Jesse Itzler sold his first private jet card by buying all the muffins at a TED conference in Monterey, forcing early attendees to approach him. He pitched Josh Kopelman, founder of Half.com, who became his first major customer. He also met his future wife at the same event.
NetJets sold for $725 million in '98. Tell the story of kind of how you got it off the ground. I heard about a conference in Monterey, California called TED Talk. So I'm thinking like, how am I going to sneak into the room where all the qualified leads are? I'm in this coffee shop plotting, and every 2 hours a wave of people come in and they're all buying lattes and muffins. So the next morning I got up at 5 and I bought all the muffins. I controlled all the muffin inventory in Monterey, California. The first wave of people on the break walk in and the guy orders a latte and a muffin. They tell him that they could give him a latte, but they're all out. Out of muffins. It's like 9 in the morning. I stop him. It's— sorry, I overheard you. I actually have an extra muffin if you want a muffin. I got every single fucking muffin under the table, man. What do you need? I started talking to him. He's like, I'm here for the conference. I'm like, me too. What do you do? I tell him what I do. He said, you got to be kidding me, I'm in the market for a private jet card. And his name was Josh Kopelman. He owned the company called Half.com. He was my first sale. And you know what happened after that? I met my wife there. She was a customer of ours, and that's how I met
