Business of Speed Podcast - Robert Jakobi: How Growing Up Around Ayrton Senna Shaped a Career

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Robert Jakobi grew up with Ayrton Senna at the dinner table. His father ran IMG Europe and later left to manage Senna directly, so before Robert was ten, he'd met Senna, Alain Prost, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, and Björn Borg. Senna also saw the Michael Schumacher poster on his wall and got annoyed about it.Robert went on to build a career in consumer brands across the UK, scaling Itsu Grocery and selling Metcalfe's Skinny to Kettle Chips in 2016. During COVID, he pivoted back into the world he'd always been adjacent to, moved to Miami, co-founded E1's Team Miami with Marc Anthony, and in December 2025 launched Hyton — the brand partnership and experience holding company now advising the Concours Club, Fontainebleau Miami, Fontainebleau Vegas, Uncharted, and Sunshine Coffee.Recorded at the Concours Club on May 1, the 32nd anniversary of Senna's death. In this conversation, Robert reveals for the first time that the Ayrton Senna Forever exhibition is coming to the United States this November, taking over the casino floor at Fontainebleau Las Vegas during F1 week. The family has agreed. The deal is done. He's hoping to bring 20,000 people through the doors.We get into all of it: the Schumacher poster Senna spotted, why Robert won't take outside investors at Hyton, why Miami has become F1's commercial Super Bowl, why "luxury" as a word has been gutted, and what a money-can't-buy experience actually looks like in 2026.Topics covered:Senna at the family dinner table, and the day Robert's father lost his closest friendThe Schumacher poster storySelling Metcalfe's Skinny to Kettle Chips and why he won't repeat that playbook with HytonWhy does Hyton have zero outside investors?Co-founding E1's Team Miami with Marc AnthonyThe Senna Forever exhibition is coming to Fontainebleau Vegas in NovemberWhy the Miami GP is now Robert's commercial Super BowlWhat "money can't buy" experience actually meansThe Concours Club, Fontainebleau Miami and Vegas, Uncharted, and Sunshine CoffeeHow designer Cain came up with the name HytonConnect with Robert and Hyton:Website: hyton.comInstagram: @hytonholdcoEmail: [e-mail]

Hola Vincenzo. Hola Lali. How are you? We're in a very special place today. It's always a great time when we get to record live in person but around fast cars it's even better. What could be better than this? We are live coming to you from Miami at the Concourse Club and we have an incredible guest today. First can we talk about the Concourse Club for a second? Can we? I mean really before we introduce the guest. The Concourse Club has been top-notch. Top-notch. We were so lucky this morning we got hot laps we got a tour of the club you're gonna learn more all about that later but what a place man we were lucky today the hot laugh was was great right and anybody that likes cars you know like the hot

lap this club the deep the little details I mean chef's kiss because extra large parking spots for my hot rod a suite of elements products in the girls room for all those girls to use whenever we want it has been nothing but top notch so let's get to our guy are we talking about all this right because we have there's somebody who brought us in here by the name of Robert Jacoby from heightened and we'll talk about heighten a little bit but Robert brought us out here to experience all of this and we're gonna take you along for a ride but we got what we wanted to do is talk to Robert a little bit about it his journey

which is very unique and uh i think why experiences matter and he's the man who talks about it yeah thank you for having me on your show thank you for being here thank you for agreeing to do this here pleasure it's great to have you come here to do it we we kid you not being able to show up here the little details showing up at the uh the front gate and being greeted warmly and then just everybody we've met so far in here has been yeah super cool it's a special place yeah i want to start a little bit robert like obviously we're at the concourse club for a reason and we'll get to that but i find your your life story a little bit interesting because you have had some very um let's say special even dinner guests at your home unique growing up so tell us or tell our audience

Why are you such a part of the motorsport ecosystem? Explain that. So I was very blessed growing up to be around Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, some of the top golfers in the world like Nick Faudo and Bernard Langer, and meeting Bjorn Borg, because my father at the time was running IMG in Europe,

and IMG had all these amazing clients then. They still do, but back then it was a who's who in sports. And so I grew up with this passion for sports. Formula One obviously was a huge passion of mine, but I was also a really avid golfer, avid tennis player. And these athletes would come over to the house for dinner. So it was an amazing kind of like experience. I have the memory still today.

