Only a few months ago, Outbound Aerospace was on its way up — literally — after raising more than $1 million in pre-seed funding and flying a prototype meant to pave the way for a blended-wing passenger jet. But now the Seattle startup’s fortunes have fallen back to earth.
Outbound’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Jake Armenta, announced on LinkedIn last week that the company was shutting down. He joked that the news would be greeted with celebration by “competitors such as Boeing, who have been rightly terrified of us.”
During an interview, Armenta took a more serious tone as he discussed why Outbound fell short: “The simplest answer is that we ran out of money, and hadn’t really secured customer commitments that were strong enough to secure the next stage of investment,” he told me.
