Boom, Virgin, and the Pre-Order Playbook for Hard Tech Companies

Boom is low-key famous for LOIs and pre-orders. We inked $5B in LOIs during YC, including one from Virgin Group. "A new record," Sam Altman tweeted at the time, and one that may still stand. Since then, we've racked up $26B in orders and pre-orders for our Overture supersonic airliner, from United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines—all deals done before XB-1 had flown, let alone broken the sound barrier. The most common question I'm asked by founders is: How did Boom do this—and how can other startups replicate this success? So many great companies started with ideas that were not obviously good. "Summon strangers from the Internet to give you a ride." "Locate strangers on the Internet to sleep on their couches for a fee." In fact, it's so hard to distinguish good ideas from bad at the seed stage that most investors have learned to judge startups on traction. That is: the way you tell whether an idea is any good is to ship an MVP and see if product/market fit emerges. This

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• Scott Langille
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