Our Founder

Jay Norris could be the man disrupting one of the biggest cost components of any physical retail operation – the lease agreement. As in-store shopping begins to remerge as the pandemic comes under control, many analysts expect both retailers and landlords to be looking for new cost structures that minimize risk by entering into variable lease agreements that consider retailers’ monthly sales performance. In the past, property owners have been leery of such arrangements due to limited access to verifiable sales reports, but Jay Norris and his band of tech disruptors at Guesst are making such arrangements more feasible with software that enables property owners to gain reliable insight into their tenants’ retail sales performance in real time

Jay is an innovative leader who uses his creativity and imagination to uncover opportunities in today’s challenging media, retail, and real estate industries. He is the CEO & Founder of Guesst Software - A Creative Leasing Platform, and the CMO and Co-Founder of the Blacklight Extension - The World's 1st Search Engine for Black-owned businesses nationwide.

Jay has over 20 years of developing retail, lifestyle & experiential concepts. His start was in the music industry, developing multi-city tours and venues for top recording artists for Clive Davis, Arista Records, and Sony Music recording artists (Celine Dion, The Notorious B.I.G, Usher, Whitney Houston, TLC, Pink, D'Angelo, and countless others). In 1997, Jay started Tastemakers Media, which published a cutting-edge magazine throughout the US featuring the best retail and lifestyle offerings domestically and abroad.