Kristin Myers: Today, a company is betting that the fastest way out of Manhattan on a Friday isn't by driving or by train, or even by taking a helicopter. They say, actually, it's by the water.
The Twenty Five is building a membership service around a vehicle that flies, we'll get into that in a couple of minutes, just a few feet above the waves. But it is regulated as a boat.
The Twenty Five founders Jamie Petty and Neill Etheridge are joining us today. The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
Traffic on the highway, delays at the airport, and some of America's most desirable coastal destinations can still be surprisingly difficult to reach. Jamie Petty and Neill Etheridge think they have the solution.
Founded in 2025, their startup, The Twenty Five, wants to transform coastal transportation into a luxury membership experience.
Here's the plan: use all-electric Seagliders designed to travel just above the water to connect affluent travelers with coastal destinations.
They've lined up serious partners: REGENT for the technology and Hornblower for marine operations. And the pitch? Give travelers back something they can't buy more of: time.
But can they attract enough members, scale the business, and turn an ambitious idea into a profitable company? The journey from startup to stock exchange starts now.
And here with us now at the desk are Jamie Petty and Neill Etheridge, founders of The Twenty Five. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for joining us.
Jamie Petty: Thank you very much for having me.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so I want to start, in case someone couldn't figure it out from that nice package that we had: What is The Twenty Five? What problem are you guys trying to solve?
Jamie Petty: So Neill and I, having moved out of the city some years ago post-COVID, realized that there was a bit of an issue. And the issue is moving from the city to, in his case, the Hamptons, in my case, going anywhere and going back into the city.
And, you know, to a certain extent, the solution was sitting right there, which is the body of water, whether it be the Long Island Sound or the Atlantic Ocean.
So we set about, as entrepreneurs, trying to find a solution to a problem that we didn't know existed before, but I think lots of people will understand.
So we've spent quite a lot of time researching what could a solution look like. Is it going to be a fast ferry akin to a SeaStreak, but a more elevated experience?
And the fact of the matter is, it's very, very hard to find something that works, is efficient at scale, that provides a solution to the various different destinations we were looking at.
And then I stumbled across, through some research, a company called REGENT, based out of Rhode Island, and their product, which is called a Seaglider.
And a Seaglider seems to fit the bill in terms of the solution. It floats, foils, and flies, which is something that hopefully you'll have a graphic so people can really understand.
Kristin Myers: You can see it right now on screen.
Jamie Petty: My timing was impeccable.
So, you know, ultimately the solution is 12 seats, can maneuver people from dock to dock, from the city to the Hamptons, or from Nantucket to the Vineyard or Boston. Same for Florida, in safety, flying in what's called wing-in-ground effect, up to around 180 miles an hour.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so, so much to get into from all of that.
Neill, I want to come to you. As you were mentioning, Jamie, REGENT is a company that you're partnering with.
Now, they flew, I want to make sure I get this right, a crewed Viceroy. I'm assuming that's the type of boat. This happened on September 2nd.
So what changed for your business then, by the next day?
Neill Etheridge: Well, frankly, it's confirmed a number of things. The most important thing it's confirmed is our delivery dates are more likely than they were before.
In other words, the product is now really proven technically. And as a result, we're in great shape now to get through the final classification phase and then into delivery in late '27, early '28.
So we're really excited. It is a big, big change for us, and it's really confirmed the product.
Kristin Myers: So we want to get to the classification in a second, but curious to know just a little bit of the background on essentially you guys, right? Because you guys, I believe, were both in finance for many, many years, and now this.
So was the pivot just wanting to solve that problem of Neill's, getting to the Hamptons quickly? What was the driving force to make that change?
Jamie Petty: Well, my background was more around, I was a professional yachtsman for a number of years in my youth, my misspent youth, and then through a number of different pivots in my life, I ended up in the aviation space.
And we built quite a large platform in the private aviation space. And then that really, for me anyway, I suddenly thought, well, I quite like the transportation industry, but let's find some solutions to problems, I should say.
For Neill, he's much more of a finance chap than I am, so I'll let you speak for yourself. Otherwise, I'll do you an injustice.
