Odysee CEO Steve Casley sees dollar signs in data. Or more specifically, AI-powered software that can analyze reams of data to help commercial airlines get the most out of its complex flight schedules.
Odysee, the first startup born out of an aviation-focused venture lab formed by Alaska Airlines and UP.Labs, is doing just that. The two companies formed the venture lab last year to create startups designed to address specific issues in aviation travel, such as guest experiences, operational efficiency, aircraft maintenance, routing, and revenue management. Odysee said it has raised $5 million in a pre-seed round led by UP.Partners, the Los Angeles-based VC firm that is connected to UP.Labs. Alaska Star Ventures, which launched in October 2021, invested $15 million into UP.Partners’ inaugural early-stage fund.
Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci flagged scheduling as an issue early on, according to Casley. And it’s no wonder. While there is software that provides flight data analysis and scheduling, Casley argues they all lack the kind of real-time time and — critically — revenue predictions that Odysee is building.
“You need some tools to make better decisions, because typically across airlines, schedule changes are made by planners with experience that do it by intuition,” Casley said in a recent interview. “I wouldn’t say the seat of their pants, because a good portion of the time they’re going to be right because they’ve seen bad changes and good. But they never really had the data to back up those decisions.”
The software, armed with data, can run hundreds of simulations within seconds to quickly quantify how schedule changes might affect revenue, profits, and reliability, according to the company.
“There are other optimizers out there, but none of those models, or any of the companies out there offering optimization, to my knowledge, offer revenue predictions,” Casley said.
The machine learning model Odysee built contains about 42 attributes that involve everything from the time and day of departure to traffic on a particular route and competitor schedules. The startup found in early simulations it was able to save Alaska hundreds of thousands of dollars on just one scheduling change.
Odysee is currently conducting user acceptance testing with Alaska. Once that’s complete, Alaska will begin a trial of the software, which Casley expects will begin by the end of October.
That is a quick timeline considering UP.Labs and Alaska Airlines only formed the aviation venture lab a year ago. The speedy path to commercial products is one of UP.Labs’ chief selling points. UP.Labs, which first launched in 2022, is structured as a venture lab with a new kind of financial investment vehicle. The firm is partnering with major corporations like Porsche, Alaska Airlines, and recently J.B. Hunt, to establish startups with new business models that aim to solve that industry’s biggest problems. Under each partnership, six startups will be formed over three years.
Under UP.Labs’ structure, these startups won’t be created solely to serve the corporate partner — in this case, Alaska Airlines. Rather, they will operate independently and as commercial enterprises from the get-go, eventually bringing in revenue by selling products or services across the industry.