Jay Z has done pretty well for himself. Despite doing arguably one of the worst rap verses in history in ‘Monster’, he’s still somehow managed to build an empire out of his hip-hop career. To his name he has a record label (Roc Nation), a clothing line (Rocawear), and easily the 5th or 6th most popular streaming service (Tidal).
He also gets to have sex with Beyoncé, which is just, well, something else.
He’s also (alongside founder Sergey Petrossov) managed to get heavily involved in JetSmarter, a venture that miiight sound like an idea someone on coke would have (“It’s Uber, but for planes!”), but is actually a pretty viable business idea, it turns out.
While JetSmarter has been around since 2012, the company has just raised $140 million in series C funding, meaning that it can “increase the numbers of routes and flights” available to customers using the service in the United States.
From what my deeply un-mathematical brain can fathom, service funding refers to a series of investments that startup companies receive from venture capitalists/other stakeholders. The C round denotes a company that are already nailing it and want to develop their product even further.
JetSmarter were already sitting on a not too shabby lil’ nest egg of just over $2 billion, and this extra dosh means that they can expand to even greater heights – Petrossov said he is keen to bring the service to 80-100 new markets by 2017.
This all sounds very dry, but what it effectively means is that it looks like this wild sounding idea from some bananas future is actually about to become a wild sounding idea from our bananas reality.
All you need to do is rustle up a cheeky $20K and pass a background check to become a member, which gets you a few free flights with the service (if you want to bring a mate along for the ride who isn’t a member, though, it’ll cost ya).
The mere thought of Jay, Beyoncé and Blue Ivy casually booking a private plane from atop their Manhattan penthouse is too much to bear. What will ya boy Hova come up with next?
Source: TechCrunch.
Photo: Victor Decolongon / Getty Images.
