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.