Last weekend, I attended a local entrepreneurship competition, the Springfield Startup Weekend hosted by Techstars and the eFactory (Missouri State University’s startup accelerator). I had a free ticket for the event, good for two days of workshops/mentorship and a ton of catered food. Little did I know that I would gain so much from the weekend: a better understanding of the entrepreneurship process, valuable business connections, a new direction for my tornado prediction model, and new friends in this city. I’d like take you through this whirlwind of a weekend, if for no other reason than to process the emotions that still linger days later.
It started on Friday evening with pizza, beer, and conversation. Then we broke the ice with a couple of marketing exercises – the room brainstormed some random buzzwords and minutes later I was on a team pitching a concept for a thing called “Beerplow.” This interlude was building up to the main event in which each participant gave a one-minute pitch on a startup idea, hoping to drum up enough interest among other participants to form a team for the competition. Despite bending the rules a bit (2+ years of scientific research nearly disqualified me from the event, but I was saved by a complete lack of business development), my idea cleared the elimination round, amassing the second-highest vote tally. I ended up with a well-balanced team of guys around my age, including a small business and nonprofit manager, a freelance graphic designer, and a graduate communications instructor.
Saturday we hit the ground running. My team quickly got up to speed on the capabilities of the model, and our first group decision was to rule out creating just another weather app in favor of developing software targeted for meteorologists. However, we soon hit a snag with our preferred market: nearly all local TV stations are owned by national conglomerates, so any decision such as what software to use is made from above and applied to all affiliated stations. Moreover, we spoke to multiple broadcast meteorologists who expressed that using an additional software program would be overwhelming on severe weather days when they already have a barrage of incoming information. This established our ultimate goal as a buyout of the technology, either by the National Weather Service or by one of two companies that produce the behind-the-scenes software platform for TV meteorology broadcasts. Either route would get faster, more precise tornado warnings into millions of living rooms, but both routes will require years of operational testing before being adopted by these large entities.
After determining the end goal, building a business plan for the intermediate time period (optimistically assumed to be 5 years) was relatively straightforward. Based on the current computational speed of the model’s algorithm, we determined that to handle the load of a major severe weather outbreak we’d need a server with about 256 GB of RAM and 10 TB of storage, costed at $25,000/year. The software platform would likely cost around $10,000, and maintaining a patent would cost another $10,000 over that span. We would cover these fixed costs through a combination of grants (NSF SBIR seeks to fund private R&D with a high societal impact, seemingly a perfect fit), capital investment, and a subscription model for interim use by individuals in the meteorology and emergency management fields.
By Sunday, we had a compelling story around which to build a pitch presentation. We had talked to 3 meteorologists (two from TV and one from emergency management) and 2 other TV producers to determine how best to get our foot in the door. We received extensive mentorship from local software developers and tech entrepreneurs, as well as market research from some in-house business consultants at the eFactory. We had 7 minutes to pull on heartstrings with the story of the Joplin tornado, describe our technology in layman’s terms, and convey the viability of our business plan to a panel of judges. Despite a couple of rough practice runs, our presentation was a success! The second-place finish was gratifying, of course, but the outpouring of continued support was unbelievable – heart-warming and motivating. We were formally invited to incubate our startup company at the eFactory, among other offers of free business consultation and grant-writing assistance.
Tornado Tracker’s power team! From L-R: Marcus, Alex, Eric, and Jorge
Startup weekend was just the beginning; in just a few days, I feel like I moved from a fringe spectator of the Springfield entrepreneurial community right to the center of the action. I met many new friends throughout the weekend, many of whom I’ve already reconnected with, for instance, at a networking cocktail hour on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I attended the 5-year anniversary event of the entrepreneurship group 1 Million Cups, connecting with many other small business owners and entrepreneurs while listening to Springfield’s renowned small business expert, the one and only Jack Stack (founder/CEO of SRC Holdings). It’s a great feeling, getting the ball rolling on tornado modeling again with the support of my new-found network!
Worldly Observations 