Neill Etheridge: Thank you. No, I've been in maritime for a long time through the investment side, very much on the investment side of the thesis, mostly commercial markets. So I am very familiar with the waterways, etc.
But I think really the whole pivot came through COVID too, candidly. You know, being involved with a lot of transactions, a lot of projects, and things like that, but not as the principal guy running the company or building the business.
So, you know, COVID changed a lot of things for a lot of people. And I think as a result of being at home rather too many, too long hours, perhaps had too much time to think and started thinking about, like, what would be good to be involved in, maritime being a big factor.
So obviously, you know, a couple of really important issues came up, namely, yes, my Hamptons trip. But also, you know, three hours, four hours is not fun in a car, right?
Kristin Myers: Yeah.
Neill Etheridge: The planes, the seaplanes are tight and they take longer, and they're very expensive, should I say, relative to what we've now come up with.
So we really wanted to find a solution. It just became a process of trying to find a... we found a problem and we wanted to solve it. So it's a lot of fun for us to get on the front foot and be a principal.
Kristin Myers: So let's talk about the name. It's called The Twenty Five. It stands for the 25th hour of the day. So what does that mean to you guys?
Neill Etheridge: You're on a roll.
Look, we want to win, and it's all about winning back that hour. Actually, it's going to be multiple hours if you think about it, because if we get on the trip, absolutely, like three hours, two or three hours to the Hamptons, are going to get down to an hour.
Out to, well, Greenwich. Out to Nantucket, an hour and 15. If anyone's done that trip, unless you're going via airplane, obviously, but still, if you're going over the water or any other route, it's going to take you four or five hours to get to these places.
So we're really winning time. But really the experience is the other thing.
You're not just winning time, you're getting an experience which would be like no other. You're getting a private aviation-type experience. You can stand up in a cabin and walk through. It's not like tucking down. So it's going to be winning out. It'll be quiet too, so that's a huge factor.
So we're super excited about what that experience would be like. And, you know, the product is very unusual. It's going to be a really good product for everyone to enjoy.
Kristin Myers: Because when you showed me the videos, I was absolutely gobsmacked just looking at it. And I was saying, but wait, does it fly? Is it actually a boat?
So actually, on that point, because you mentioned the classification bit, so it flies, kind of. I don't know if that's entirely accurate to say that it flies, but it's not crewed by pilots. It's not an airplane pilot that's piloting this thing.
It's instead certified mariners that are going to be really at the helm of this. And it's regulated by the Coast Guard as a vessel instead of being regulated by the FAA, which, you know, some folks might really understand, regulates aircraft.
So how does that change, that classification of this being handled by the Coast Guard instead of the FAA, really shorten that path to revenue for you guys?
Neill Etheridge: Well, I mean, first of all, the U.S. Coast Guard piece of regulation that it's relying on, there are actually two pieces of regulation there, longstanding.
One of them is a wing-in-ground-effect regulation, which is actually, you know, there's a congressional regulation for the U.S. Coast Guard that the product itself will be relying on.
And then the fast boat, which speaks to itself, the regulations around that.
So why is this quicker? Well, two reasons. There is existing regulatory coverage for this type of product. It exists in a prior form, wing-in-ground effect.
The second thing is it's not necessarily flying over land and people's houses. So I think it slightly changes the dynamic in terms of speed, in terms of the issues that come up.
You're always over your runway. I mean, that's a big piece. Safety is our biggest priority in this platform.
And from our perspective, this is the product that provides you a smooth, quiet experience.
And from classification, going back to that one point again, we've been, well, should I say REGENT have been, working with them for years now and have gone through the process of interacting with the various agencies, including the FAA, to make sure that they aren't interested.
They remain absolutely clear this meets all the regulatory kind of standards that the U.S. Coast Guard regulation relates to.
And I think the other thing which we did, which I imagine you might get on to, is we decided to, we were very clear we weren't going to reinvent the wheel.
We wanted to bring an operator in that had proven experience for 100 years, in this case Hornblower Group, and they operate ferry services everywhere.
So we wanted to make sure we had a partner that had the relationships with the regulators, knew how to deal with them, and was respectful and understanding of their needs and wants in ports all around the United States.