And as it relates to Formula One, I was nine when Ayrton Senna sadly passed away. It's actually on this day today, 1st of May, 32 years. But I remember, you know, when I was six, seven, him coming over for lunch, for dinner, when we moved into our apartment, you know, him coming and seeing my room. And I actually had a poster at the time of Michael Schumacher when I was seven years old, because this was in 91 or 92 when he won his first race. And I kind of quite liked him. I don't know why. And he saw this poster on my wall and he got pissed. And so,

you know, he had a unique personality, but like very special personality. And I'll never forget that it's not every day we get to Senna has become and that I don't want to go deep into the center more because we could go about it all day but we've like we're one degree from Senna on the show often yeah often had drivers that have yeah driven with him and now we have you sat and had dinner with him which is fascinating but how do you think that shaped where you are now without going too deep into what heightened is do yeah but how do you think that shaped you growing up well i think one his death was a huge loss for the family because you know my father was

his manager but also one of his closest friends they he left img in 91 with my father to start their own agency together so he was a huge part of our life and you know i'll never forget the day when he passed away you know there's certain days that you remember when you're like a young kid you know princess Diana when she passed away Ayrton Senna and so and seeing my father distraught like that I haven't really seen him like that since so that you know it shapes you as a young kid um and I just we've always been associated with him because you know he's everywhere in our house he's everywhere in my father's office he's in my office you know I have a replica helmet and so it did shape you know my life my father's life my family's life but I would say the biggest thing

was i always had a passion for formula one so i i ended up building a career in food and beverage and in consumer i always wanted to go out on my own and do something myself but i always had this passion for formula one and i knew at some point i would end up doing something and coming back into that world and i did you know five six years ago during covid when my industry the food and beverage world got hit very hard uh by covid as you know retail got decimated cpg got kind of really hit hard and so i pivoted and started spending more time in formula one especially moving down to miami uh and you have the miami race come here and i saw the opportunity to do things because netflix and drive to survive created a new audience in america you had this

crazy surge in popularity and i then started building you know a business of like clients and doing sponsorship deals and getting more involved in formula one and in the ecosystem and it's been amazing and it's always been there and now i'm really kind of working in the industry so you're i would call you a bit of a serial entrepreneur yeah what about from from being in sort of more consumer goods and packaged goods you then you went into e1 racing yes for people who don't know that's electric boat racing it's an excellent series because there has to be a man and a woman on the boat which i absolutely love so tell us about how team miami came to be because i think that sort of was a different sort of investment for you it was a different lane at

the time so talk to that how that came about was five six years ago i started spending more time in f1 and doing a lot of sponsorship deals uh with f1 miami with f1 and with one of my father's clients cecco um but what the opportunity with e1 came about because i have a younger brother two brothers and my younger brother at the time and still today was working for the league for e1 and so being in miami they all they wanted to have a miami team and my brother douglas didn't he was in charge of building out all the different teams he did an amazing job and so being connected the way i am i brought in mark anthony the singer and we launched team miami together i brought in an investor group and co-founded the team uh so that's how it all came about um i loved obviously

you know being involved in the team day today but on the commercial side so very similar to what we're doing now at heighten with all these other commercial partners we built t miami into the most successful commercial team in e1 we have some amazing partners in azimut yachts below the watch company um and you know it was it was a great journey um i would say that you talk about you you know, going back to being a serial entrepreneur and building things and, um, and, you know, and exiting. So I had fortunately the, um, you know, great success in the UK with two brands, you know, it's you, it's your grocery and Metcalf skinny. Um, and Metcalf skinny was bought by kettle chips, which is a potato chips brand, uh, in 2016 and Metcalf skinny for those of you that,

