Good morning, everyone. Im scott mcgrew. When someone comes up with a new idea, a new invention, a new way of looking at thicks the classic reaction is, its been tried before or itll never work or nobody wants it. And in nearly every case the critics are wrong. Take the automobile, for instance, henry ford reportedly said if i had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse. I know not to react that way when i hear a new idea. Dont say its been tried before or itll never work. It is awfully tempting in the case of boone technology, a young group of entrepreneur who is want to build a supersonic airplane to take travelers from new york to london in a little less than four hours at twice the speed of sound to be a bit doubtful. Bret shoal is the founder of boom technologies. Some drop out of college to start their first company. He dropped out of high school to start his, then went back to cloj. Joined by narc new and aaron levy. Im going to apologize, and i think you saw that setup coming that im going to apologize. Itll never work, its been tried before, and nobody wants it. Whats your reaction . Well, it has been tried before. The thing about supersonic travel is its not new, its existed for 50 years. The problem was the technology hasnt existed to make et affordable for practical travel. So concord, roundtrip ticket new york to london would set you back 20,000. Thats a bucket list kind of thing. Thats not transportation. But fast forward 50 years, we have the technology to doitd in a way more affordable way. What technology . The materials . It comes down to three things aerodynamics, materials, and propulsion. Aerodynamics, build in simulation a much more aerodynamic design than you can develop in a wind tunnel. Materials, light weight, stronger rs that can take higher temperatures, better for the stress of supersonic flight. And engine technology. Concord flew an afterburner, which it looks cool at an air show, but its way more fuel inefficient and its also souper loud. You can make it affordable but then again the technology to avoid the sonic boom, i mean, ive heard that nasa and lockheed are working on one for 2019. Mmhmm. That would lessen the sound. How are you able to avoid that sonic boom or its not even allowed flying over the u. S. Was because its so loud. Lets start with the minimum viable product. It turns out there are over 500 routes in the world where you can fly supersonic and give people a big speedup without worrying about the over land issue. Thats where were starting. New york to london, San Francisco to tokyo, seattle to shanghai, all kinds of routes mostly over water where you can get a big speedup without worrying about the sonic boom. That said, this airplane is much quieter than concord. Instead of sound like a bang, its more like a car door slam. Over land, well have to see. 2,500 each way new york to london. Whats the price trajectory . Whos your target audience . Could we possibly see a drop in price with speed . Thats where were headed. Our longterm ambition is anywhere in the world for five hours and 100 bucks. Were chipping away at that. Today the technology exists to do that for the same price of a business tick class ticket. Let me bring this in for a bit of landing and that is you havent built the airplane yet. Right. You have a bunch of experts, though. Obviously my first question, lear should do this or citation. They build airplanes and you dont. Mmhmm. But youve been able to bring in experts despite the fact that your previous job was at groupon. Mmhmm. You arent i mean, youre a pilot, but you dont design airplanes. How did you bring in so many experts . I think people underestimate what they can learn when theyre motivated. Ive within a pilot for 15 years. Ive loved airplanes since i was kid. It makes no sense for going backward in air travel performance when our computers and phones are better. I spent about a year selfteaching, textbooks, spreadsheet, met as many smart people as i could find. If youre going to put together a dream team on, this you can get anybody in the world we want and we found those people and got them. Richard branson from virgin. Whats his involvement with the project. Virgin group has options on the first ten aircraft. Thats a 2 billion deal there. But they havent given you any money. Option funding on the aircraft. Richards tried to buy concord multiple times for virgin. When this dling delivers, theres no way virgin wont buy the airplane. Wheres the faa on this . The. The regulators are all personally excited about this. They want to see some progress in air travel. One of the things that makes this practical and today all of the ketek nothings on this airplane, the materials, the aerodynamics, the flight control, the propulsion, theyve all been regulatory approved in other aircraft. So were not going to regulators and saying lets rewrite the rules. Rules are fine. Well follow the rules. This sounds similar and i think this will be quite flattering, heres guy who essentially didnt know a whole lot about rockets, sent a rock tote the or a capsule to the International Space station after a long period of time. Right. He had one advantage and that was he helped found paypal, so he had a lot of money. So wheres the money going to come from . It comes from investors and from customers. So the money is really not the problem here. Really. No, its not. You tear first person who has ever sat in that chair and said the money is not the problem. No. When this thing comes to market, were going to sell over 1,000 airplanes. You have to fill the airplanes with money. But 1,000 airplanes times 200 million each, thats big. The investor return on that is awesome. I get that. We have to build the airplane first. Right. Investors are super excited. Okay. All right. And boeing and air bot . Well, boeing and airbus, its the classic story of optimization versus disruptive innovation. I hate to use the buzzwords but its true here. Theyve been optimizing the same basic design for 50 years, but theyve been making it safer and more efficient, but they havent changed the standard