Founders: Shimon Elkabetz, Rei Goffer & Itai Zlotnik
Founding: 2016
Mission: Help countries, businesses, and individuals better manage their weather related challenges with the world’s leading weather intelligence and climate adaptation platform.
Employees: 240 & 20% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Series E & $250M+ raised
Investors: Activate Capital, Squarepeg Capital, Canaan, ClearVision, JetBlue Ventures and Pitango
Key Customers: AWS, Delta, Ford, JetBlue, Patriots, Porsche, Uber, United
Glassdoor Rating: 4.2
Valuation (estimated): $500M+ (assuming they sold ~10-15% of the company in the Q2 ‘23 $87M Series E fundraise)
^ this is a useless number. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Tomorrow.io is a “weather intelligence and climate adaptation” software platform for enterprises and governments. This team is on a mission to build the world’s first commercial weather radar satellite constellation to bring real time weather forecasting to the entire globe. A weather service, in a box.
Israeli business school students Shimon Elkabetz, Rei Goffer & Itai Zlotnik traveled to Boston with entrepreneurial aspirations. Shimon was a former Israeli Air Force fighter pilot who was attending HBS. Rei & Itai were just down the river at Sloan. Rei had served in the Israeli Air Force and Itai had been a Special Tactics Officer in an elite special forces unit before working for Apple in Tel Aviv.
The friends met at Grendel’s Den in Harvard Square to exchange startup ideas before collectively realizing the impact of weather on each of their careers and the broader business problems weather can cause. As they researched the problem, they came to understand that weather forecasting comes from three sources. Sensors, like from an observation tower, capture data. Next, models are built to analyze the data and predict what’s going to happen. Third, a forecast gets extrapolated. All of these inputs are predominantly and historically government funded.
Just a few short years after Peter Thiel lamented on the current state of technology that “they promised us flying cars, and all we got was 140 characters” this trio founded Tomorrow (fka ClimaCell) and embarked upon an ambitious mission that, if fulfilled, would have broad ramifications to provide more accurate & reliable forecasting for businesses and governments.
In the U.S. we often take forecasting for granted because, due to government infrastructure, radar coverage, and satellite coverage we have a pretty good handle on our weather patterns. But 5B people across the world live outside of consistent radar coverage and much of the oceans are uncovered too. Most satellites look at Earth, on average, once every three days. The weather industry relies on data from government weather stations, radar data, and satellites which are largely focused away from weather related tracking.
In terms of tailwinds, both literally and figuratively, the planet is warming up. By the end of the century average temperatures will be at least 5 degrees warmer and could be up to 10 degrees warmer than the 1901-1960 average (src). Hurricanes are becoming more intense and other weather related disruptions are likely to continue.
From 2016 to 2020 the Tomorrow team built an integrated Weather Intelligence software platform & API to help individuals, businesses, governments, and countries with hyper local weather intelligence. For example, they helped Indigrid in India prepare for the path of a cyclone so they could better position their teams and keep electricity on for 100M citizens during the storm. They helped Delta save $3.5M when they identified a short window during a winter storm where they could de-ice and get delayed flights off the ground to their destinations. By integrating with the workflows of enterprise customers across aviation, logistics, and sports they can help these businesses do better strategic planning.
In 2020, the founders brought their board an even more ambitious vision to build the largest vertically integrated weather and climate technology company in the world. All they had to do was launch satellites into space to build out a full fledged worldwide weather monitoring platform.
Tomorrow launched their first satellite, Tomorrow R-1, into space onboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket on April 15, 2023. With a team of dozens of engineers and PhD’s doing weather modeling, along with actual rocket science, they’re on a path to build monitoring capabilities across the entire earth within an hour. Their constellation will leverage 28 satellites (across two sensor types) to change the way weather forecasting is done. To become a weather service…in a box. SaaS itself can only do so much, so space and sensors will have to do the rest. It’s worth watching the fulfillment of that first launch in Tomorrow’s 6 Years to Launch video here.
On June 14, 2023 they launched Tomorrow R-2, their second satellite, followed a couple weeks later by the announcement of their $87M Series E capital fundraise. The Tomorrow team continues to build out their client base in the enterprise across aviation, logistics (trucking, shipping & rail), and sports customers. They’re establishing public/private partnerships to help governments across the world get up to speed and license their technology domestically.
Operators to Know (Locally):
- Bill Claflin, Director of Enterprise Sales & Business Development – Safety Operations
- Monica Leal Crombe, Director of Sales – Latin America, Global Mining & Construction
- Michael Huguet, Senior Expert Meteorologist
- Alexander Kenny, SDR Team Lead
- John L’Heureux, Lead Manager
- Natasha McGrady, Director, Solutions Engineering
- Lisa Miller, Senior Manager of Manufacturing & Quality
- Marie Rose Muir, Director of Operations
- Kelly Peters, Director of Marketing
- Ken Richard, Director of FP&A
- Neil Sullivan, Global Controller
- Reece Todd, Senior Meteorology Expert
- Natalie Turini, Director of Account Management
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Tomorrow.io team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired (Locally):
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
- What are the next key product & company milestones that will help unlock the next stage of growth?
- What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 250 employees?
- Who are the key competitors and how does Tomorrow differentiate itself?
- What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in the coming quarters // teams that need the most help?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Tomorrow.io you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring near instantaneous weather forecasting to the 5B+ people and vast oceans currently without coverage. All weather affected enterprises and governments applaud your efforts. See you around town!