So I think at the regulatory side, we're okay. There's a process still to go through. And, you know, they've got to get through the final classification, which we anticipate Q1 next year.
Kristin Myers: Well, you're absolutely right. We do want to dive into some more of that stuff because you will be sticking with us through the break.
I want to ask before we do go to that break, you mentioned the safety bit, and I think this is something that I had mentioned to you previously about the safety, because 180 miles an hour sounds terrifyingly fast outside of a plane, right?
So talk us through just a little bit more about that safety. You said you could walk around the cabin. Is that while it's in motion? Do you have to be...?
Neill Etheridge: Right, to get to the seat, right? I think, you know...
Jamie Petty: Carry on. Go ahead.
Neill Etheridge: So there are plenty of examples out there of waterborne vessels, excuse me, that are traveling at 150-plus miles an hour.
You've only got to look at YouTube and see what goes on in Florida with these guys going out in their Scarabs, doing 150 miles an hour.
The fact of the matter is that those speeds in a boat, you have something like a two-mile horizon, and also, of course, the bow of the boat is constantly rising in the waves. So obviously you're only ever seeing it every, you know, half a second or whatever.
With a Seaglider, you're 33 feet above water, above sea level. You have a seven-mile horizon.
And with the advantages of the Seaglider having forward-facing sonar, forward-facing radar, multiple collision-avoidance systems, a lot of those are proprietary, and they have developed it so that it's really quite hard to have an incident.
And, of course, it's a glider. If everything went wrong, it would simply glide down and land. You may spoil your drink, but it just becomes a boat again, and the Coast Guard will come and get you.
Kristin Myers: Now, there are three ways out of Manhattan to the Hamptons on a Friday in July, so let's walk through them.
First, there is the road. Now, if you take the LIE, that's the Long Island Expressway, you're going to be traveling about 90 miles. And in summer traffic, that could take anywhere from four to six hours.
You could take a helicopter. Now, that is only about 30 to 40 minutes, but a seat is going to cost you anywhere from $800 to nearly $1,100 each way. So it is fast, but it is also expensive, and that's not going to fly in bad weather.
And then there is the water, which until now meant a ferry and about three and a half hours of your day.
So The Twenty Five is betting on a fourth option: a vessel that skims above the surface at about 180 miles an hour.
So it's not a plane, it's not a boat. And that distinction is really the whole business.
We're back now with Jamie Petty and Neill Etheridge, founders of The Twenty Five.
Okay, let's get a little bit into some of the brass tacks, because we talked about how expensive a helicopter is. So how much is a membership to The Twenty Five? Because it is a membership service, correct? And what does that membership really buy you on a day-to-day basis?
Jamie Petty: You can carry this one.
Neill Etheridge: We're not going to give you the specific answer on that. There will be tiers. And so the idea is that you'll have certain tiers to be able to buy into it and participate all the way through to just general access.
Obviously, the different tiers will provide different benefits. So if you think about it in terms of the benefits, each tier that you'd win.
So at the very basic level, you would obviously get a certain level of preferred booking rights and timings, all the way through to the next level, which, keep in mind, because we're water-based, we're going to actually be able to do so many more things that others can't.
Our partner has certain locations in the state, in New York and up in Boston, that go straight from the airport, for example. But they also have certain, let's call it the U.S. Open, etc., sports events.
So we're able to then bring our community a hell of a lot of interesting unlocks that they otherwise never get.
So I think our tiers will reflect both the benefits and the access, booking rights and timing, 24 hours before, 48 hours, or a week, or whatever, depending on the level of membership.
We are completing exactly what that would be over the next few months, and then obviously additional things for the community.
The benefit will be access. Key is access. Access to really unusual experiences, which is really what the product is. It's going to be a scarce experience that everyone's going to want to go on, and then access to these kind of event-driven opportunities that really don't exist.
All the way up to probably the highest possibility is we could take you right home if you happen to have a dock at your house.
Kristin Myers: Yes, I'll work on that.
