DayJet CEO: Business Models Drive Disruption, NOT Technology
Edward Iacobucci began his Tech 2007 keynote this morning in Research Triangle by sharing that he was a ‘geek” before it was fashionable, way back in the 70’s.
Iacobucci has come a long way since creating his own Computer Science specialty at Georgia Tech, pioneering the IBM OS2 in the 80’s and founding Citrix Systems in the 90s to innovate with server-based computing.
For the new millenium, Iacobucci set his sights on regional business travel, founding DayJet in 2002 to build “the world’s first per-seat, on-demand jet service.”
Five years and $200 million in debt and equity financing later, DayJet ”took off” last week, in Florida:
DayJet members, which number more than 1500 business travelers, can now book just the seat they need aboard DayJet’s fleet of Eclipse 500 VLJs–very light jets–customizing travel according to time and budget requirements: fly point-to-point between an initial five Florida DayPort and return home in a single day, with pricing a ‘modest’ premium to an equivalent full-fare economy coach fare.
For Iacobucci, DayJet’s operational launch is the culmination of his in-house engineering build-out of a “proprietary, fully integrated, real-time logistics optimization and operations system.”
While the IT power is formidable, Iacobucci stressed that the foundation of the future sucess of DayJet will be thanks more to its new type of “customer adaptive” business model, than to the cutting edge technology.
Iacobucci’s core message to the audience of tech entrepreneurs and investors today in Noth Carolina was that while technology is an “agent for change,” it is “new applications of technology” that creates market disruption.
In other entrepreneurial words, don’t look to technology to build the next “bigger, better” implementation of an existing solution, deploy technology to create and serve a new market opportunity.
Iacobucci seeks to disrupt the “modality of travel” by disaggregating regional air transportation with DayJet’s new “on-demand travel sold by the individual seat.” business model.
For the first time, “customers will be in control,” of where they fly, when they fly, and how much it costs, according to DayJet.
Iacobucci hails DayJet as the “next major advance in corporate productivity and regonal economic development” and is confident this chapter in his “geek” business life will also advance the financial returns of his investors.