forces of flight. So we speak to all of them. It's a lifting body. It's lower weight, all composite aircraft. It has lower drag, and it requires less thrust, which actually a smaller engine means also lower weight and lower drag. So there's kind of a virtuous cycle there. So that's inherently more efficient than a wide body flying a cross country flight, for example, which both both wide bodies and narrow bodies can fly across country flight. But we can fit more passengers than the narrow body and we can do it more efficiently than the wide body. That's the middle market. So you're absolutely right. It goes effectively from a cross country flight, a North Atlantic flight, a Boston to Dublin for sure. That's where the sweet spot for this aircraft, because middle of the market doesn't just be passengers. It also has the connotation of range, right? Exactly. So let's talk about the origin of the business. What exact problem did you and your co-founder mark page see that led you to the founding of the company in 2020, and how did you even go about getting started? Interesting. So I was working with an electric aircraft company called Beta Technologies, and we had hired Mark and his design firm, which was called Design BZY-NE. We had hired him to design that aircraft. And so this was a couple of years before we founded Jet Zero. So in his portfolio, I had noticed this. Wow, that, that, that plan. is amazing. It looks like the future. What is that? Oh, that's my blended wing body design. And so I asked him about it and I got really curious. And I really started to dive into the history of it, what it meant, what it could offer. And that 30% aerodynamic efficiency number really shot out to me because I was fairly new to the business. I've been in aerospace for about 10 years. So at that point, I was only a few years in having worked previously in automotive and software. At that point, I'm just a sponge. And I'm noticing that the airlines, they come out and you're sponging up all this information and you're starting to see the trends in real time. You notice they are scratching and clawing to get 1% fuel burn benefit. And they're also looking for a mid-market solution. So I went to market and I said, hey, you're saying 30%. And over here, I'm seeing anywhere from 1 to 3% is worth an investment of millions and millions of dollars on the part of the airlines. Why aren't you taking this to market? And I kept pushing him. And eventually he came back to me and said, well, I'm on the engineering side. I've never built a business. You're the one who's been with all these businesses that have grown. Beta has become a really successful company before that Tesla and some others that I had worked with. And he said, how do you do it? Which was really your question. Like, how did how did this happen? And my answer to him was simple, you just do it. And he's like, I know, but what does that mean? And I said, that's the only explanation there is. Like, startups of this nature do not come by sitting down in my opinion anyway. And I haven't seen it this way by sitting down and putting your MBA hat on and writing this 400-page business plan. It starts by looking at the basic building blocks of how you do something and just attacking them. You just go after the most important things that allow you to build a story that you can take to really all the people that it's going to take because something, for example, with Jets here that's this big to go after building big aircraft, you really have to build a broad coalition. No, absolutely. So what, you guys had a conversation and then it was probably many conversations. And then it was kind of off to the races, right? Like, you decided to leave your job and go off with him and start your own venture. That's essentially what happened. Yeah, exactly. And the way it worked for me, he actually showed me a picture of this. He came over to my house and said, "How do you do this?" So I thought of all the different things that had to be done. I put each one of them on a post-it note, colorize them, and then I put them on the wall. And so when he came over, he was like, "What is this?" He said, "All these post-it notes all over the wall." Kind of mad scientists vibes. Exactly. And he's like, "These are the things that we would have to do, which of these things seems impossible once you break it down to a thing on a post-it note." And of course, anything looks possible if you can break it down to a thing on a post-it note. So I think that gave him the confidence of saying, like, "Okay, I don't know how to build a business." But clearly, you know what the constituent parts of this thing are. And each of them looks discreet and doable. We just have to attack them one by one. It's really actually more just about belief. You have to believe that something's worth doing, and you have to know that you don't know everything about it. You understand the destination, and you commit yourself to the journey, even though you don't know what the road is going to be like between the starting point and the destination. That's okay. Just take the plan. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people want that certainty. In aerospace, it's called ATP, authority to proceed. So that's what would normally happen in a big business. And a big aerospace business is you would go in and present your whole plan of how you're going to. And then they would give you authority. And that basically means we're backing this thing from the beginning until you're successful. Well, it's funny you talk about belief, because I was going to ask, you know, we've heard so much about the future of flying in recent years, right? As a reporter, I've previously covered flying taxis, autonomous passenger drones, China's effort to build the C919, its first large homegrown passenger plane. I think the challenge is that sometimes people can feel like this is literally a pie in the sky, right? In this specific case, how did you convince folks to get on board? Did you have to grapple with that kind of skepticism? Well, in our case, it's a piece of pie in the sky, right? Everyone likes to talk about how it's a triangle-shaped plane, so not the whole pie just a piece. A slice. Yeah, just a slice of pie. The beauty of this is people like pie in the sky. They want you to go after the future that we all want to live in, and we think of ourselves simply as humble servants