Vivek Poola

Post-pitch story

Jay Bautista pitched SkyHi as a subscription for spontaneous travel: pay a monthly fee, book last-minute flights at flat rates. It's the kind of idea that sounds either brilliant or doomed, depending on which investor you ask — and SkyHi has spent the years since stubbornly refusing to die. After the show, the company went through Techstars Los Angeles in 2018, then raised over $268,000 from more than a thousand everyday investors through a Republic crowdfunding campaign in 2020 — remarkable timing, given what happened to air travel that year. SkyHi survived the pandemic, kept its corporate registration active, and is still operating as a seed-stage company. Bautista is still founder and CEO, and as recently as May 2026 he was actively seeking new angel investment to keep growing. SkyHi hasn't had its breakout moment yet, and its current user numbers aren't public, but eight years of survival in one of the hardest corners of consumer travel is its own kind of story.