The founder of "Uber" for booking flights Sergey Petrossov told the story of his success

Source: monaco-ru.com

Earlier, "Megamind" wrote that the service for booking private flights JetSmarter , attracted $ 20 million in a round B. The founder of the service is a native of Russia, Sergei Petrossov.

Petrossov had several IT projects designed for the Russian market, but real success came to him thanks to the startup JetSmarter - this is “Uber for the private jets market,” as described by the businessman himself.
')
Sergey Petrossov told Slon Magazine about his previous projects, about failures, about the history of creating the JetSmarter service, about the prospects for its development, and about working in Russia.

"Megamind" leads the most interesting quotes from the interview .

About their first projects in Russia

When I launched several companies here, I already had experience in the IT business in the USA - I was engaged in it, even when I was 18 and I was studying at a university in Florida. My first technological project - LiveContact, was really made by hands of developers from Russia. It was a SaaS service aimed at Western Europe and offering sites to organize customer support through chat, audio and video. We sold LiveContact, to which several hundred sites were connected, quite quickly, in 2009, but I cannot name the buyer and the terms of the transaction.

About the project of distance education system

Yes, this project was associated with software for universities and schools, which were given the opportunity to organize distance learning for students and apprentices. We reached the base of about 100 thousand students, four universities were connected to the system: Moscow State University. Lomonosov Moscow State Railway University, Moscow Institute of Communications, Siberian Federal University.

It was assumed that the project would be of national scale and receive state support (state universities should have become customers), but due to bureaucracy and corruption in the Russian education system, the project never reached the federal level. In 2012, we licensed the product to the state, I left the project. Now the company licenses software to several universities and private companies in the distance learning market.

The project was not [particularly] financially successful, but it gave me acquaintances with many politicians, successful businessmen and even billionaires.

On the analogy between Uber and JetSmarter

In the analogy between JetSmarter and Uber lies the fact that both services allow you to quickly and conveniently book a flight in a mobile application. With us you can do it in a few minutes, bypassing the chain of brokers, and fly away within a few hours. We calculate the availability of flights in real time, based on information directly from the airlines. There are a lot of nuances here - it’s not just necessary to keep track of which point the plane moves to, but also, for example, take into account the time spent in flight by the pilots, refueling the aircraft, and so on.

Inside the application are three products. At JetCharters, users can book a charter for the flight, setting the direction and type of the vessel, at JetDeals we offer a search for one-way flights - to close the so-called empty legs when the jets fly empty to the point where they have to pick up the passenger. The third service is JetShuttle, where the user can book one seat on an airplane that flies a regular flight - for now, these are flights only in the USA, but we plan to expand the geography. JetSmarter services are available in 170 countries.

About monetization

For frequent flyer membership, we charge $ 3,000 as an “admission ticket,” and then $ 9,000 annually. With a membership, you can fly for free with empty flights, finding them on JetDeals, without it you get such flights at prices with big discounts (up to 70% of the usual prices on charters).

Additionally, those who signed up for membership receive discounts on regular charter flights at JetCharters - 10–30%, and also a personal “concierge” who can book, for example, a restaurant table at the arrival site, buy tickets for a concert, rent a car, and more. .d About four thousand free flights per month are available to members.

About the service audience

Since its launch in March 2013, we have been growing and growing by 15–20% every month, now we have about three hundred thousand application installations. I cannot disclose the number of users who bought a membership.

We expect that by the end of 2015, the number of bookings through the application will be 10 thousand. Calculate the number of bookings per month is difficult, because some months the user base is growing by 20%, in some - by 100%.

[They fly most often] in the so-called “golden triangle” - between Los Angeles, New York and South Florida.

We focus on a wealthy audience, with a personal fortune of $ 100,000 to $ 1 million, but in fact there are other users. I often tell that we have one college student who bought a membership, breaking the installment on payments by two credit cards. There are other stories, but, unfortunately, I cannot share them - many of our users do not want us to tell about them.

About the specifics of the Asian market

In Asia, users are a bit more demanding, but in general, their preferences are no different. The greatest difficulty in entering the new market is not in users, but in finding aircraft suppliers that are suitable for the operation of our applications JetDeals and JetShuttle.

About a recent round of $ 20 million

It was already Round B, with members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, several world-famous musicians and people from the entertainment industry, as well as the London-based private equity fund, people from those who are analysts for UHNWI (ultra high net figure), and also family offices and C-Level executives (top managers: CEO, CFO, etc.) companies such as Goldman Sachs and Twitter .

I cannot name specific names, except those already voiced (Saudi Prince Abdullah bin Bandar bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud and rapper Jay Z , according to Business Insider), but I can say that all of our private investors have invested before the round B , and in the course of it, were the clients of business aviation, they knew us. I can say that everyone who participated in the recent round was users of JetSmarter.

On development plans in Russia and in the world

We will expand our services, primarily JetDeals and JetShuttle. We plan to increase the volume of offers on such markets as China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, as well as New Zealand and Australia. In 2016, we want to pass the mark of 1 million users and 50 thousand bookings for the year. At the same time, we expect that the number of aircraft available in the application will not exceed 3.3 thousand. We estimate the world market of flights on private jets at $ 60 billion, the market of business aviation is 2-3 times more.

The money of the recent round went to expand partnerships with airlines, including in Russia.