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Creating, managing and facilitating a two-sided marketplace is extremely challenging and a constant juggling act. With limited resources, growth is even harder. Despite growing pains, you must continue to plug away and collaborate. Our biggest challenge: allocating and strategizing when and/or how much focus we have on member acquisition versus partner acquisition - a common issue amongst marketplace startups. In building our team around the Fresh Jets marketplace, it has required patience and flexibility.

Since we launched in March earlier this year, we've pivoted multiple times and reallocated team members to capitalize on new opportunities and they've continued to respond and produce results. We had a team of three when we launched and today, there are eight of us. In early August, we challenged ourselves with what we knew were fairly lofty goals in comparison to previous months and dominated every benchmark.

This past month [October] was our best yet! We welcomed 870 new members, 14 new aircraft partners, 134 new aircraft, and offered over 200 flights. Our team exceeded their goals in each category by at least 150% - pretty impressive. Traffic to FreshJets.com has increased on average of 400% across all vital categories [active users & sessions]. By year's end, we will have over 800 aircraft [currently 719] which is our biggest revenue driver.

Our team is dedicated to expanding access to available aircraft in multiple markets. We've had a small taste of the fun that comes with reaching milestones and goals, but we're all bought into the bigger picture and have created our own culture to enhance the notion of 'being a part of something bigger'. This is incredibly exciting and if you've been part of startup at this stage, you can relate.

As the year-end nears along with Q4, we are excited to rollout added features and user experience improvements making it as easy as possible to be notified of available flights and instantly buy them. This will start over the next few months and within the next six months, our product will blow your socks off.

Along with our co-founder Johnny Sengelmann, we're confident that we have strategically built a winning team. This past summer after acquiring MyJetNet in Scottsdale, we added two of their team members as our Director(s) of Sales and Marketing respectively. We hired a longtime intern as a Membership Consultant and a few others contributing in this area as well. We've also added experience with a seasoned Director of Digital Strategy.

You may be pondering... what's next or who's your next hire? Honestly, we take it day-by-day and in strides. When opportunities present, our team discusses and then acts, tables or moves on. Our main focus over the next few months and into Q1 of 2015 is all about revenue and product - both of which our customers [you all] dictate.

By Timmy Wozniak

Timmy is the Co-founder and CEO of Fresh Jets, which not only helps users find private jets, but also connects people to pleasurable flying experiences and supports collaborative transparency amongst its’ members and partners. Sign up for Fresh Jets - it's free! ✈