In my previous blog post, I said that I would reveal the Secret Key to unlocking the billions of dollars available through semi-private jet travel. But before I do the big reveal, some additional context might help you more fully appreciate it.
I think the best way to start is to tell you the story of how I got involved in this concept in the first place. After all, you may be wondering what I’m even doing anywhere near this business, considering that the closest I’ve ever been to a private jet is driving by them on the way to the airport.
It was eight years ago, and I’d been laid off from my latest job. As a fifty-something in Silicon Valley where age discrimination is standard business practice, my job search wasn’t going well. My severance was running out and unemployment wasn’t even close to cutting it. So in between pumping out resumes, I was picking up contract work wherever I could find it, when, out of the blue, I landed a contract to build a web application for a company in the semi-private jet business named JumpJet. “Cool!” I thought. “Finally, a break.” This was a chance to earn some desperately needed income and work on an exciting project for a change. I even imagined I might get a ride on a private jet out of the gig.
Now, I had no idea what semi-private jet travel was. But it didn’t take long to get the concept: Semi-private is just a middle option between commercial airline travel, which is crowded, cramped, and time-consuming, and private jet travel where ultra elites travel in complete luxury, privacy and convenience. With semi-private, a few individuals or groups share private jets in groups as small as 3, and thus bring the cost per person down. Think: jetpooling.
JumpJet’s pitch was that you could fly on private jets for about the cost of first-class. The only catch was that you would need to share the jet with other passengers. But as I got deeper into the project I observed that they treated the fact that passengers would be sharing flights as a dirty little secret. They guaranteed that a jet would always be available whenever and wherever you need it, and they suggested that chances are no one else would be on the flight anyway.
As I was working on their web application and had a direct look at their database, I could plainly see that their business model was fundamentally flawed. The only way to fly people on private jets for the price of first-class commercial is if you fill the jet to at least 90% capacity. And in order to do that, you need to get multiple parties to coordinate their travel plans so that they are leaving at the same time, from the same airport, going to the same airport.
It soon became apparent to me that in order for this business to work you would need a huge number of members in order to find enough matching trips. Even then, the passengers would need to be flexible and cooperative in order to match their travel plans along those three axes (i.e. Time/Date, From Airport and To Airport).
This thought process naturally led to my big epiphany: In order to have lots of people coordinating their travel plans and sharing packed flights, they need to have a social, collaborative mindset. I realized that the critical success factor wasn’t creating some fancy application — it was changing the mindset of the market. Traveling socially with other smart, successful, friendly people isn’t lame — it’s cool!
I also quickly realized that the founders of JumpJet had no clue about any of this. They saw their customers as kind of ‘Elites Lite’ — looking for the closest thing to the Private Jet experience that they could afford. But they only had a couple thousand members, so of course there were almost no matching trips. And since they guaranteed the flights, they had to send up these partially-filled jets, losing thousands of dollars on every flight. They were betting that they could somehow survive long enough to incrementally build their membership up to the breakeven point.
I couldn’t believe it.
And here’s where it gets even crazier. While JumpJet thought their break-even point was somewhere around 5,000 members nationwide, a quick spreadsheet analysis showed me that they would need at least 100,000 members nationwide in order to have enough matching travel plans to even approach full occupancy. There was no way they were ever going to make it with that plan.
I told the people at JumpJet all of this; valuable advice that they really should have paid me a lot of money for. Instead, they ignored my input, and later ended up stiffing me on my web development work before disappearing into oblivion.
That’s when I decided to start my own version of the business — SocialAir. I wrote a business plan, created a pitch deck and signed up for every startup pitch event I could find in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it seemed like every angel investor I pitched was stuck in the standard mindset that private jets are inherently meant to be used privately — not shared. I wasn’t making much progress.
Mind you, I was still unemployed all this time. Eventually, I landed a job in the nick of time before all my reserves ran out. Between my job, a two hour commute, taking care of my young daughters and my lack of funds, I had to set the Social Air project aside. I settled back into my career as a Digital Marketing Manager — until my fascination with the field was reignited eight years later.
Well, this post is already well over my three-minute limit, so I’ll stop here. If you’re not crystal clear on what the Secret Key I referred to was from this story, that’s understandable. That was a lot to unpack. I did reveal The Key, as promised, but it may not be exactly what you think.
But now that you have this context, in my next post I’ll focus on that Secret Key, and you’ll have all the information you need to determine whether I’m a delusional dreamer or a fucking genius!
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