✈️ Issue #46: Flying With Crypto
Josh Jones - HMC alumnus, Co-Founder of DreamHost and HMC Inc, early Bitcoin believer, and owner of Northern Pacific Airways
💬 Welcome to issue #46 of Between the Lines
Unsurprisingly, 2020 was confirmed to be the worst year on record for the airline industry. According to the IATA, total industry passenger revenues fell 70% with net losses of $120B+, and it was the largest ever recorded decline in air passengers since the data started being tracked in 1950. Due to the poor industry performance, over 40 different airlines completely ceased operations and/or filed for bankruptcy - Ravn Alaska was one of them.
After Ravn went bankrupt, however, Claremont graduates Josh Jones and Tom Hsieh capitalized by winning the resultant auction and getting the airline back and running by the end of the year. They’ve now crypto-fied the airline’s frequent flyer program and plan to launch flights and tickets this year for Ravn’s “Icelandair for Asia.” ⬇️
~ Josh & Miles
👤 Community Spotlight: Josh Jones
Josh was born in 1977, the first child of a Mudder dad and Pitzoid (?) mom. They took him around the world (DC, Wisconsin, Paris, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and back to DC) before he ended up right back in Claremont, right back at Harvey Mudd, right back in North dorm where his parents first met. From there he started DreamHost in 1996 with three other Mudders on campus, before getting into Bitcoin in 2010, and starting the Mudd Startup Incubator, HMC INQ in 2017. He now lives in LA, co-teaches a few classes at Mudd (and UCLA) on Entrepreneurship, and is on numerous boards. He’s also chairman/owner of the new international airline Northern Pacific Airways!
While you were only just a sophomore at Claremont, you along with a few other HMC classmates started DreamHost in your dorm rooms. How did you and your friends conceive of DreamHost? What’s one fun memory from your time building DreamHost while you were all still students?
It actually took close to two years for us to land on “web hosting” as our business model. We were just super enamored with the “web” and were always checking out and sharing cool websites we found. It was nice because if you saw something awesome (like the first time I saw an animated gif… on speedo.com!) you could just view the source and learn how to do it yourself. One evening I stumbled into the computer lab and came across Dallas Kashuba (HMC) and Michael Rodriguez (HMC) working on company logos. I asked what they were doing, and they said “making logos for our new company,” and I said “what’s it do?” and they said “Internet,” and I said, “I’m in!”
I also remember when we first learned how to register domain names (they were free), and I started checking all these big company names to see if they were taken. Toyota.com: available. TacoBell.com: available. Hustler.com: available. I was like “I should get these and then sell them to them later!” and then I was like, “They’d probably sue me.” Too bad I didn’t think of just registering all the “generic” domains that didn’t violate anybody’s trademarks!
Recently you started venturing into the intersection of crypto and airlines. Can you tell us more about what you and fellow HMC and CGU graduate Tom Hsieh are working on with FlyCoin, Ravn Alaska, and Northern Pacific? How did it all start?
Tom had a commuter airline startup in my HMC INQ accelerator back in 2019, which unfortunately ended up launching a week before COVID-19 shut all air travel down in March 2020! However, he and airline executive extraordinaire Rob McKinney unearthed a new opportunity when regional carrier Ravn Alaska declared bankruptcy a few weeks later. One that we ended up capitalizing on by winning the resultant auction, and getting the airline back up and running by November 2020 (see ravnalaska.com).
When things had more or less stabilized last May, we started to consider where to take Ravn next. The first obvious idea was to crypto-ify our frequent flier program… and hence, FlyCoin was born! We ended up getting so much interest from other airlines in it, that we spun it out as its own company and it raised a $33M seed round in late 2021 (see flycoin.org)!
The next not-so-obvious idea was to expand our reach from our hub in Anchorage… internationally! The plan was brought to us by Ben Munson, the head of our outside routing and pricing service, and it’s essentially “Icelandair for Asia”. By operating a hub-and-spoke network of narrowbody 757s from Anchorage to Japan, Korea, and the lower 48, you can offer flights between the U.S. and Asia at much lower costs than current options, while encouraging an Alaskan stopover on the way! We actually just received DOT approval to start selling tickets and flights will begin this November (see np.com).👇
💼 Who’s Hiring?:
Rev’s speech-to-text services combine the world’s best A.I. with the fine-tuning of the human ear to transcend the limits of audio. Working alongside 60,000+ freelancers, they continually enhance their best-in-class technology to deliver services with true-to-word accuracy and industry-leading turnaround times for captions, transcriptions, and subtitles. Rev is a venture-backed internet startup headquartered in Austin with an office in San Francisco, and they’ve raised over $30M. Scripps alumnus, Leah Rappaport, is currently the Senior Manager for Paid Acquisition at Rev, and she’s looking to hire some fellow Claremont talent.