of airplane performance. So boeing, theyre in a battle with airbus for Single Market share, trying to make money on each stream line of scrimmager they share. The ceo of boeing, you can say i want to build a supersonic airplane, theyll probably find a new ceo. This needs to be nurtured in new companies. The idea youre building an airplane that will be sold to the Major Airlines . Thats right. Straightforward. Well make the airplanes, sell them to airlines, airlines will take people around the world. Tell us about the comforts of a supersonic ride and higherups, more radiation, right . Its actually a great ride. The higher you are, the less turbulence there is. So it will be a smoother ride. The Passenger Experience will be about like flying first class dmakally. Theres one seed on each side of the aisle so you dont have to choose window or aisle, your own personal overhead bin. It will be awesome on board. Isle take the overhead bin. Come back when you have an airplane. I believe in you because elon musk did it and so many others. Come back went youve got yourself maybe we can do the show on the plane. This. This isnt years away. Our first demonstrator airplane flies towards the end of next year. Blake, were excited for you. Thank you. Up next, google has an answer for aelectric San Jose Sharks the battle of the home assistant, when press here continues. Welcome back to press here. I remember years ago trying to convince someone they needed a dvr, a tivo, and they did not see the value. Of course today Everybody Knows they need a dvr. I bring this up because pi new gotta have thing is a home assistant. The amazon echo sit ong the kitchen counter. You talk it to and it plays music or tells you the cubs score. It has a voice. Its name is alexa. Less than two weeks from now, google will lease its rival to the echo called the google home. It does not have a name but it will have the power of google behind it and that may be enough. Dave evans is a futurist, holds patents on all kinds of things including the connected car. Hes an expert on the internet of things as well. You were just telling me you have nine alexas in your house . Three in my home today and six more arrive today, bringing it up to nine. Have you had trouble convincing people why . Theyll say i have siri on my phone. Whats the cubs score . I dont think one negates the other. Having it on your phone is powerful too because a phone gives you context, location, with you all the time in your pocket. But the convenience of having something in your own home, youre sit ong the couch, you say turn on my lights or play music or how many ounces in a cup, whatever you need, because you have it in the kitchen perhaps, its powerful. The two complement each other very well. I use siri more, havent splurged yet. What are the features you find most convenient . For alexa, i like the language interface, of course, like being able to just speak. I dont have to take a device out. Push a button on it. I just speak. You can say call me an uber. As long as youve set up the account ahead of time, it does. Right. Its phenomenal in that way. Google now is you know, theyve caught on and theyve got their little looks like an air freshener, that theyre going to why did it take us so long to figure out this was going to be a thing and now other companies are copying it almost as if in a pan sncc. I think theres a perfect storm of technology. So everythings in the cloud so, its accessible. I think the Voice Technologys gotten really well. The fact you can now speak and it understands. Its not asking you, can you clarify that or say it again. The text to speech is really good. It speaks back. And Network Connectivity is so ubiquitous, its this perfect storm of capabilities coming together that enables it. This would be very challenging to do a decade ago, but youd have Something Like a fridge in your home. But the price point, the technology, perfect storm has come together to enable it. Amazon and goog havent tradition any li been gadget companies. Theyve made gadgets but when theyve done so its been sort of a means to an end to get consumers into those ecosystems and spend more time and engage. Do you see these devices as a means to another end or are they in and of themselves theyre going to be big sellers and make a lot of money . On one hand, youre selling the device itself, right . And over time you might see Premium Services on those devices surcharging for. Bottom line, those devices help you buy things. From an amazon perspective youre now using lets say echo or alexa to purchase something with a very low barrier to its very easy to use your voice, alexa, buy me x and it shows up. One click revolution. Exactly. But this is no click. Your Company Makes an app that brings all these things together. If this then that is a xet for of yours, fair . You smile. We think were very much next generation. Were a big fan because they proved market perez but string fi is another level. We call them flows, recipes, our ability to create flows is powerful. One of the ones i liked as an example is if my Wireless Sensor detects this or you know what i really liked was if my forecast says its going to rain, turn the lights blue in the hallway before i leave. And adjust your irrigation system at the same time and your temperature, your thermostat. This is where its really at. Its one thing to build the device but to be kind of the os of all of this. Right. We often joke that everythings getting connected but its not connected together. And thats where we come in. We let people connect anything to anything regardless of manufacture, protocol, standard. We make it real easy for people with no Technology Background to connect things together in powerful ways. At the end of the day, all this technology, unless it solves real problems its just gimmicky, right . We let you build great experiences with the stuff you have. What do you expect as far as thinking about amazon, google, and maybe facebook as the os, as the underlying infrastructure for people to build on top of . Weve Seen Technology sort of consolidate