JetBlue Cofounder Explains How to Make Business Take Flight

Forget focus groups. Forget big budgets for marketing and sales. The best way to build a successful business is to market a product that you love and that people really want or need.

“Build something that comes out of your heart, and stand for something. then worry about advertising, because word of mouth is more powerful,” Amy Curtis-McIntyre, JetBlue Airways founding vice president of marketing, told students at the Entrepreneurial Edge Conference hosted by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship November 18 at Gleacher Center.

Curtis-McIntyre drew frequent laughs as she described her journey of helping to start the new airline from the ground up, using not her money but her ideas, including the name “JetBlue.”

After she chose to leave her “safe” career with Virgin Airlines for the new venture, Curtis-McIntyre saw a list of industries people most hate dealing with. Airlines tied for third with the department of motor vehicles. Rather than accept that she worked in a reviled industry, she said she realized, “This screams opportunity!”

Since the bar was set low, improvement would be easy to come by. “It ended up being the greatest motivator,” she said.

The listed businesses took away consumer control, so JetBlue executives tried for the opposite. The eliminated seating class divisions, allowed only ticketless bookings, let passengers choose their seats, and gave each passenger a remote control for the TV on the seat back in front of him. The company took off.

“For those of you who are planning to start your own thing, alone or with other people, there are very few rushes that feel like ownership,” said Curtis-McIntyre.

—Mary Sue Penn