2021 was a whirlwind, exciting year for the JetBlue Technology Ventures (JTV) team. We welcomed several Crewmembers, made investments in eight new portfolio companies, and continued ongoing innovation programming efforts with JetBlue Airways and our partners.
While no one could have prepared us for what 2021 had in store, I’m thankful for a great team to work with through it all. Below is a look at some of our key investments and headlines from this past year. Here’s to an eventful 2022!
Team updates
Our founder Bonny Simi joined our portfolio company Joby Aviation as Head of Air Operations and People in December 2020. I officially assumed the role of JTV’s president this past July.
Stephen Snyder joined our team at the tail end of 2020 as Operating Principal. Since that time he’s demonstrated a remarkable commitment to his role and JTV’s mission. I am delighted to share that he was promoted to Managing Director of Operations & Partnerships last month.
Ryan Chou was promoted to Investment Principal, while Daisy Garcia and Ruchit Majmudar were promoted to Senior Analyst, Investments and Senior Analyst, Operations, respectively. Sarah Mattina was also promoted to Senior Specialist, Communications & Marketing.
Jacqueline Young joined us this summer as our Venture Associate. She is currently finishing her MBA at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Amy Wang joined our team in December as an Operations Analyst based at JetBlue’s Long Island City Support Center. Amy previously worked on JetBlue’s corporate communications team supporting the IT department.
New investments
We reviewed more than 1,200 new startups in 2021 and grew our portfolio with these exciting additions:
Transparent builds and maintains a platform that aggregates data on vacation rental market conditions.
TurnKey is a vacation rental company that partnered with JetBlue Travel Products prior to its acquisition by Vacasa, which went public this month.
Lacuna helps cities make better use of fixed public infrastructure with its open-source technology platform.
Beacon.AI aims to reduce human error in aviation and improve operational efficiency using artificial intelligence.
In addition to these, we closed four other investments to be announced in 2022.
We also made three follow-on investments with existing portfolio companies Tomorrow.io, FLYR, and Universal Hydrogen. This brings JTV to a total of 36 initial investments and 21 follow-ons during our five years.
Innovation programming
We were grateful to speak at 39 travel and technology conferences this past year, both virtually and in-person. These events allow us to meet like-minded venture capitalists, founders, and travel industry innovators.
As a corporate venture firm, our role is to not only to identify and invest in great startups, but also to partner with JetBlue to bring new technology to the operation. We helped two JetBlue Airways teams — sustainability and payments — understand and envision the next generation of their respective business units through our signature Innovation Sprints. These are 12-week collaborative programs to help the teams maintain a fresh outlook and understand what the future of their sector looks like by getting to know a select group of startups.
We also partnered closely with JetBlue University to identify trends in the training sector that could help improve JetBlue Crewmembers’ educational experience.
Lastly, we continue to work closely with JetBlue Travel Products as they expand their product offering to better position JetBlue Airways as a holistic travel provider.
Portfolio updates
Lastly, here are some notable 2021 highlights and achievements from across our portfolio:
Joby Aviation went public and announced a new partnership with JetBlue Airways.
Tomorrow.io announced its intent to go public.
i6 implemented its fuel management technology with the Boston Logan consortium and also signed Virgin Atlantic as a customer.
Miles launched internationally as the number one mobile application in Japan.
Volantio expanded its partnerships with Volaris, Vueling Airlines, Corsair International, AirAsia, Japan Airlines, Vistara, and Malaysia Airlines.
FLYR Labs acquired two companies to expand its airline software and closed a $150M Series C.
We’re eager to see what 2022 has to bring and invite you to keep up with the latest by following us on Twitter and LinkedIn or by signing up for our bi-monthly newsletter.
