4 ms·

Do you have a source for sites like weather.com and AccuWeather being part of a billions of dollars industry? That is surprising to me.

datadrivenangel 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather
- positr0n 2y ago
  > AccuWeather's estimated annual revenue is currently $156.6M per year.
mikeortman 2y ago
It's hard to get accurate numbers as many weather sites are privately held. But to give some info: Weather Company was sold for $2B to IBM in 2015 (and recently sold to private equity for undisclosed amount). Tomorrow.IO has a $1B+ valuation pre-IPO SPAC. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/04/08/ibms-weather-company-has-a-path-to-billions-in-new-revenue-thanks-to-the-rise-of-the-subscription-economy/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/04/08/ibms-we...
- WrongAssumption 2y ago
  That’s not really indicative of a large industry. If the weather company was bought for 2 billion, at standard valuations they were probably pulling at most 100 million per year in net income.
  - keithalewis 2y ago
    User name checks out.
akira2501 2y ago
You can't safely fly or sail unless you know and can predict the weather at your destination.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  That's not a full explanation for these companies being valuable though. Only flight planning makes use of commercial weather forecasts - the actual decisions (take off or delay, land or redirect to alternate?) are made by the pilots based on reports made by the airports themselves, usually based on their respective national forecaster's reports. Commercial pilots don't just bring up weather.com on their iPad on final approach, although their dispatcher might well have used a more sophisticated version of the same thing hours before the flight set off. P.S. It's easy find online versions of the reports that pilots get over the radio. Here's an example with explanation for Boston Logan International, USA: https://aviationweather.gov/data/metar/?id=KBOS&hours=0&decoded=yes https://aviationweather.gov/data/metar/?id=KBOS&hours=0&deco...

datadrivenangel 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather

positr0n 2y ago
> AccuWeather's estimated annual revenue is currently $156.6M per year.

mikeortman 2y ago

It's hard to get accurate numbers as many weather sites are privately held. But to give some info: Weather Company was sold for $2B to IBM in 2015 (and recently sold to private equity for undisclosed amount). Tomorrow.IO has a $1B+ valuation pre-IPO SPAC. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/04/08/ibms-weather-company-has-a-path-to-billions-in-new-revenue-thanks-to-the-rise-of-the-subscription-economy/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/04/08/ibms-we...

WrongAssumption 2y ago
That’s not really indicative of a large industry. If the weather company was bought for 2 billion, at standard valuations they were probably pulling at most 100 million per year in net income.
- keithalewis 2y ago
  User name checks out.

akira2501 2y ago

You can't safely fly or sail unless you know and can predict the weather at your destination.

seabass-labrax 2y ago
That's not a full explanation for these companies being valuable though. Only flight planning makes use of commercial weather forecasts - the actual decisions (take off or delay, land or redirect to alternate?) are made by the pilots based on reports made by the airports themselves, usually based on their respective national forecaster's reports. Commercial pilots don't just bring up weather.com on their iPad on final approach, although their dispatcher might well have used a more sophisticated version of the same thing hours before the flight set off. P.S. It's easy find online versions of the reports that pilots get over the radio. Here's an example with explanation for Boston Logan International, USA: https://aviationweather.gov/data/metar/?id=KBOS&hours=0&decoded=yes https://aviationweather.gov/data/metar/?id=KBOS&hours=0&deco...