Berlin, Germany, October 29, 2020

The journey actually has began on the day we founded Aeroji. At that point it was clear that we will attend one of the biggest conferences. The reason for that is very simple. Since beginning we have believed in our idea so much, that we wanted to share that with as many people as possible. With every new feature we have even more faith in our idea and our product. Therefore we were excited to present everything we have done yet to the aviation community. But how should we get in touch with the people at the conference? As a fresh and newly set up startup it is clearly hard to get in contact with each member of the community. And with the mentioned passion and excitement regarding our product, we aimed for a speaker position in the upcoming conference. Unfortunately all speaker position were already assigned. The announcement that the conference also has changed to a virtual one made things more difficult for us. We thought about the challenges presenting ourselves in virtual meetings instead meeting up in person. Two days prior to the start of the conference we got our access and tried to get in touch with as many people as possible. We focused on both sides, airlines and lessors, having interviews with.

As mentioned before the conference took place despite the unusual set up. It was the first virtual conference of the Aero-Engines Europe series. A lot of people were excited to see how it is going to be. At first it felt a little bit strange, because watching all the presentations was like watching a Ted talk. After a few presentations we got used to the virtual environment that we couldn't tell the difference between a real conference and a virtual one. The reason might be that the presented industry insights were so interesting, that the people forget about their current surrounding. We received very valuable insights from different companies. It was interesting to see the effects of the pandemic from different point of views. All companies are struggling one way or another, some harder than others.

The one thing everyone had in common was the certainty that the recovery will be completed in 2-3 years, which gave us hope for the whole aviation community. So all-in-all it was a unique und very insightful virtual conference and we were more than happy to have participated.

But how did the interviews go for us? We had a lot of interviews in between the presentations. Each interview was timeboxed to 15 minutes. So we were not sure if this time was enough to get to know the pains of our interview partner and show the current state of our product. During the interview planning some of the meetings shifted, so our planning required lots of flexibility. But we assume that we did a good job, because of the interview partners we had, who covered every angle in aviation we were looking for:

• MRO
• small and big lessors
• small and big airlines
• even big conventions with more then 100 airlines and many lessors included

Even though we are working in the aviation industry for a couple years now, we were still a little bit nervous when interviewing people. After the first couple interviews that nervousness fortunately disappeared. Possibly because of the good feedback we got.

The received feedback was unbelievable. Literally every interview partner was interested in Aeroji. Some wanted to join directly as Beta users and others even wanted to partner up. Some interview partners gave us some new contacts, to get in touch with them, because Aeroji might not be their special field but the one of their contacts. It was interesting to see that our solution with Aeroji is addressing the biggest pains in the community:

• There are multiple sources to find engines or lessors.
• It requires a lot of efforts to manage the contacts and stay up to date with the availability of engines.
• It is very hard to find the perfect match.
• Most public information you find are incomplete and/or outdated.
• So the interviews can be summed up as a complete success.

We were amazed by the results of the interviews but still are imagining, how everything could have turned out if we have gotten a speaker position. Couple days later we got an email from Aviation Week, because they were curious about our product. They wanted to do an interview with us. We didn't hesitate to reply and are more than happy to be able to introduce our product to a broader audience of the aviation community. The complete article can be found here:

German Startup Develops Streamlined Platform For Aero-Engine Leasing, Sales

The interviews went great. Many people have shown their interest in Aeroji. Therefore a lot of new contacts subscribed for the newsletter on Aeroji and in addition were interested in becoming a beta user, too. We were very happy that everything turned out the way we hoped for. Our build up basis for the beta-testing is very promising, so that we will have a smooth launch. With all the received interest we are still hoping to attend many more conferences in order to bring our mission to the aviation community closer. Our mission to provide the convenient and transparent way for aviation business by reducing complexity, creating trust and connecting people.

With the next blog post we will start a new series of articles 'Team: Behind the Scenes' in order to present to you the Aeroji team members more closely to develop a strong connection to you.

We are there for you anytime to answer all your questions and to listen to all your proposals as well as criticisms. All your feedback is very much appreciated. Just let us know at hello@aeroji.com or on any social network.

We wish you a successful rest of the week.

Your Aeroji Team