uh, well for the, for the audience is a, is a gourmet healthy popcorn brand. So like skinny pop over here in the u.s but those businesses were built and then they ended up getting metcalf skinny got bought um and in cpg it's interesting a lot of brands founders will come in and they'll scale the business for five or six years and then they'll sell it when they get to a certain size and that's what i did there but with heightened now i want to build a long-term business i'm not interested i'm not looking to sell heightened in the next year or two and you know that's why we created it as a holding company so I look at you know I aspire to be like LVMH or you know some of the other really amazing holding companies out

there that do multiple things have multiple verticals and we've obviously got different things we're doing but we're very focused right now on the brand partnership side and working with clients like concourse club and the fountain blue but it's been amazing but I'm thinking now much more for the long term yeah when I was building Metcalf skinny for example I was thinking well how quickly can I get this business to X million in sales so I can sell it to a strategic like Kettle Chips? Which there's nothing wrong with that.

That is what a lot of entrepreneurs do. But this is heightened as now your baby. You want to raise it and... Yeah. So I don't have any outside investors, which is different, you know. And so there's no pressure to like... When you bring in investment,

and I've raised money before for companies, you've always got the pressure of make pleasing them and they want to exit it at a certain point. and so you then have to answer to the board and when you don't have any outside investors and you're the only shareholder it means that you can build something slowly for the long term you can pivot you can you know think strategically and that that's a great thing to have and i'm very lucky to have someone that's working alongside me frank who comes from f1 miami where you know we are able to ideate together on what we want to do and you know we only launched heightened in

december officially so it's been four months and we've achieved so much in four months and if you'd ask me last summer you're going to build height and you're going to have you know five different clients by may 2026 i would have said no way so it's all you know everything's moving in a certain direction but i think because we you know we're founder driven we don't have outside investors no venture funds no pe we're able to do things the way we want and grow in a very structured focused way and think for the long term i want to shift to miami for a second i think miami's unique for many reasons but why are you focused on miami right now well i think um separate to the personal side of i think miami is you know with three kids and a family the best place to

bring up a family so the quality of life is amazing so it's on the personal side as it relates to work there's just so many people have moved here uh over the last five years you know since covid there's been an influx of people businesses young talent um it's an amazing place to be it's very pro-business uh and you know other parts of the us now are not like that um and for us and what we're doing which is basically in the world of sports we're obviously in through heightened and still in consumer we're doing things in hospitality but sports is a big focus for us especially in Formula One. Miami's like kind of become like the center of that and so the race the F1 race for example this week you know it

is for me the most important race of the F1 season out commercially outside of maybe Monaco maybe Las Vegas but you know what Steve Ross has done in the last years building this race from scratch is amazing so as a fellow founder and entrepreneur you know you really you know you get it you're impressed by these types yeah it's amazing what he's done is the local promoter but you know we've got you ask going back to miami we have concourse club as a client here we have fountain blue miami as a client we're about to bring on another client in miami fountain blue vegas whilst it's in vegas the team the ownership team that we deal with are

based in miami and so everything that we're doing in my office and team are here everything that we're doing flows through miami uh and then even all some of the stuff now on the consumer side so can't forget about that yeah you know I'm very excited about a recent investment I made in sunshine coffee which is if you think think blank Street a very high-end premium Miami born the founders very talented he's called Alan Phillips has a design background and he's really talented and for those of you that don't know you know when you build a kind of a consumer brand packaging and branding is everything and so I got involved with this business

about a year and a half ago joined the board and made an investment and you know we're about to open our second location and it's booming and so really you know everything I'm doing is flowing through Miami and you know that's that's kind of you know why you know we're so focused on the market here so Miami's great spot to be you before we started we actually referred to this as your Super Bowl I think you use the word super or you use that specifically American audiences understand the Super Bowl but also the magnitude of the Super Bowl is so grand right from a marketing perspective yeah commercial

