糖心视频

Morning Markets: So much for VC being boring.

Quick hit this Friday about , a company that I didn’t think had a real shot at success. For those keeping score, brilliant thoughts like that one are why I’m a writer and not an investor.

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Boom, a Y Combinator company, has closed a $100 million round that includes “$56 million in new investment as well as previously-announced strategic investments,” it announced today. The new capital was led by聽 . YC’s took part along with other investors and angels. It also brings the company’s total raised to $141 million, according to the company.

It’s a lot of players betting on a company that is trying to do something really hard. Namely, build a supersonic jet that will fly across the Atlantic at speeds of — Boom claims — Mach 2.2. That’s incredibly fast.

Boom describes its jet, dubbed the “Overture,” as the “world鈥檚 first economically viable supersonic airliner.” Concorde disses aside, I hope the company is right, and that it succeeds.

I’m mostly being selfish, as I’d like to get to London faster than I can today on some lumbering van from Airbus or Boeing. And if Boom can come up with a way to fly from Boston to San Francisco at Mach 2.2, I will personally put up a kidney. Flying is too slow today, and it drives me nuts.

But what hits me in particular about Boom is that it isn’t enterprise software or a social app with a known path to virality. It’s not a new game, or a VR helmet, or a nifty way to store lots of data on someone else’s cloud or protect passwords at scale. It’s not software, it’s hardware. And silly-hard hardware at that. Which makes it incredibly risky, with the chance of a huge payout for investors, and, as mentioned above, a huge chance at bankrupting me personally if I can leave United and its fleet of 7xx airplanes for good.

It feels very venture capital, in other words. Perhaps that’s way , and , and , and , and , and , not to mention YC and Emerson are putting up the money.

Can you imagine the bragging rights if it works?

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