–SELLER: The Jet Business–

Overview

• Boutique brokerage and advisory firm for preowned large-cabin and ultra-long-range jets
• Founder/CEO Steve Varsano; ~3.8M social following
• ~15 staff across two offices: London and New York
• Runs the world’s first street-level jet showroom, opened 2011
• Private and bootstrapped; financials not disclosed

Company Highlights

• 500+ aircraft sold
• $4B+ in lifetime transaction value; priciest single jet ~$100M
• 117 billionaires visited the showroom in its first four years
• 2.5M TikTok, 1.26M YouTube, ~392K Instagram; top video 35M+ views
• Called “the world’s best-known aircraft salesperson” by Corporate Jet Investor

Founding Story

• A career dealmaker, not just a salesman — 40+ years across aviation sales and M&A
• Aviation roots: GAMA, then sales at US Aircraft Sales and CMI Aircraft
• Dealmaker chapter: ran disposition of a £1B+ European property portfolio (Mountleigh), M&A roles under Nelson Peltz, founded M&A advisory Atlantis 2000, led Yum! Brands’ Europe/CIS expansion
• Returned to brokering in 2006; opened the Park Lane showroom in 2011 to make an opaque business visible
• Added education-first social content to find customers — it worked, and built a brand bigger than the brokerage

Business Model & Services

• Aircraft brokerage…  preowned large-cabin and ultra-long-range jets; commission on transaction value.
• Advisory & research…  market data, valuations, and structured buying advice for UHNW clients — a paid expertise layer.
• The showroom…  Park Lane retail space with a full-size ACJ319 cabin and a 26-foot video wall.
• Social content…  a marketing engine, not a media business — awareness and inbound leads, no evident sponsorship revenue.

Financials

• Not disclosed — private and bootstrapped. See the valuation note in Deal Details.

–BUYER: Flexjet–

Overview

• World’s #2 private-jet operator after NetJets; fractional, leasing, jet cards, charter
• 340+ aircraft; 2,100+ clients
• ~2,600 employees (4,000+ with sister companies)
• Global footprint: Ohio HQ, US terminals + Addison TX maintenance, London/Mayfair, Farnborough (2026), Milan, Dubai
• Chairman Kenn Ricci; CEO Michael Silvestro; part of Directional Aviation
• HQ: Richmond Heights (Cleveland), Ohio

Company Highlights

• ~$425M projected 2025 EBITDA, up from $398M in 2024
• $800M raise in July 2025 — largest in private-aviation history — valuing the company ~$4B
• $7B Embraer order (182 jets)
• Fleet targeted to ~600 by 2031
• 1,300+ pilots
• Largest in-house maintenance network in private aviation; 11 private terminals operating or in development

Founding Story

• Founded 1995 as a Bombardier–AMR Combs joint venture
• Acquired by Kenn Ricci’s Directional Aviation in 2013 for $185M
• Built its heavy-jet fleet largely via the preowned market — exactly where Varsano’s sourcing fits
• Pushed upmarket: Red Label, LXi interiors, Riva Yachts and Bentley tie-ins

Business Model & Services

• Fractional & leasing…  the core business: aircraft shares plus monthly and occupied-hourly fees.
• Jet cards (Sentient Jet)…  prepaid flight hours; access without ownership.
• Charter (FXAir)…  ad hoc and supplemental demand.
• Brokerage (FXSolutions)…  Flexjet’s existing whole-aircraft brokerage — now combining with The Jet Business.
• Aircraft management (Sirio)…  Milan-based; an area Flexjet is expanding.
• Helicopters…  owned Sikorsky S-76 fleet; leases and helicopter cards.

Select Capital Markets History

• Jul 2025: $800M equity led by L Catterton (LVMH-affiliated), with KSL Capital and J. Safra Group; ~20% stake, ~$4B valuation
• 2022–23: agreed, then terminated, a SPAC merger with Todd Boehly’s Horizon Acquisition Corp II
• 2013: acquired by Directional Aviation from Bombardier for $185M

Parent Company — Directional Aviation

• Flexjet sits inside Ricci’s Directional Aviation Capital, alongside FXAir, Sentient Jet, Sirio, SimCom, and REVA
• The L Catterton / LVMH tie routes luxury-brand and consumer thinking into Flexjet — context for why a high-visibility consumer brand is attractive beyond aviation

–DEAL DETAILS–

Overview

• Announced June 13, 2026
• Varsano becomes president of Flexjet — product innovation and international growth, plus fleet sourcing and disposition
• The Jet Business combines with Flexjet’s FXSolutions brokerage; separate brands, shared back-office
• Brand and Park Lane showroom retained
• New “Flexjet Solutions” gives Jet Business clients ops support, inspections, maintenance, AOG, and management
• Terms not disclosed — private buyer, no public filing

On valuation

We’re not putting a number on this one. It’s a private, commission-based, founder-driven brokerage with no disclosed financials, so any estimate would be a guess dressed up as analysis. What we can say: after a $800M raise, Flexjet has ample firepower, and this reads as a capability-and-talent buy, not a scale buy.

