Hermeus CEO AJ Piplica joins us to talk about the hypersonic airplanes they’re building, breaking the SR-71 speed record, their go-to-market strategy, the parallels to Top Gun Maverick, and a ton of other stuff. ---- Links * Sign up for our amazing newsletter https://www.themerge.co * Support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/the_merge * AJ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajpiplica/ * AJ Twitter https://twitter.com/AJ_Piplica * Hermeus https://www.hermeus.com/ * Hermeus Twitter https://twitter.com/HermeusCorp ---- Follow us on... * Instagram https://www.instagram.com/merge_newsletter * Facebook https://www.facebook.com/themergenews * Twitter https://twitter.com/MergeNewsletter * LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/themerge * Website https://www.themerge.co ---- Show Notes (00:57) intro (5:45) AJ’s origin story (7:25) how old were you? (8:24) not a space person (10:11) sequestration (10:48) missiles to aircraft (12:41) Monospony the board game (13:12) Raising money the right way (15:04) the name? (16:42) how Hermeus was funded (18:33) AJ loves our ChatGPT rap song (19:16) AJ's spicy take on defense profits (22:06) climbing the food chain (23:14) using a T-38 engine to go Mach 4 (24:08) Top Gun Maverick (25:52) Quarterhorse (28:52) breaking the SR-71 speed record (31:04) Darkhorse (33:41) avoiding the Valley of Death (40:09) lobbying is the price of entry (41:22) AJ's Christmas Tree (46:05) why do it at all? (49:00) Hermeus has one competitor (51:28) Halcyon (55:51) how the Pentagon prices things (59:52) outro