I read and read and read to figure out why I was getting a class not found error, it turns out the manifest.mf had an error in the line:
Main-Class: com.example.MainClass
I fixed the error by going to Project Properties dialog (right-click Project Files), then Run and Main Class and corrected whatever Netbeans decided to put here. Netbean inserted the project name instead of the class name. No idea why. Probably inebriated on muratina...