We’re always looking for passionate, talented people to help us overcome barriers of communication, regardless of your location. Anyone interested should apply through the link below or reach out to me directly with questions!
Performance Marketing Manager (SF/Austin/Remote)
We’re looking for someone with 2-5 years of experience managing paid advertising specifically across Facebook and LinkedIn with a focus on driving revenue.
Make sure to check out the other 5,000+ open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, make sure to create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 750+ remote jobs, 180+ internships, or 30+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention Claremonsters!
As always, if any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or if you are an employer and are looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s top financings 💸
Mahmee is an integrated care delivery platform for maternal and infant health. Their team is building digital infrastructure to connect patients, independent health professionals, and enterprise healthcare organizations to ensure that moms and babies don’t fall through the cracks of the U.S. healthcare system. Mahmee was co-founded by Melissa Hanna (PO & CGU) and they just raised a $9.2M Series A led by Goldman’s Asset Management. BusinessWire has more.
Vai Viswanathan (HMC), the Founder of Canary Aero which partners with innovators in the inspection and autonomy space, is also the Computer Vision Lead for Voxel - a video intelligence company to proactively manage your operations, safety, and risks. Voxel just announced a $15M Series A to help expand their AI technology that could stop accidents at work. Forbes has more.
Awards you should know about 🏆
Claremont alumnus and Co-Founder of Yoodli, Varun Puri (CMC), was just announced as the Pacific Northwest's Young Entrepreneur of the year by GeekWire, along with his Co-Founder Esha Joshi. Yoodli is an AI-enabled software platform that analyzes delivery and gives tips for improvement — in a non-judgmental way — on public speaking. GeekWire has more.
Zac Brandenberg (CMC), DRINKS Co-Founder & CEO, was announced as an Entrepreneur of the Year in the Food & Beverage category for the 2022 American Business Awards! The judging panel recognized Zac’s contribution to the 🍷 industry with the pioneering Wine as a Service (WaaS) platform that opens a formerly-closed industry and enables any company to be a wine business.
Everything else you need to know….📖
Some inspiring words from Keck’s commencement speaker last week, Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong (founder of 54gene and Keck alumnus). “My ability to persevere allows the element of chance to help me win, for, after all, most successes including mine, include some luck. But if you give up, you might miss luck when it comes.”
Mavenlink is a modern software platform for professional and marketing services organizations that was founded by Ray Grainger (HMC). Mavenlink and Kimble Applications just merged and announced the launch of Kantata. Kantata was created to accelerate the development and delivery of the most comprehensive range of vertical SaaS solutions. BusinessWire has more.
Dan Elitzer (PO) is the Co-Founder of Nascent - a global, multi-strategy investment firm focused on crypto and open finance. He shares some of his thoughts below on DeFi and building new financial infrastructure.
Can’t get enough of Between the Lines? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!
🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🥿 Putting Her Best Foot Forward….. As the working world starts to head back into the office, we’re faced with a question we haven’t thought much about in two years: What should we wear? Jamie Curran (CMC) has been hard at work to answer that question with comfortable yet stylish footwear. Jamie is a student entrepreneur at Northwestern University and she recently launched Jaes, a fashionable and comfortable footwear line that she hopes will empower women in the workplace.
💼 The Most Trusted Platform For Local Jobs….. FlexJobs recently acquired Localwise, a local hiring startup founded by Benjamin Hamlin (CMC). The strategic addition brings a dedicated focus on local job searching and hiring to FlexJobs, which has provided the largest database of vetted and hand-screened remote and flexible job listings since 2007. “At Localwise, we couldn't be more excited to support the mission of FlexJobs and to amplify the company's impact.”
🍼 The Baby Formula Shortage….. The nationwide baby formula shortage is making some parents frantic, and it's also raising questions about how such a critical product could be in short supply in one of the richest nations in the world. Helena Bottemiller Evich (CMC) is the Senior Food and Agriculture reporter for Politico and she joins NPR to explain what’s behind the shortage and what’s really happening.
🚢 All Aboard The Claremont Cruise….. Expedition cruising company Lindblad Expeditions will deploy Marine Learning Systems’ online training platform, MarineLMS, fleetwide, following a successful pilot period. Murray Goldberg, a HMC Board of Trustee member, is the founder and CEO of Marine Learning Systems - a rapidly growing eLearning software and services provider that caters to the unique needs of the maritime industry.
Feedback? We love to hear it. Hit us with an email. 👊🏼