of a future that everybody wants. Who doesn't want to fly on a more efficient, less polluting, less noise, more comfortable, more commodious, more future-oriented plane. With better tech, everybody wants that. Without planes, what would our modern world be? It would be wholly different. I think people want that, but they also want believability, right? They want the believability of, okay, you're not just promising us flying cars, you're promising us something that we're going to see in our lifetime, that we're going to feel comfortable and safe about. That's not going to create this not in my backyard thing. This really fits all that, right? Because we have airport infrastructure, we have FAA guidelines that are already existing that we can design to, and when people see the reality of what we're doing, the pragmatism of what we're doing, that's where the belief connects to the reality, the pragmatic reality, and that's where I think people helped us grow a really broad coalition to back the businesses. No, absolutely. I want to ask you more about that in a second, but to your point earlier, you decided to take on one of the toughest industries there is, right? It's one of the most regulated industries that exists. What gave you confidence that you'd be able to overcome inherent challenges, like extremely slow innovation cycles compared to, let's say, software, right? Or potentially long airworthiness certification process. What gave you that kind of confidence? What most entrepreneurs and innovators do is they take a problem and turn it on its head and shake it upside down until all the change comes out of its pockets, right? And then they make something out of that. Now, in this case, it's pretty simple. Certification is a challenge. And so people often speak of that as though it's an impediment. We see it as an enabler. The reason being, it provides certainty. Whenever you're, whenever you're building something, that's the perception is risky. And you yourself see that destination as inevitable. I'm committed to that destination. This is where we're going. Then what you're looking for is certain milestones along the way or certain things when you begin. Let me give you an example. What's great about this market that we're entering is some things are absolutely certain. The market is defined by moving people to destinations from one point to another point. Those are called city pairs. They never change. LA is not getting any closer in New York and it's not getting any further from New York. So it helps us understand the certainty around that. The FAA is not quite so certain, but it's on the same level, right? Because we have this thing called Part 25, right? That's the regulation that governs certification of this type of passenger aircraft. Those rules are written and we get to use those as the enabler of our business because we don't need to guess where the bar is that we need to clear. So everybody that's working towards that. First part, second part, real quick, partners. Rather than design everything ourselves, we're simply saying there's three things about this plane, the arrow, the flight controls, the structures, all composite, right? Carbon fiber. That's what we're going to focus on and then we're going to use our partners in supply, our partners in design and development. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just clump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Are there prominent in their subsidiary scale composites, the likes of RTX with Pratt and Whitney and Collins? I could go on and on. There's a long list of partners that supporting us. They bring us the solidity of having parts that we can put out into our product that are already certified. They've already been through that process. Do we have to integrate them and certify it as one unit? But that is really the thing that gives us the sense of Yeah, that's a big piece of it, isn't it? Already. Right now at Woodhouse Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM, get 0% APR for 72 months on select 2026 RAM 1500 models during the make this the summer event. 10 year 100,000 miles powertrain warranty now at Woodhouse with proof credit tax title license extra $299 dock fee into a signing offer ends June 30th, 2026 CDL for details and I mean similarly you started one of the most capital intensive businesses there is that has long been one of the biggest barriers to entry right not just for companies or individuals but even countries right how did you feel prepared to tackle financing did you go straight to the big airlines you know what did that process kind of look like for you as you started to think about how do I actually fund this whole thing when we started it was 2020 the middle of the pandemic which interestingly led to a different kind of a way to develop a company because we were able to recruit from anywhere we didn't have a headquarters we were all working out of our home offices and it was just a handful of us at the beginning at that time climate tech and climate investing was in a boom time and so we went to climate tech investors, but they had very little familiarities. with this sort of thing. Now obviously, in order to address things in climate, you can't just solve it with software. You have to build big things like power plants and boats and planes and, you know, trucks and, you know, that's something that you need to do. But the climate tech investment community wasn't really set up for that. That's why we went directly to the Air Force, to the airlines, to the supply chain. And he said, "You, on the supply side would love to have more people to sell your products to." And on the demand side, the airlines really needed a solution for the middle market. They needed a solution for lower fuel burn and all sorts of other things. So we saw for supply and demand, as opposed to doing the traditional venture, you know, here's the pie in the sky, a million dollar checks and we'll go in that direction. We really had to pull back regroup and adjust, not pivot because we're building planes. You know, we're not going to pivot to building a video game, but we had that opportunity to go back and say, "Okay, what's our best path?" Yeah, that's interesting. I was going to ask about investor appetite as well, but you've just kind of answered it. And I assume that once you've made the case to airlines, right, "Hey, this will help you reduce