

Marketing Stormpulse: rise early, work hard, strike oil - wensing
http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1299679268/marketing-stormpulse-rise-early-work-hard-strike-oil

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aresant
StormPulse's previous article made me question why they've been ignored by
VC/Angels despite great traction, and smart founders.

I have a crackpot theory: Silcon Valley doesn't understand weather.

I live in CA too, and "weather" for me is not wearing sandals to work.

The StormPulse founders live in FL, where "weather" is not being able to find
your house when you come home from work because it's in a tree a half-mile
away.

Meanwhile "The public’s online appetite for weather cannot be overstated.
According to a Scarborough Research study, 36.5% of adults went to the
Internet for weather info in the past month, behind only e-mail (62.6%) and
ahead of news (33.6%)."

I can't wait to see where these guys go . . .

StormPulse's first article -
[http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-
stor...](http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-stormpulse)

Quote referenced:
[http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/390680-Stations_Wea...](http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/390680-Stations_Weather_Forecast_Looks_Cloudy.php)

~~~
jfarmer
It's their job to sell it. Push, not pull.

I know Matt knows this, but you can't expect anyone to care unless you make
them care.

Being located in Florida is a liability for VCs and angels, regardless.

You're right that their product has a great "problem slide" built right into
the deck: a picture of a tree crushing a house.

~~~
aresant
I agree completely.

I think these posts will help them tremendously - engaging HN usually leads to
good things and having the community help to sharpen the pitch is a great
first step.

It's a shame that this post wound up on the second page of HN - probably too
many of Matt's fans hitting it early triggering some kind of HN algorithm . .
.

------
NathanKP
So simply summarized Stormpulse's success came because:

    
    
        1. They provided a better solution to a problem that people had,
        2. They made the solution easily spreadable via an embedable widget,
        3. Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast.
    

Two of the three ingredients they had control of, the third was a random event
that they were well-placed to take advantage of. People who saw the Stormpulse
widget remembered it and searched for it directly, rather than try to use the
broken, or inefficient service of other online weather media.

~~~
scott_s
But the third is not uniformly random, it's periodically random. That is, you
never know exactly when a bad hurricane is going to form, but you can have
confidence it will happen.

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vaksel
that doesn't seem to be so much about marketing, but more to do with being
viral.