perspective do you see the Miami Grand Prix the same way like truly in that yes because with the Super Bowl and I I unfortunately haven't been for a few years because my daughter was born in February right during Super Bowl weekend so I I'm a good father I don't miss her birthday but I went probably four or five years running and what people go to the Super Bowl for is all the events around it they a lot of people don't even go to the Super Bowl they want to be at all the business events and Miami's become like that too now with f1 it's I noticed it probably three years ago and so even this year you know

the number of events you've got going on around f1 every night during the day is amazing and everyone comes in so it is our Super Bowl because all of our brands that we work closely with they're all here all the players all the key players all the C-suite executives, all the CMOs, all the partnership officers or chief partnership people of each of these teams. They're here and you've seen some today. We've hosted some today here at the Concourse Club, at the Fountain Blue Miami. We've got meetings in the F1 paddock back to back today and tomorrow with lots of different people. And so this for us is a really important week and weekend.

I just wanted to ask something on a very micro level. Tell us, Hyten, where does the name come from? What does it represent for you? What does it mean? great so I have an amazing designer friend in London so he did he was my head of graphic design at Metcalfe's food company which was our holding company for its who grocery Metcalfe skinny and he was one of my first few hires he's called Kane and so he's always done my branding and so when I had the idea of creating a holding company last summer to house all of the different ventures I have and and and kind of like put everything under one

umbrella and build that next LVMH I went to Kane and I said let's come up with a name and originally initially we were thinking maybe should we call it Jacoby you know Jacoby & Co and we came up with Highton because it's generic it doesn't exist it's memorable and I feel like you need a name like that and that's how we came up with it but it was really Kane that kind of came up with it yeah shout out to Kane nice job Kane Kane we're here for you so you you you keep referring to the LVMH that's the goal that's the sort of the projection yeah I think you have to think big a hundred percent why you're not gonna do a so

right and there that requires different silos right now and you said you want to grow you know slow and steady wins the race so right now just to explain to people what's the primary focus of the business today so if you look at our website we have like three different areas that we're focused on one is investments and shareholdings and that's across three different verticals so consumer sports and hospitality and then we have a second area of focus which is brand partnerships and then the third is kind of events and experiences we're very focused on number two and number three so brand partnerships and events and experiences the investment side i'm always looking for great

investments we obviously you know we um i just invested in sunshine yeah i have a shareholding a minority shareholding in tea miami uh i've got some um a large shareholding in misfits which i invested in five and a half years ago it's a plant-based protein bar from the uk that's doing really amazing now in the us uh in whole foods and trader joe's and nationally but the big and but those are all like passive investments so i'm on the board of misfits i'm on the board of sunshine but i'm not involved day to day and being an operator and founder i i you know i like being active and so the area that we're really focused on is the brand partnership side and the events and experience inside and Frank and I you know we've got obviously

some great clients and great brands that we work with and that's the area that we're building because that's bringing in the revenue for the company do you think experience because experience is what is what we've experienced today yeah a great experience and every little detail matters have you seen a shift in in how experience is um what it means yeah to the brands what it means to the people that are you know like all the folks here that get to to be here the expectation expectation yeah has that changed over the you know the course of time i i've seen a change what does experience mean to you i think is what i should so so we're well how i think of with everything that we do is how can

we be different how can we add value you know we don't want to be like another company other that says they're a brand partnership agency for example and I think what our clients are looking for is being able to offer money can't buy experiences to their customer base so if that's a brand for example American Express they have their Centurion card holders yeah they're looking for money can't buy experiences so you know our next for example you know they've got a great relationship with the phantom blue vegas and phantom blue miami because those hotels are doing year-round events activations and experiences that are great for their card holders

and unique and special concourse club they've got obviously a very high-end membership basis i'm sure you learned today being here but you know the corporate partners that are coming in here to activate they're taking for example over the track for half a day the banks or hedge funds or whoever that is and they're hosting their top 100 clients high net worth people and they're giving them a money can't buy or special experience a unique experience and that's what we you know when we reach out to brands um to approach them about say concourse club or fountain blue vegas we go with that lens with that approach because there's so many people that are approaching these big companies and saying well we want you to do this activation or that but i'm we're thinking

