Why We Invested in Sunshine

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We’re excited to announce the launch of Sunshine, a company that joined our incubator in April and is releasing its iPhone app in the US today. Here’s why we funded them.

The World’s Most Accurate Weather

Until now, most people have simply accepted that existing weather forecasts are inaccurate. Rain predictions are general estimates, and temperatures are basic guidelines that are often wrong by more than 10 degrees. The available government data and current weather apps are so bad at predicting accurate weather that tornados have already killed 10 people in the US this year. Why do we put up with this? We invested in Sunshine to change this for us and the world. For the first time ever, we’ll have accurate weather data and predictions.

Sunshine provides personalized weather forecasts with greater accuracy than ever before. Using the barometer inside most later-generation smart phones, Sunshine builds on existing weather data to provide “nowcasts” that are significantly more accurate than any other source. Using proprietary algorithms, Sunshine’s predictions get even more accurate with localized, crowd-sourced weather data.

The Maven team and I had been looking to help build such a company for some time before meeting the Sunshine team. Ever since 2008 when I first started using Waze, it struck me that similar crowd-sourced technology could do the same thing for weather that Waze has done for traffic — take the guesswork out of something critical that people experience every day. When we met the Sunshine team, we knew they were uniquely positioned to build this company. Co-founders Katerina and Yiannis share a passion for weather. They’d already built a successful crowd-sourced weather app, Weendy, which aggregated data from a passionate niche market of wind sports enthusiasts to predict and share current wind and water conditions. Soon after launching Weendy, Apple released the iPhone 6 which included a barometer, joining many Android devices which already had such hardware. This amazing combination of a shared vision, with the best team, at the right time made Sunshine a great fit for an investment from Maven.

We’ve already seen amazing results. After a beta launch in Canada last month, Sunshine quickly became a top weather app in the Canadian Apple App Store and predicted weather with up to 35% more accuracy than anyone else. Download Sunshine here to see for yourself how this app improves your life — we’d love to hear from you.

 

The Top 10 Reasons Your Consumer Startup Will Succeed

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I’ve been working in consumer tech for 20 years, first as an early employee and operator, then starting in 2008 as an angel investor and now a VC. I’ve been fortunate to work with 3 unicorns ($1B+ startups) and have earned a 10x return on the cash I invested from 4 great exits to-date, and several companies in my portfolio are still privately held and doing great. Since then, my team and I at Maven have invested in another 22 startups over the last two years — all of which are still operating and one of which has been acquired. I am proud (and lucky) to have these results and have looked at literally thousands of companies to select these investments. Over the years, certain patterns have emerged that I’ve distilled in the following top 10 reasons consumer startups succeed:

#1 Vision Worth Fighting For:  What are you planning to bring into the world that is worth all the time, effort, and money required for success? We back passionate founders solving novel problems that don’t already have an existing solution in the market that’s “good enough.”

#2 Founding Team: You’re more likely to succeed with a passionate team of 2-3 founders, one of whom has great technical expertise. It’s an added benefit if the team has worked together for a while.

#3 Culture: Even with a small team, a company culture already exists. Take the time to document it early, live it, then hire for culture fit first and skills next.

#4 Product/Market Fit: The biggest recurring obstacles to product/market fit are that the product doesn’t solve a real need, that it’s not hitting the right audience, or that it’s just not ready for ‘prime time’. Set the right metrics and track them closely to identify and solve these issues if they arise.

#5 Language/Market Fit: All of the language you choose — company name, product features, company description — needs to describe what your company does while connecting with your customers on an emotional level.

#6 Growth: Study known growth techniques, and creatively adapt them to your specific business. Make the product great for your core base of users.

#7 Focus: Whether it’s deciding to target enterprise or consumer, or prioritizing product features, you need to focus, or risk spreading your resources too thin.

#8 The Right Mentors: To prevent mentor whiplash — conflicting advice between mentors — choose individuals who have relevant experience to your business, rather than general success at a tech company. Hold regular advisory board meetings to talk through conflicting ideas as a group.

#9 Fundraising: There are a number of factors to consider in a Seed round; take the right-sized amount of capital, protect your cap table, and be wary of raising too many convertible notes & party-rounds.

#10 Luck: Each of these nine requirements is necessary, but on their own or collectively are still not sufficient. To achieve massive success, you will also need some good luck and great timing to succeed. But here’s the good news: you can influence your luck by laying the groundwork, making good decisions, and acting fast when luck strikes and great opportunities arise.  Louise Pastier appropriately said, ‘luck favors the prepared mind.’

If you follow the first nine steps, sprinkled with the right amount of luck, you can build a massive consumer company that improves the world for its customers. Which of the top 10 reasons do you think is most important? Are we missing any?