up to half of your number one line item cost, saving you millions of dollars a year." I think it is, right? While helping you meet your emissions goals, it's a win-win for them. It's a no-brainer. Yeah, for sure. There's so many, the more they scratch through the surface, the more they realize the benefit. I mean, if you look at all of the top things that are what you would call growth impediments to the business, this plane really addresses them. So, I mean, if you go back, it depends on what your perspective is, right? If you ask the FAA, what's the impediment to growth, they might say, "Well, noise at the airports, pollution at the airport particulates from emissions around the airport." The airlines themselves would almost certainly say, "Fuelburn and emissions?" That's the passenger. What's your impediment to flying more often? They might say, "Price linked to fuel burn." But they might also say, "Comfort," right? They might say, "If the experience was better, I would fly more." Because that's discretionary income that people are using to travel if it's not a business. So, all of those things we can address here, that ultimately will lead to sustained growth. Amazingly, this industry, if you look over the past 25 years or so, we've had our tough times, 9/11, financial crisis, COVID, right? The industry is weathered those and doubled effectively in that time period, at least. The industry has a big question mark right now, which is, "Are we going to double again by 2050, as is projected? Are we not?" Really, what Jet Zero offers is a solution to the impediments to that growth, so that the industry can continue to grow at the traditional rate. Right. Speaking of funding, to date, you've raised, I think it's about $300 million, including from some of the top airlines that we mentioned, as well as a $235 million grant from the U.S. Air Force that was awarded in 2023 to produce and fly a demonstrator jet in 2027. That must have just been a pinch-me moment. How did that contract come about? Well, it was a long process. It was a pinch-me moment, thanks for seeing that. It was amazing. It's surreal when you're doing a press conference with the Secretary of the Air Force and he's extolling the virtues of this technology. That is a real pinch-me moment. There was a lot of work that went into that right because it actually started two years prior to that. In fact, in two years, it was August and August. We announced the Air Force in 23 August. In 21 August, we announced our first big project since launching the company was with NASA. And so for two years, we had been working with NASA on the further development of the technologies that go into this. And effectively, it was NASA that ushered us straight into the Pentagon. They basically said, "Look, we've been developing this technology for decades and we've proven it out. We've proven our arrows, structures, and flight controls, these three enabling technologies." But they walked into the Air Force and said, "Hey, we heard you're looking for a 21st century plane for a 21st century problems, range, payload. You should be looking at blended wing." And they said, "We are looking at blended wing. What is there?" And they said, "Well, here. Jet Zero is dedicated to it." So now when we're working with the Air Force, there are certain NASA employees that are seconded to that program. So it's kind of a joint effort. And also the FAA is involved already in certain research institutions. Georgia Tech, for example, is a leading aerospace program among universities and they have representation on the program. You know, it's really interesting because obviously you talked about the importance of partnerships. And one thing that I was really curious about was, you know, on the commercial side of things, you've got these carriers like United, Alaska, Delta. What does their support enable for you and what kind of feedback had they already given when it comes to operations and design? I imagine it's so valuable. Well, a few things. They're all different. They're all bringing what they're enthusiastic about. And that's the cool thing. So each of them has been enthusiastic about different things. So for example, United is the most recent announcement. Great big order from them. And that signals demand for this product. When this leading airline in the United States says we want to order 100 days aircraft and option another 100. That's a massive statement. So great. And we're working with them on the financial front and really trying to connect the dots on that through line to a successful business because they have a venture group that's focused on that. So their venture group is working very closely with us. On the Alaska side, they were the first airline in their venture group is investing in what they think are the most innovative technologies. So we've been working with them on the innovative technologies front and how that works. When it comes to Delta, they were really interested in the cabin technology. They were interested in what's going to mean because they kind of looked at this and said ultimately we buy seats in a cabin on a plane. That's what we sell to our customers as a seat. So they looked at this different shape and have been now for a few years. And they said we really want to lean into that. And so we've been working with them very closely on what they would like to see in a cabin. Fuel burning emissions reductions are awesome, but ultimately they want to know that their passengers will get on and love the experience. Right. Absolutely. Let's talk about the travel experience. For passengers, what would it feel like to fly on this plane? It'll be super comfortable. It's a spacious cabin. We've built multiple full-scale mock-ups of it so that particularly our airlines can have a sense. The first question people ask is, how many windows are there? Are there windows when you're in the wing and so forth? And the answer is it's not about the windows because we have virtual windows all around us in our hands, in our laps on the seat back. And those have exterior views. It's really more about how spacious is this, how comfortable is it? And so it's really bringing up a premium experience and upgrading really every C class. That's the idea. I've seen it described as so-called living room in the sky. I'm sure you don't hate that description. No, no. Is it true that the cabin would be open to all