Bonny Simi, pilot and founder of US airline JetBlue’s corporate venturing unit, read the runes correctly in December when she left to join portfolio company Joby Aviation as head of air operations and people.
This week, Joby, which is in prototype phase of developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) passenger aircraft, has agreed a $6.6bn reverse acquisition with New York-listed special purpose acquisition vehicle Reinvent Technology Partners.
Simi, who remains an adviser to JetBlue Technology Ventures (JTV), said: “The regional transportation ecosystem is ripe for disruption, and startups like Joby Aviation will revolutionize how people move across urban areas. Joby’s vehicle platform will be the standard to beat. Nearly four years ago, we saw that Joby already was the emerging leader in the eVTOL space, and [the developments with Reinvent] validate our early investment.”
Simi had uncovered the Joby soon after setting up JTV in 2016 – it was the GCV award winner as new entrant of the year – through her network in Silicon Valley (she studied under legendary finance professor Ilya Strebulaev at Stanford) and was a big proponent on the power of eVTOL to disrupt airlines even a few years ago.
Joby is expected to operate for commercial use in the US beginning in 2024 after becoming the first company to receive an eVTOL certification basis plan with the Federal Aviation Administration and receiving the US Air Force’s first ever airworthiness approval for an eVTOL aircraft. The piloted, four-passenger aircraft is faster than existing rotorcraft, flies 150 miles on a single charge, and will be 100 times quieter than existing rotorcraft or small planes during takeoff and landing, JetBlue said.
Raj Singh, managing director of investments at JTV and co-winner of the GCV Powerlist award with Simi in September, said: “As with all of our investments, JetBlue Technology Ventures’ goal is to better position JetBlue with startup-led innovation that could radically change the travel industry. Travelers today are more conscious of their carbon footprint than ever before, so the reduction of pollution that comes with electrification is highly appealing.”
The deal is also noteworthy for bringing together the digital with physical ways of connecting people.
Long- and short-haul travel is being disrupted through the covid-19 disease, accelerating shifts to cheaper or more sustainable modes and reflecting changing communication and work patterns caused by technology more broadly.
Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, the two directors of Reinvent alongside Michael Thompson as CEO, were among the first three investors in social network Facebook and early investors in Twitter and Airbnb. As Pincus was in the early phases of founding gaming group Zynga in 2007, Hoffman was among his earliest investors having earlier set up business network LinkedIn.
Pincus and Hoffman acquired the six degrees patent that enabled the social media and network effects model to flourish based on Metcalfe’s law, which states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).
These network effects, as well as undermining the need to travel so frequently given online ties, also are starting to disrupt finance.
Pincus and Thompson began investing together in 2017 after the latter reportedly returned investors’ money from BHR Capital, a successor to hedge fund Bay Harbour Management, allegedly “following an extended period of poor performance,” according to Hedge Fund Alert at the time.
Alongside Hoffman, they established Reinvent Capital in 2018 with an eye to tapping into the late-stage venture deals being agreed.
In its regulatory filing for the Reinvent Spac, they said: “A substantial market opportunity exists for a potential business combination in the private technology sector. As of August 2020, per PitchBook Data, there were 417 private technology companies valued over $1bn globally, accounting for over $1.65 trillion of cumulative valuation, up from 18 private technology companies valued over $1bn in 2010.
“More than half of these companies are headquartered within the United States, and most are focused on our key investment sectors, including consumer internet, games, marketplaces, ecommerce, and other technology subsectors.
“While the quantity and scale of private technology companies have grown, the number of technology initial public offerings (IPOs) has remained constant at approximately 40 technology companies per year. Per studies from Jay Ritter, the average age of a technology company going public has increased from four years in the first dot-com boom to 11 years in the last decade.
“Based on Dealogic data, the average market capitalisation of technology company IPOs has increased from approximately $400m to approximately $2.8bn in this time. We believe this disconnect between the quantity of scaled technology companies and the number of those companies that actually go public each year has created an attractive backlog of potential targets for our blank-check company.”
It is an opportunity set to make the three even richer as the initial shareholders in Reinvent collectively own 20% of the Spac. In the S-1 regulatory filing: “In August 2020, our sponsor paid an aggregate of $25,000 to cover for certain expenses on behalf of us in exchange for issuance of 14,375,000 Class B ordinary shares, par value $0.0001 per share, or approximately $0.002 per share.”
The deal with Joby now prices each share at $10 each, according to the 8-K filing this week.
Whether in business, finance or life, the power of relationships and networks holds true.