So, okay, so there might be three tiers, something like bronze, silver, gold, or something like that. But is there going to be a possibility to buy a one-off ticket if you want without purchasing a membership?
Neill Etheridge: Yes.
Kristin Myers: Okay.
Neill Etheridge: We're defining that more as, like, dynamic pricing, kind of a pricing point in the marketplace.
We're going to cap it. We're not going to be silly. We always want to be able to be competitive compared to our peers in a similar space.
So, yeah, there will be access. Obviously, you'll still have to register and make sure that all the clearances and things like that, because we're being very cognizant of safety.
And that's a big thing, making sure everyone's a registered member of the platform, whether they're, you know, one-off users or not.
Kristin Myers: Correct. And that's exactly the kind of member that you are going for?
Jamie Petty: Yeah. I think from a luxury perspective, if you've traveled by helicopter, you'll recognize that in most cases it's a fairly short experience, but it's also not what you'd say an elevated experience.
You know, obviously corporate jets, different world, certainly that I live in.
And then you've got the Jitney. You've got taxis and, you know, Uber facilities, etc.
I think the beauty of something like the Seaglider is you've got plenty of room on board. You're not going through TSA. You're on board within a few minutes. Quick safety demonstration.
It's incredibly quiet, full Wi-Fi facilities, huge windows so you can see what's going on outside. It's an elevated experience, and I think an exciting one.
Kristin Myers: So I want to ask about load factor, which I did actually have to look up prior to this because I had no idea what that was. But essentially that's going to be the occupancy, as I'm discovering.
How many seats are you guys going to be underwriting? What percentage of those seats really have to sell to make a route worth it?
Neill Etheridge: So our overall business model relies on a certain number of months a year. Some of it we're not going to share, but I can give you a feeling so you get a sense of the direction of thinking.
The asset, the gliders, don't just need to operate up here because we can move them up and down the seaboard. We can take them down to Florida, we can take them into the Caribbean. We've got lots of different opportunities.
So one factor, when you're looking at a measure like this, is you're looking at how long can it get used? What's the useful time during a year?
And the good thing is we can move them around either on the water or, in fact, we can put them on the back of, you know, a trailer, etc., to move them around.
Then the second point is, to your point, load factor. How many seats are there? There are 12.
In our general assumptions, there may be examples where a premium or higher-premium participant, or member, should I say, would have maybe an eight-seater access, which gives them a slightly more elevated experience where the seats are facing each other, etc.
But our load-factor assumptions are generally around 65% to 70% on our current business model.
So there are variables that you have to think about: time of year, locations, etc. But we're really thinking around six to eight of those seats always being occupied.
Obviously, again, more detail than you possibly need. We can get into a lot more later, but as we define the product...
Kristin Myers: I just had a random thought. Are you allowed to bring pets on this?
Neill Etheridge: I don't see why not.
Kristin Myers: Okay. I mean, because that's usually a barrier to entry for folks wanting to go by plane somewhere.
Neill Etheridge: My understanding is, from a regulatory perspective, there's no problem at all. It's a boat.
And I think from our perspective, a lot of people who are in the premium space and a number of the private jets and the places that we... they take their dogs, they take their cats, they, you know, everyone has their thing.
And, you know, I think we may have to put one or two on for those that are allergic, though. But hey.
Kristin Myers: No, I mean, of course, of course.
Okay, so a little more on the numbers. You guys hold a purchase agreement for up to 60 vessels before a single delivery. What does that agreement actually obligate you to right now?
And what happens? I know that you said that the timeline, especially after that September 2nd flight, or passage I'll call it, went successfully, makes the timeline obviously more likely to happen.
But if that timeline does slip, what happens to that purchase agreement?
Jamie Petty: Okay, you wrote it.
Neill Etheridge: I happen to be negotiating most of it, so I'll take it.
So, the obligations to take up these orders are driven by a schedule of payments. As with any brand-new purchase of an asset like a helicopter or other, there's a schedule of payments.
So as and when that flight started, there are a series of obligations and payments because they're getting closer to delivery.
Our partner at REGENT have now built their full-scale manufacturing plant, so they now need to start putting orders through it.