kinds of configuration options, including a world with no dreaded middle seat? That is absolutely true. There are six separate compartments by design. And so they could be set up as six different C classes. That might be a little bit complex or a bridge too far. But maybe not. It's really up to the airlines to make that decision. It's really fascinating to see how you've been able to try to innovate in this way, but then make it clear that it's up to the carriers to kind of plug and play as they wish. It seems like that's one of your approaches, balancing innovation with a flexibility to, if someone's resistant to change, maybe. Exactly. We want to be able to do kind of mass customization, where we give them a pallet of choices to go to so that we can mass produce, but we absolutely want to give them flexibility. What about powering the plane? There's a lot of movement around sustainable aviation fuel and hydrogen-powered aircraft. You yourself have previously worked at an electric plane startup, which we talked about. What is your case for innovating around the airframe and how that's a more urgent priority is a question that I got? Yeah, I think that's, you just said it perfectly well. Innovating the airframe is a more urgent priority than propulsion. Using jet engines, the riskiest thing that you can have in an aircraft development program is a new engine. You need reliability in the engine. So our choice was, let's use existing burning regular jet fuel. That's the way to go. You begin with the end in mind is you need a more efficient airframe. Once you have that, you're lowering the cost to more expensive entrance, right? Anything that enters the market tends to be a little bit more expensive at the beginning until you get the economies of scale. That's going to be true for sustainable aviation fuel, for hydrogen, for hybrid electric. Electric, I'm a fan of. It just isn't going be probably even in our lifetime. remarkable if we have jets of this size flying on electric, unless we have some magic battery breakthrough. Because of regulation, because of engineering, just because of battery energy again. Okay, got it. And going forward, I suppose, is there anything to stop the hemates, like Boeing and Airbus to start doing what you're doing? And is there a reason that you think that this hasn't already been done? No, not at all. In fact, we expect them eventually to also be doing the. But they're not set up to absorb the risk. It's actually way easier for a startup to absorb the risk of change than it is to move the big ship in a new direction. I think that it serves the industry well. I think actually. It's why I'm uncomfortable with the term disruption. I think it fits, but I think it's actually good for the entire industry, including Airbus and Boeing. The same way the advent of Tesla was, you know, other car makers are now making electric cars. I see this almost exactly the same. This will be eventually. You'll see all plane makers in the space making these type of planes. Just not yet. Someone's got to do it first and wear up for the challenge. You absolutely see this as the future of commercial flying. Absolutely. I see no reason why, you know, in the 2050 time frame, for example, all big planes, all wing planes. Yeah. And to be clear, I think your current time frame as well for going into service is in the 2030s, early 2030s. That's right. Yeah. And even the CEOs of Airbus and Boeing previously have said they see this as the future, but they're not ready for it now. And that's fine. Right. Someone needs to prove it, and we're happy for it to be us. Right. Yeah. There you go. All right. This brings me to a segment we're calling what it takes, where an audience member gets to hear more on what it takes to get where you are. Great. Today, Nico, a mobility consultant based in Orange County, who previously worked for Lufthansa, asks, "What convinced you to move into launching a new aircraft maker when Boeing and Airbus have actually seen declines in demand in recent years?" Oh, I can tell you what convinced me, but it wasn't. There's nothing about declines in demand. These companies have thousands of aircraft in their order bank. So demand is high. We actually have way more demand than we can build to. The question, though, of what would motivate us to do this is it's never the one thing, right? You always, anything that's big in your life, there better be more than one reason to do it. Like, we're good as human beings of sort of connecting a bunch of dots and saying, "Okay, I've got a picture here." And so for us, there were multiple pieces to that picture. NASA'd put a billion dollars into researching these technologies. The supply chain was thirsty for someone new to sell to and they had these parts on demand. I had an amazing group of people come together and say, "Yeah, we want to join this mission." The Air Force came to bear, the airlines came to bear. Like, there are so many things that came too, that it really put us in a position to go, "Yeah, we're ready." Thank you, Tom. Now we're going to do a quick rapid fire round. Don't overthink it. Just say whatever comes to mind, ready? All right. What is your favorite way to unwind after a long day? Typically, I'm watching soccer. That's the favorite way to unwind. Liverpool's my team. If they're playing a game, highlights, transfer news, that's my go-to. Premier League fan. How many hours of sleep do you get each night? Oh jeez, depends on the night. In the past week, the range has been between one and a half hours and nine hours. That's a big range. Yeah. What do you like to ask when you're hiring? What are you going to do on day one without any supervision or instruction? Biggest pet peeve in the workplace. A possessive mindset. Like, this is my thing, or my resource, or you know, I'm really into a flat organization and people working together, cross-functionally, not a big fan of like overt hierarchy as little as possible. Well, Tom, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Had fun too. Thanks for the show. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on Behind the Business. For more stories on business and leadership, follow our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week. Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new, grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new, grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mavily.