E7: Building a Mach 5 Jet backed by Sam Altman, Founders Fund & Khosla Ventures

Hi all,

This was happening week, I was in NYC and recorded 3 really fun episodes with Packy McCormick (Not Boring), Colin Greenspon (Cofounder of Narya Capital with VP JD Vance and Peter Thiel) and Abe Murray (AlleyCorp - firm that incubated MongoDB and Business Insider) - stay tuned for those to drop within next month.

In today’s episode, I got to sit down with AJ Piplica, founder and CEO of Hermeus, a company on a mission to build the world’s fastest aircraft. We made a special trip to Atlanta for this one.

Sharing summary of the interview below.

Hermeus fundraise and progress so far

In just over six years, AJ and his team have raised more than $200M led by Sam Altman with participation from Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel and Khosla Ventures. They have built a 200+ person team in Atlanta, and built three full-scale prototype aircrafts. The goal? Hypersonic flight at Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, enough to take you from New York to London in 90 minutes (Concorde did that in 3.5 hours).

Hermeus has gone defense-first: delivering uncrewed hypersonic aircraft to the U.S. Department of Defense and allied partners.

We forgot how to build planes

AJ mentions, in the 1940s to 70s, America would manufacture multiple aircrafts all in under 5 years. Now, that same process takes 20-25 years. In a world where China can field new systems faster than the U.S., AJ is betting on a one-aircraft-per-year cadence to flip the script. That requires iterating at a pace most would say is impossible for aerospace.

The DNA of risk appetite

His childhood obsession for “building things that move”, and being a SciFi fan from Star Trek to Star Wars, led him to Georgia Tech. After college, he got his start at Generation Orbit, where a team of fewer than 20 built and tested a rocket-powered hypersonic demonstrator for the Air Force. It was a crash course in doing more with less: avionics, rockets, flight tests, all with a minimal crew.

AJ’s family escaped communist Yugoslavia, with his grandfather literally jumping off a train to make it to North America before reuniting the family. Later, AJ learned his own parents once moved states for a startup job that collapsed within six months, a risk he didn’t even realize he grew up inside.

This taste of a small team, frontier aerospace foundation and the inherent entrepreneurial and risk taking, has now laid the foundation for Hermeus’s “life and death” motto.

This episode is a masterclass in solving hard problems fast. What it means to truly iterate at a pace you rarely see in hardware. Hope you enjoy as much as I did filming it!

Watch on Youtube:

Timestamps

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 00:41 - Why Atlanta

* 02:42 - Childhood obsession and early life

* 05:44 - Hypersonic vs Supersonic

* 10:21 - Defense first approach

* 16:22 - Fielding aircraft, then vs now

* 23:18 - Building in America

* 31:00 - Hermeus long term vision

* 38:23 - Business, numbers, incentive, deadlines

* 47:23 - Trust and co founder relationships

* 55:12 - Culture fit and hiring

* 59:51 - Why airplanes?

* 1:04:59 - Risk appetite and the migration story

* 1:12:15 - Optimists vs pessimists

* 1:18:21 - AJs LinkedIn cold messaging strategy

* 1:23:18 - Mentors

* 1:27:42 - Raising money and investor stories

* 1:29:45 - Closing thoughts

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