When Victor founder Clive Jackson decided to step back from the day-to-day running of the business to concentrate on the new Alyssum Group holding company, he knew exactly who he wanted to take over the app-based charter broker. Joe Cohen may not have a background in aviation, but he has plenty of directly relevant experience to apply to the company, and the sector.

“I’ve been through digital transformation in a number of marketplace businesses in the past,” he tells ShowNews, “and I’ve seen where we are in the industry play out three or four times already in my career.”

Although perhaps best known for founding the secondary ticketing marketplace Seatwave, Cohen has been heavily involved in businesses ranging from legacy ticket agency Ticketmaster to online dating platform Match.com. These experiences have given him a number of insights he can apply to the business-aviation market.

“There’s a lot of similarities I’ve seen before, where you’ve got a supply or operator ecosystem which is not hugely fragmented but is hugely complex, and is largely still run as an offline business,” he says. “And then you’ve got a customer-demand side of the marketplace that is very fragmented – in private aviation even more so than most, because your customer base is not a mass-consumer customer: they’re difficult to find.

“But they have become accustomed to digital services that they use in every other aspect of their life, and their expectation now is that you will deliver a private-aviation service as you would deliver Uber, or Expedia, or a dinner reservation.

“So I’ve personally been through the transformation before,” he says “and I understand what we need to go through with operators in that ecosystem to help them bring their business in line with the expectations of customers.”

“There’s always challenges in doing it, but knowing what we have to do feels like it gives us a little bit of a step up.”

Cohen was attracted to the sector, and to Victor in particular, by several factors.

“Private aviation is growing very quickly, but my personal expectation is that this is slow growth compared to what we’re going to see,” he says. “I have a personal belief that we’re in a similar place to where commercial aviation was before the advent of GDS [global distribution systems] and revenue-management systems; and we know that since those have come about, commercial aviation has doubled in size every 15 years. So there’s an opportunity to build a really significantly sized business.

“And I think Victor’s establishment as an early front-runner across Europe positions the business very well to take advantage of, and benefit greatly from, that category growth,” he continues. “I was really impressed by the people who I met within the company, and, while there wasn’t a lot of experienced and seasoned leadership, I felt that was something I could bring. And I felt a personal chemistry with Clive. I’ve been a founder in the past, and I know what it’s like to let someone else take your baby and run with it.”

For his part, Jackson believes that Cohen’s appointment is a perfect fit.

“I’m very fortunate to have, in Joe, someone who truly understands digital and two-sided marketplaces, who’s a super-fast learner, and who is not afraid to ask anyone and everyone around him for the benefit of their insight and advice,” he says. “There are advantages to brining people from within the industry but, frankly, when you’re a challenger brand disrupting the status quo, it’s far easier to do that when you come from outside and are willing to challenge age-old beliefs and assumptions.”

Cohen’s appointment was made public just this month, but he has been in-post since January. He argues that there are untapped markets for the entire sector that he is well placed to help Victor identify and exploit.

“I believe there is a sizeable segment of the population who can afford to fly privately as a treat maybe once or twice a year, but don’t believe they can afford to,” he says. “The number of households with a net worth of US$5 million and above is forecast to grow by 43% in the U.S. and Europe over the next four years. Combined with the worldview of the millennial generation – which has demonstrated that they would rather pay to use something rather than own it, particularly something expensive – there is a massive opportunity in the next 10 years.”