1/ In the pre-founding days of @boomaero I worried “what do *I*—an Internet prod/eng guy—bring to the table?”

2/ My aerospace knowledge was limited to a private pilot’s license. I didn’t have the resume for the job—not even close.

3/ but it turns out that passion and vision trump knowledge and experience

4/ what did I bring to the table? Literally: the table, the chairs, the people sitting in them, and the topic of discussion

5/ No kidding. In early 2015, I had a half dozen candidates for the first couple jobs in the company. They had impressive resumes, but I didn’t know how to interview them and didn’t know how to convince them I was credible

6/ So I figured I’d get everyone together and have a big group conversation. The bet was I might not know all the answers myself but I could pick the right partners out of the room

7/ Then came the sleight of hand. I asked @schreier (a partner at @sequoia ) if I could borrow a conference room @sequoia for a couple days. I figured I’d impress the investors with the engineers and the engineers with the investors

8/ This crazy plan worked! Of the half dozen people in the room, two people became the earliest hires and key partners. Others are consulting with @boomaero to this day. All have contributed.

9/ This sleight of hand has endured as a key part of our strategy @boomaero. When you need two skeptical parties to team up with you, figure out how to get them to convince each other

10/ this turns out to be key to how we raised our Series A and started our relationship with Rolls-Royce

11/ in 2016, we were a tiny seed-stage company with massive dreams. We didn’t have the money or partners to realize them. We desperately needed both capital and credible partners.

The investors wanted to know who the partners were. The partners wanted to know who was investing

12/ It was a chicken and egg problem.

So we bet the company on building a full-scale mockup of XB-1... and throwing a massive reveal party. We invited the chickens *and* the eggs to attend.

13/ We asked prospective partners if they would do us a solid and tell prospective investors why they were interested.

And we asked the prospective investors to tell our potential partners why they thought @boomaero was a good investment.

14/ then we took a very deep breath and put the potential investors and potential partners in a conference room together. The result would be tremendous or disastrous.

15/ I sat there and watched as they closed each other. *Everyone* in that room eventually became an investor or a key partner. Whew

16/ What I learned is that it is a core job of the entrepreneur to solve chicken and egg problems. You don’t solve them solo—a key tactic is to elicit the support of the chickens and the eggs.

Then you get a supersonic jet. Or at least a decent chicken omelet.