how can we actually be different what can we offer to these companies that is different to other agencies or brand partnership companies out there and i think we've got you know clients like concourse club and phantom blue vegas and uncharted that make it really you know easy not easy that's a bad word but it may it kind of allows us to be differentiated with our offering which is so important yeah because it is a competitive landscape let's not lie so i think that what you're doing is very unique you're also catering to it to a to a demographic that they're used to really good experiences so if yours doesn't stand out if yours isn't exceptional from Vincenzo mentioned the moment we they

opened the gate at the concourse club it was already like okay we've arrived at a different sort of place right the this is a very different money can't buy experience and you can tell that the every detail every person we spoken to every touch point it's been outstanding i heard about the extra large parking spots you can't get over the extra large times from different people right and by the way the you know so we've we've obviously been busy the last few days bringing potential clients here to see the concourse club that we think would be a perfect fit for the club and there's only so much you can do on zoom explaining what the concourse club is or even by the way fountain blue vegas

for example there's only so much you have people have to go and experience it and you know one of our big clients um i'm obviously the confidential i'm not going to say who it is but we brought their chief partnerships officer to the hotel three weeks ago and she was like like wow like you know she had the most amazing experience and off the back of that experience and trip you know we think we can now build this you know strategic partnership with them This is for the Vegas property. This is for the Vegas property. Because that Vegas property is a canvas and a half.

If you are a brand who wants to activate, you really need to get a hold of Heighten and do something there because that is... Well, it's the new five-star hotel on the Strip. There hasn't been a five-star hotel like it for years. Their closest competitor is The Win. Now, The Win has got the brand awareness, but what we've been very focused on at Heighten over the last year of working with them is how to drive more foot traffic inside the hotel,

how to have more brands activate how to bring more of the teams and drivers during f1 you know now we've got a year-round kind of project you know we're we're advising them year-round we're not just working around f1 there's plenty of other events in Vegas but yeah I agree the concourse club this is not something anyone can walk exactly no no no no absolutely right the same thing with with you know the concourse club we're about to go to at the actual yes the GP campus like those are experiences you get so having contacts having connections having you know the word I'm looking for but you I know you have the

passion yeah as well it's a differentiator yes I want to ask you something so so people learn a little bit more are you guys doing things for the World Cup do you run things year-round yes what's the great great great great question so it is a year-round now kind of obviously we're focus on year-round events so obviously F1 Miami is a big event for us F1 Vegas is a big event for us because of you know Fountain Blue Vegas the FIFA World Cup will be as well because we're working with Fountain Blue Miami and that we're doing a huge amount of things inside the hotel and at events

activations and things during the World Cup that will be one of the biggest events has ever come to the US our Basel I think will be a big event for us we're about to bring on a new client they haven't signed yet so I can't say who it is but they're based in Brickell downtown and they want to do a lot of events and activations around Art Basel so Miami is great because there's so many big things going on throughout the year we also are working with I have can't forget them we're working with an amazing company in New York called Uncharted which was started by this billionaire Michael Loeb and he does

these events in unique event talk about kind of unique experiences he has a a house in the hamptons which is from the billions it's the billions house it's in south hampton on the water it's unbelievable and he does these special events uh during you know during the summer in his house and we're helping him plan a new event in august on the 28th called fame to fortune there'll be 400 guests there you know who's who in like the world of celebrity and media and culture and brand and c-suite executives um and we've heightened was engaged to have basically help put on the event bring in the speakers bring in sponsors bring you know the guest list and that's been great to work on so a lot of the companies that we're working working

with we can go to them now and say okay if you know you want to activate around the us open tennis you've got uncharted if you want to activate around f1 miami you've got concourse club or you have fountain blue miami if you want to do something around vegas you've and f1 you've got fountain blue vegas so all of our clients there's a lot of synergies across them with the brands and companies that we're working with and of course keeping customers coming back not always having to find new ones you have the ability to do that with different cities correct you know it's not only motorsport there's more work there's there's different things um if someone today was to come to you and say all right robert i'm sold i want to work with you put something

