Caryn Seidman-Becker

It was a Republican-led Congress.

They wanted public-private partnerships.

If you look at the founding of the Department of Homeland Security, which I think is one of the largest and fastest startups, I might have these numbers slightly wrong, but it's 250,000 total employees of the Department of Homeland Security, which has all these sub-areas, whether it be CBP, ICE, FEMA, TSA.

Those are a lot of subsidiaries, if you will, under one corporate umbrella.

Congress wanted to make sure that there were public-private partnerships to drive innovation to expedite the traveler experience.

They put this program together called the Registered Traveler Program.

TSA gave out a few licenses for the Registered Traveler Program for people to try and see what they could come up with in the world of public-private partnership and innovation.

Steve Brill had written a book, 9-12, which was the day after 9-11.

He received one of those licenses and started Clear.

And there were a few other companies who started as well.

And ultimately, he was the most successful.

He got into 16 airports.

I think he raised about $100 million of capital and then had some debt on top of that and was building this concept of a trusted traveler program, a registered traveler program with biometrics on a smart card.

So it's this one-to-one match.

It had 190,000 customers.

Then two things, maybe three things happened.

One being the 2008 downturn came.

So it started in 2003, but didn't launch in Orlando till 2005.

The highest percentage of first-time travelers in America go through the Orlando airport.

Strollers, balloons, the whole thing.