Strategic Rationale — Buyer (Flexjet)

• Fleet vertical integration — own sourcing and disposition, tighter lifecycle control
• Smarter disposition — Varsano’s remarketing chops help exit aging jets without arming rivals
• Lead funnel — whole-aircraft owners into fractional, jet cards, and charter; ~half of owners also use jet cards
• A marketing engine, not just a rolodex — a social CAC machine Flexjet can aim at its own funnel
• A teachable capability — Varsano can build social marketing in-house
• Europe — London base, Mayfair sales centre, new Farnborough terminal

Quote from Ricci: “Steve and The Jet Business truly check all the boxes.”

Strategic Rationale — Seller (Varsano)

• Turns a founder-led brand into an institutional platform with global infrastructure
• De-risks his concentration; solves the succession problem of a one-name business
• Clients gain Flexjet’s full operational stack via Flexjet Solutions
• A real mandate — president, product, international — not a sidelined earn-out

Quote from Varsano: the chance to put what he built inside the platform is “one you do not pass up.”

Post-Deal Operations

• Varsano becomes president of Flexjet
• The Jet Business and FXSolutions combine; separate brands, shared back-office
• Brand and Park Lane showroom retained
• Feeds fractional, Sentient Jet, and FXAir; supports fleet acquisition and disposition

–WHAT ELSE I FIND INTERESTING–

The headlines will call this a TikTok deal. Flexjet’s own reasoning says it’s about controlling its fleet.

The trades will lead with 2.5M followers, because that’s the fun number. But Flexjet’s stated logic is almost entirely about owning the acquisition and disposition of aircraft — sourcing preowned jets, and just as importantly exiting aging ones without arming a competitor — plus a high-net-worth funnel into fractional and jet cards, and a European foothold. 

None of that is a media thesis. Varsano’s four decades in aircraft sales, M&A, and remarketing matter here far more than his view count.

It’s not a social deal. But social shaped this deal in specific ways — here’s the breakdown.

Dismissing the audience entirely would be the opposite mistake. Here’s what it actually did:

• Made the business grow faster — which made it a target. Faster growth and a bigger brand put a small brokerage on a giant’s radar in the first place.
• Raised his visibility with the people who buy companies. Investors and executives scroll the same feeds. Years of seeing his name and brand made The Jet Business top-of-mind when a buyer went looking.
• Improved marketing at both ends of the funnel. It reached new customers referrals never would, and kept him in constant, low-effort contact with existing ones — better retention.
• Hands Flexjet a cross-sell accelerant. That same machine can now convert owners into fractional, card, and charter customers faster than traditional aviation marketing.
• Transfers as a capability, not just an audience. Varsano can teach social marketing inside Flexjet — a skill most aviation incumbents lack.

So media wasn’t the reason for the deal. But it grew the business faster, added synergies to the partnership, and raised his visibility with the exact buyers who’d want him. That’s the nuance the headlines are missing.

A second creator-audience deal the same week — and because the buyer is public, we can see what it cost.

The same week, NextTrip (NASDAQ: NTRP, a microcap) bought a controlling stake in YADA, a licensed TikTok Partner Agency. We know the price because NextTrip is a public SEC filer; Flexjet is private, so its terms stay dark. That contrast alone is useful; public buyers can’t keep the number quiet.

The 8-K: NextTrip bought 51% of YADA for 50,000 restricted shares — roughly $155K–$175K at recent prices — plus a three-year earnout. No knock on anyone; building is hard, and an earnout-weighted control deal is rational. But the upfront consideration tells you the scale: a small, early asset, not a materially revenue-generating business. It also fits NextTrip’s pattern — small, mostly-stock-funded tuck-ins (JOURNY, TA Pipeline) assembling a content-to-commerce story while the parent is still pre-scale on revenue.

Side by side, you see the real question behind “audience as an asset.” Flexjet bought a business whose value sits substantially in one founder’s brand and HNI relationships. NextTrip bought a small agency — a team and a TikTok partner license. Different bets on how much survives the founder.

Non-media buyers keep buying media. The trick is knowing what they’re actually buying.

We’ve tracked this buyer shift for a while: HubSpot buying Starter Story, OpenAI buying TBPN, Accenture Song buying Whalar. Non-media buyers increasingly are acquiring creator marketing assets.

The nuance worth getting right: sometimes the buyer wants the media asset itself — HubSpot bought an audience and brand to lower customer-acquisition cost. Other times the buyer wants a non-media business, and the media component is a value-add, not the thesis — Flexjet bought a brokerage and fleet capability, and the audience is a synergy on top. Conflate the two and you’ll misjudge both the price and the strategic integration.

Flexjet/Varsano is mostly the second kind, with a real media kicker. NextTrip/YADA leans toward the first, but tiny. That distinction is how creator-x-media M&A actually works once you get past the headline — and it’s the insight most coverage will get wrong on these deals.

Why Varsano sold a business he spent 15 years building around himself.

From the seller’s chair this makes sense before you even discuss price. A founder-led brokerage has a ceiling and a succession problem: growth is capped by one person’s bandwidth and relationships unless he/she builds a scaled team and systems over personality. In turn, that can make enterprise value fragile because it’s concentrated in a single human unless a systematized business is built, which is hard, particularly when a social following centers around a single founder personality.

Selling to the category leader converts personal fame into an institutional platform, hands his clients a full operational stack, and de-risks his own concentration. It’s the same move we flagged in Initial Group / Silver Tribe — operationalizing fame into durable enterprise value. For founders we advise, the lesson is concrete: a content and customer-acquisition engine is now a value input at exit, and it’s worth more when it’s institutional rather than all-you. If you’re building one, or buying one, reply to this email.