together for me in miami how did what does that look like what can you do so well obviously we we're very focused on delivering for our clients so there's only two of us right now frank and i um at some point shout out to frank by the way who's sitting back there hi frank yeah um make sure they don't the shuttle bus doesn't leave by the way and you can take that that out so I think we obviously want to build the number of clients we have because obviously each client we work with you know we're on a retainer with them and then obviously you know like with any client you know if you bring sponsors there's a you know there's a commission deal but I think we're very

focused on delivering so there's only so many clients we can have so we're also quite selective with who we work with we're not just gonna work with anyone we want to make sure we can deliver for them and we want to make sure we can add value and vice versa we want to make sure that they think we can add value so it has to work for both sides we've got four clients right now soon to be five and you know I'd like by the end of the year to have another you know three four clients at the same time I think we're going to need to add to the team but there's no point in just adding to the team for the sake of it like fortunately

so far Frank and I've been able to deliver for all of our clients because there's a lot of overlap and synergies too um you know we're working like 24 7 and when you're building a new company from scratch that's what you're doing it's great but you love that game i love it i love building things from scratch and this is like this is it um but you know the goal is ultimately to build out uh the business and build out the number of clients we have and also most importantly bring more business for them for the existing clients we have like we're not even at the tip of the iceberg yet like with what we can do here at concourse club and and what we can do in Vegas with Fountain Blue and Miami.

Like we've got, you know, many more clients we can bring them and that takes time because we've got to bring them and see the property. You know, it takes time to, you know, set up those in-person visits. There's only so much you can do on, like you said earlier, there's only so much you can do on Zoom.

Even for us, when we were talking to you before, we had to come and see it. We have to come and experience. We can't talk about it without experiencing it. And, wow, it really, I don't even think you gave it as much do as it deserves. We haven't even gone to the campus. We haven't even gone to the campus. I'm very excited.

Yeah. I'm pumped for you and Frankie for what you're building and how you are really changing the way we look at what an experience should look like. Yeah. Like, to me, that's... At that corporate level, for sure. And especially what we're seeing across the board. A lot of things just kind of get to be the same. Yeah, I agree.

It's gotten, like, everyone, what is it, blanding, where all the brands started, like, all looking the same. But you know why? Because even the word, like, luxury has been so watered down. That's such a, like, I don't even, I'm not going to throw any brand under the bus,

but luxury now is almost everything, right? Everyone says they have a luxury something. Everyone. This is actually something, and I like what you said, a money-can't-buy experience. What we've experienced today, what we're going to experience

when we go to the structure on campus at the Grand Prix, that is a money can't buy. You have to be working with Heighton to be able to experience that. That is a money can't buy. So for me, that is actual luxury. Something that money can't buy. Correct.

Robert, how does the audience find you if they want to reach out? We have a website, Heighton.com, H-Y-T-O-N. We have an Instagram page that we just launched. You can follow us, Heighton Hold Co. At Heighton Hold Co. and you can get in touch directly with me robert at um heightened.com is my email address um so i'm happy obviously to to you know speak to anyone like we're always on the lookout for uh great

brands to work with um you know people that want to potentially work with us on the team like you know as you know you build your business through having surrounding yourself with great people so so if you are a brand that wants to think differently about experience a brand that wants to do different for your own customers yeah I think it's clear no bigger no-brainer it's clear that this is the guy to talk to this is the team to talk to and we're grateful for being here this week it's been lovely thank you so much the beginning of the week so there's more to listen I just want to say before we finish up it's really great to have you here I'm so happy that

we were connected to have you here obviously as guests have you come in for the weekend you guys have built an amazing business too so I have to make a shout out on that front what you're what you're doing what you're doing what you're doing is great and i'm looking forward to doing further collaborations with you and i think there's lots of things that heightened business to speak and do together and thank you for having me on your uh on your show appreciate it thank you sir thank you thank you so much lovely