Adam Robinson was among nine people killed when a Learjet 60 crashed in Greenacres, Florida, on 1 November. Kursiv Uzbekistan takes a look at the ex-credit trader who helped online shops identify visitors and built Retention.com into a business with $22 million in annual recurring revenue.
The seven passengers killed in the fatal crash of the Learjet 60 have been identified as Adam Robinson, his wife Helen Sharp, their children Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, as well as the children’s nanny Anita Maria Cetina.
The pilots’ former employer, East Coast Jets, said the Learjet crew included captain Jeff Gregory, while relatives identified the first officer as the 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras.
«Mom, how did we get so rich? “Your father raised $100 million for his startup.» «So he got rich?» «No. I left him for the VC who made 2 and 20 on all the money he invested» https://t.co/Nx4DNKCli6
— Adam Robinson (@RetentionAdam) October 11, 2026
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had found evidence suggesting the jet began breaking apart before impact. Investigators have yet to determine the cause.
Read more: Before Florida: What went wrong in Learjet 60 earlier crashes
Who was Adam Robinson?
Robinson, 45, worked as a credit trader at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital before co-founding Robly, an email marketing platform. The next business idea came from a feature called Robly ID.
Customers wanted the tool to help match anonymous website visits with email addresses. Robinson spun it out in 2019 as GetEmails, which was later renamed Retention.com.
The feature that evolved into a company
Robinson used cash from Robly to build GetEmails. By the time he sold Robly in 2021, he said that both businesses were generating about $3m each in annual recurring revenue and $1.5m each in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation.
2019: I want a $25m ARR biz w/ >35 FTE. https://t.co/ANEPscKEA7 today: $23m ARR, 27 FTE. 2024: $10m ARR w/ 3 FTEs is the dream. https://t.co/MvqDOarpoh Today: $9.5m ARR, 3 FTE’s Today: I want a $1B ARR 1 man startup. https://t.co/jbtMoQoTij in 2028: …to be continued…
— Adam Robinson (@RetentionAdam) August 18, 2026
GetEmails could already replace the earnings he was giving up. Robinson later described the Robly sale as an eight-figure exit and said he grew Retention.com to $22m in recurring revenue within four years without raising outside funding.
The sidestory: Former NASCAR star Greg Biffle among seven killed in Cessna 550 crash
From online shops to sales teams
Retention.com helped retailers identify some visitors and follow up by email. RB2B, which launched in March 2024 as part of Retention.com, took the idea to business sales teams. It could send a visitor’s LinkedIn profile to Slack, where a sales rep could act on it.
Robinson said RB2B ended 2024 at $4m in annual recurring revenue but faced 15% churn. He wanted the software to flag when someone from a company a rep already covered visited a page that signalled buying interest.
His newest endeavour, MoltSets, was launched in October 2026. It sold access to business contact data that customers could pull into their AI tools or sales software. On the day of the crash, Robinson said on LinkedIn that RB2B was at $10m in annual recurring revenue and MoltSets was close to $1m, Business Insider reported.
