AireXpert is taking off with larger customers, raising funds, hiring

Andy Hakes knew when he started his business that there was a high entry bar for landing contracts with big airlines.

That’s why his strategy for AireXpert has been to target smaller and more regional airlines who partner with major airlines.

“We did a lot of planning and strategizing around it,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a while to see payoff from them. Now, we’re seeing that payoff.”

The startup, whose software manages the complex series of maintenance tasks that are required before commercial planes can take flight, is close to pushing past $1 million in annual recurring revenue. The business expects to reach that milestone before the end of Q2 this year, according to Nita Bhatia, chief operating officer.

From late January to late February, the company has increased revenue 105% and has doubled its airline customers. Those airlines are also larger than the more regional airlines the company started out focusing on, so the total exponential growth has more than doubled, she added.

The startup, founded in 2018, has also doubled its employee count over the last eight months, with a current total of seven full-time workers, 11 contractors and two part-timers.

Hakes said the business’ success is largely due to its platform’s maturity, which was helped by his decades of experience in the aircraft field, including about five years as owner of an aircraft maintenance company.

“The ecosystem is incredibly complex, and finding product market fit was not easy,” he said. “The platform has evolved to the point where it is very mature, very robust and reliable.”

Even still, the company has a roadmap for new platforms features and functions but continually adjusts based on customer feedback.

The startup’s strategy for success also includes focusing on not only why customers buy the platform but how they buy. Especially targeting an enterprise industry, which leads to longer sales cycles, AireXpert is constantly figuring out how it can better facilitate purchases.

That includes ensuring the platform smoothly rollout throughout the customers’ operations, even when that spans across the country or world, and reviewing, analyzing and sharing data to help decision making and mitigate risk.

“We think it’s advantageous not only to ourselves but to them as well if we can really shoulder a lot of that workload and help them to guide them through their own internal sales processes,” Hakes said.

This year, he’s focused on tapping into and leveraging channels and, now that the structural foundation of the platform is in place, boosting integrations, data and analytics for its customers.

That will include adding to its team and raising funds. The startup expects to bring on about four new workers by the beginning of Q3 2023 and is kicking off raising a $2 million seed round. Launch NY invested $125,000 in the business last year.

“At the end of the day, it’s what everyone wants in every industry – a single pane of glass in front of them that allows them to execute,” Hakes said. “That’s our goal, to be the primary integrator and interface that allows them to execute in a way they haven’t been able to do to date.”