When Jay Shabat launched his newsletter in 2004, he had absolutely no experience in journalism or in operating a media company. This was also long before the era when it became easy to distribute paid newsletters. But what Jay did have was a passionate fascination with the airline industry, and he leveraged that passion to build a loyal readership.

 

In our interview, we discussed how he found readers in a pre-social media age, his pricing strategy, and why he decided to sell the company in 2018.