into these main players. Is this another example where these are the layers . Theyre different ecosystems. On one hand, therein lies the problem because which ecosystem do you align to . Were seeing the proliferation of ecosystems. We unify all of that. But Consumers Want choice. They want to pick the best product and know it works. Doesnt look like android is going to be it will be a player for sure. Regarding the technology, googles ceo recently said that the ability to distinguish between accents and things like that will happen in the future. Theyre even working towards being able to detect emotion. How far along are we . Were very far along. If you Call Companies today for customer support, your carrier or what have you, your Cable Company and you express anger in your voice, it immediately accelerates you to the top of the queue. That right there, from a visual perspective, we can recognize 40 different emotions from a visual perspective. Were getting pretty close. When we horse race this between amazon and google, the two Major Players right now, it would seem google would have the ultimate advantage in that hardware is relatively easy to create. Its a box with some microphones and speakers. Googles got google behind it. I mean, its got the worlds knowledge in a way that amazon may not have. Is that a Fair Assessment . I think what google has is a few things to their advantage. One, they have their deep mind technology, the machine learning, which is really powerful, but they also have android, which is prevalent across a lot of devices, tell viss, phones and so on. And they have a lot of apps like gmail for your email and google calendar. They have a large footprint and they can give you continuity of experience where perhaps some of the other folks cant do that. Dave evans is the cto of stringify. I highly recommend, if youre playing around, its pretty cool. Back in just a bit. Welcome back to press here. You can give me a call right now at 4084324747. This is my actual phone number, my direct line. But i will not answer. I pretty much never answer the phone at my desk. And you cant leave voice mail because its full. I dont check it. For most people the office phone is just simply dead. You can get a hold of me. I use email all the time, twitter. Our office doesnt use slack, but i hear its great. It was introduced on this show. But the office phone, forget it. Craig walker knows all about office communication. He is the inventor of Grand Central sold to google to become google voice. Became Google Ventures first entrepreneur in residence and runs dial pad, which promises to make office communication, quote, delightful. Now, let me ask you, if you i mean, youve done all these Different Things with startups with office communication. Where does the love for this come from . Were you the kid who has little phones or tin cans and talking to the neighbors sort of thing . It came from just being frustrated of how it was, right . So Grand Central we started because i had three phones my cell, work, home number. Check three different voice mails. It would drive me crazy. Each one would be different. Im like why cant there just be a number for me, if someone dials that number be, ill take it wherever its the most convenient. That was behind google voice and Grand Central. Now take that to the business. The workers are around, you know, works no longer a place you go, its a thing you do. And so being able to take calls and take messages anywhere you are on any device youre using seems that would be a good idea. Ive been covering tech for a decade, and i covered cisco back in, you know, the mid2000s and this was a dream then, creating the unified communications platform. Since then youve seen everything from skype up to slack and facebook at work. There is this promise of do anything, anywhere, from any device, at any time, talking to anyone. Where did we go wrong . Why has this been so difficult . I think that first generation of what they used to call unified communications was more complex hardware sitting in a closet. The i. T. Guys had to manage and it basically costs more and was more complicated. Whereas now with everything in the cloud, theres no hardware, theres nothing on premise, everyones got their mobile device, which is probably their primary phone, and were able to build these features. Youre an Office Communications company that doesnt have any hardware. Exactly. I bring the hardware. My ipad, laptop, iphone, whatever. . And you think of the i. T. Department at a business. Theyll have to provide you a network, have to give you a laptop, and youre probably bringing your own cell phone. Wouldnt it be great just to use those three things for everything and you can do voice, video, message, voice mail, conferences, collaboration all on the things . At the same time when you bring your own devices lots of times youre getting calls and multiple times and crossing with your family. How do you separate all this sort of work and regular life. Yeah, well, interestingly enough, people give out their personal cell phone for work a lot of times because they dont have this so, thats kind of blurring has happened. Way dial pad works is your personal cell phone can actually have two identities. If im calling my wife it will show me as my cell phone number but if im calling a business associate or client it will show me as my work number. Im able to separate those two. I have two different voice mails, two different caller i. D. S, two different messaging platforms and im able to keep that line distinct. Im with you, when off work twitter account and a personal twitter account or a facebook or whatever, you think did i just post that to the wrong one . It does seem sort of were in this voice resurgence and im thinking of Hillary Clinton and her emails, that i bet they wish they had ha a lot of those conversations via voice. Yeah. And not via email. Well, in voice is actually a super foich way to get things done. You can troubleshoot on the fly, you can get in arguments, you can solve problems immediately without this back and forth.