Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 5)

Joel Thomas: On January 6 of 2014, when I showed up at work, there were resignation letters. Everybody had quit and gone to work at another company. It was really challenging. I had just gotten engaged a year before.

To wake up on my birthday and not have anybody at the company was scary. I had invested in a large office space at the airport. I was left with two sales people and myself, Garrett, and Terry. They weren’t friends from before.

A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What year did this restructuring happen?

Bassel Ojjeh: This was in 2014. 

Sramana Mitra: LigaData really comes together in 2014. What happens next?

Bassel Ojjeh: My biggest focus continues to be profitability. Last year, I was reading something when it struck me, “You want the freedom to innovate and you need to be profitable to be free.” That combination is really important.

Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: As long as it works, it’s great. When it doesn’t work, it’s problematic. 

Joel Thomas: It did work till 2014. Everybody was doing really well. We were leaders in our industry. Because of the volume of business that we were doing, I was invited to join this organization called Air Charter Association of North America, which is an invite-only organization.

A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Bassel Ojjeh: We got our first few customers. We wanted to counter what the software industry is used to. We went open source. The goal was ubiquity. What we found out fairly quickly is, if you’re selling to traditional companies, they’re not used to buying open source software. It became counter-intuitive to them.

Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What’s the next major milestone after October 2008?

Joel Thomas: I had invested every dollar back into this marketing idea. There were two strategies. I believe in web-based marketing. That was a good strategy because of my experience of running this political organization at UCF.

A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who were buying at this point when you were doing this company in the early 2000s?

Bassel Ojjeh: I left Yahoo in 2009 and started what I just mentioned to you. That was from 2009 to 2010 onwards. Financial industry, banking, and mobile operators were buying at this point.

Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the next few strategic steps of how you put one foot before the other.

Joel Thomas: When I tried to incorporate, we didn’t have a merchant processor. If you’re working locally with people, it’s easy enough to get a wire. People who utilize our service are called unscheduled, on-demand air transport. People need this service last minute.

A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData (Part 2)

Bassel Ojjeh: Backing up, what’s really important when I started my career at the database company in Ohio was coming in and saying, “We’re working out of someone’s house.” At that time, we shipped products. You put it in the box and put it out the door.

We had to stop whatever we were doing at 4PM to make sure that we go to the shipping room and be ready for UPS. I saw the company grow from there to the point where UPS would send empty trucks on an hourly basis to load up all the boxes we had every day. I saw how we grew to that point.