So our first delivery, I think we mentioned, was winter '27/'28. There are a couple coming then, and about four to six the following year, and it keeps going up.
So we have to meet those payments as they go.
So that's where we're at at the moment, where our purchase order is up to 60, and we have to meet obligations over the two-, three-, four-year delivery cycle.
Kristin Myers: So what markets are you guys targeting first? Because I imagine some folks watching this are kind of excited to maybe start booking these boats.
Jamie Petty: I hope they are because it is going to be very exciting and new.
So the target markets for us are the obvious ones, the ones that Neill and I have talked about many, many times: New York to the Hamptons, you know, Greenwich to Nantucket, from Boston to Nantucket, the Vineyard.
And everyone in the Vineyard this summer, a lot of us were wishing that there was a faster way to get from New York to the Vineyard. We are that solution.
And then, you know, further south, Florida. Think West Palm to Miami, down to Bimini, for the charter market down in the Bahamas and the private islands down there.
And then eventually onto the West Coast. Hopefully we'll have one in time for the Olympics as a showcase. We shall see. But certainly that would be a great platform for us. We really want to go there.
And then, sorry to interrupt, and then, of course, Europe. So think Monaco, Nice Airport, Saint-Tropez, all of those other places.
Kristin Myers: So be there in '29?
Jamie Petty: Yes, '29.
Kristin Myers: That's right around the corner. We're almost, not far, '27 right now.
What are some of the biggest challenges as you're thinking about expanding into these new markets? Is it the dock? What piece of that actually is the biggest hurdle to that scale?
Neill Etheridge: Ultimately, we've actually got ahead of that.
So we've really enjoyed this. This has been fun because it really goes to how we actually define each marketplace and our relationship to it.
We have, obviously, with Hornblower, a really big advantage that they're already very much a legacy player. They have all the port relationships and so on, which has helped us a lot.
However, at the same time, we're a premium product, so we want to make sure that we have a certain environment that we want to maintain.
So there is a plan to actually elevate, as we go, these access points, drop-off and pickup.
But we've spent our time like, okay, in the first phase we are focused on the East Coast. So where is that going to be?
So we've started working with the local marinas, some of the key ports in and around Manhattan.
We would love to announce specifics. We can say that we've signed a couple of MOUs, but they're MOUs that require us to get to the next stage before we can make them public.
But needless to say, they're in Manhattan, they are on Long Island, and they are up in the Boston area.
And we're about to sign a number down in Fort Lauderdale, which is probably our first one. We're going to say partnered up with a big hospitality platform. Super excited about that.
And then we have, you know, Palm Beach. Obviously can't go without that.
And many of the Bahamas, we have obviously some partners in our platform who are backing and working with us, should I say, that are in the Bahamas, they're based there. So we expect that that will be another area.
But slowly but surely, market development is driven by these partnerships and collaborations, making sure they're properly educated because we're also, they're all electric, remember?
So we have to make sure there's sufficient power in certain locations and all the kind of relations there, charging.
So it's been fun, and we've been getting ahead of that. So by the time we get to next year, we will be in a position to serve the first two for sure.
But thereafter, it will be a great program, and then it will be a really good reveal as we peel away the layers of where we're going to go. It's going to be fun.
Kristin Myers: Last question. I have about 30 seconds. I'm going to throw this to both of you.
This question I ask everyone that sits in these chairs. So this is Startup to Stock Exchange. When you think about ringing the bell, or do you think about ringing that bell, what does that feeling or what does that thought really look like to you?
And when would you want to target for that?
Jamie Petty: You know, it's an exciting proposition. I think for a business like ours, there are a number of prospective exits, not entirely an exit, but there'll be a number of turns, I'm sure.
I personally would love nothing more than to ring the bell for such an exciting New York-led business. You know, it's going to be so New York-centric. I think it would be a cool thing to do.
However, it's going to be driven by the market nearer the time, but we're probably four or five years away from that. But yeah, I'd love it.
Neill Etheridge: It's my first time in here.
Kristin Myers: We'll have to bring you back, hopefully on that day.
Thank you so much. Jamie Petty, Neill Etheridge of The Twenty Five.
