Virgin LOI Demo Day

A story about how Boom Supersonic's founder turned a potentially embarrassing YC Demo Day pitch into a massive success through last-minute dealmaking.

"In 2016, this founder went through Y Combinator when it was mostly software companies. He was pitching a supersonic jet company, and I remember wondering how he was going to show traction because every YC pitch ends with showing user growth.

At the very end of his pitch, he whips out a piece of paper and says, 'As of last night, we have $5 billion in preorders thanks to Virgin and Richard Branson.' The whole room was shocked.

Here's what actually happened behind the scenes: He realized he couldn't show up to demo day with no sales. His pipeline included United, Delta, Lufthansa, and Air China, but he only had 8-9 weeks before demo day. He thought, 'There's no way I'm closing Lufthansa Airlines by demo day - I'll be lucky if I close them in nine years.'

He realized he only had two options: a startup airline or Virgin. He got one small LOI from a startup airline nobody heard of, but that wasn't enough. Luckily, he was assigned to demo day two instead of day one, buying him an extra 24 hours.

The night before demo day, he got an email from Virgin saying they'll take the first ten planes and Virgin Galactic would help build it. He fell off his chair, had to read it three times. They went from potentially being the biggest laughing stock on demo day to the company that showed up with $5 billion worth of LOIs - a record that won't be broken soon."