Why WeatherSocial Failed

I was sitting down today, with the many thoughts and ideas in my head, and I was thinking about why my idea from back in 2012, WeatherSocial, failed. I have a pretty good idea but wanted to share it.

I had first thought of the idea when I was chasing a storm back in 2012. I was out in the middle of a field, watching the clouds roll in, I looked at the radar on my phone and it had said that it was hailing in Kaukauna, which is a city just 10 miles west of where I was. I thought "I wonder if it actually is, and if so, what the size is." I felt that there was no way of me knowing without actually driving there and I didn't know where on the web to go to find communication from someone in Kaukauna besides on Facebook. So that's when the idea of WeatherSocial hit me. It originally came to me as "Storm Chasers of America". I then thought, "why to stop there though?" Over the next several days I thought of several other ideas I could add to this weather social networking idea of mine. Over the next several months I created a rough draft of the website. One night I was over at a friend's apartment and told him about the idea. He liked it and offered his help. Because I felt that I had to give him something in order for him to feel his time worthwhile, I offered him stock in the company. In order to offer him stock in the company, I had to incorporate the idea into a company. A few weeks later I had surgery to fix a deviated septum. While I was resting from the surgery, I googled how to start a business. From there I began researching lawyers in the area who could help with the launching of the business. Every single law firm I came across were personal injury law firms. Personal injury must be a huge money-making field for lawyers as it was quite annoying how many there were. I finally came across a law firm that did business startups, so I contacted them. Before I knew it, my friend and I were in our business suits sitting in front of a lawyer at this law firm who was ready to help us launch our business. She had stated that Storm Chasers of America was probably too long of a company name, so right there on the spot I came up with the new name of WeatherSOCIAL. While the legal name was WeatherSocial with no space in-between the r and s, we were told that the "Social" didn't need to be capitalized on papers because capitalization did not matter. It was up to us whether or not we wanted to capitalize the SOCIAL part as we pleased, which we did. A month had passed and I had decided that I wanted to try and sell stock to the Silicon Valley companies, so I booked my friend and I, and his girlfriend at the time 3 plane tickets to Los Angeles, CA where we would hire a driving company to take us from LA to Silicon Valley and back. So with about 20 users registered on WeatherSOCIAL and the site not being finished yet, we headed to Silicon Valley after failed attempts to contact them. Our first stop was Accel Partners. A man from this company was one of the first investors in Facebook. With no luck at the entrance, we called them. They finally answered and told us to email them our Powerpoint about the company, so I did, and we left without meeting with them as no one was there to meet with us. Our next stop was Google headquarters. We must have driven up to the wrong entrance because we were met by security who asked us if we had an appointment or meeting with someone. We lied and said that we did. Because they couldn't confirm it, they didn't let us in. I handed the security guard one of the many business cards I had made for the company a few weeks back and we went on our way. The next stop was Yahoo headquarters. I had started to not feel too well, so I had my friend go in without me. About 20 minutes had passed by and suddenly my phone had started ringing. It was my friend. I answered the call. He said that he was talking to some people and needed to know what our email was. I gave him the company email that I had set up and then he hung up. About 5 minutes later he came out. He said that he had talked to a group of people about our idea. He said that they were very interested and would be in contact. Several months had passed and there was no word from Yahoo. Eventually, my friend lost interest in the company and began to refrain from helping with it. I removed him from the company and started to do work on my own. Eventually, everything that needed to be done on my own became overwhelming and I halted my work with the company. Every so often I would open the files on my computer, look at the code, think about whether or not I should continue my work on the company, decide again that the amount of work would be too overwhelming to do on my own, and then close the files. Every so often I thought about getting rid of the company, and then would think, "but what if I eventually find the help I need and make it happen? I would have to re-incorporate all over again." A couple years passed and I eventually grew tired of filing company taxes every year with nothing but zeros covering every page, so I eventually decided to file the paperwork to dissolve the company.

Now to point out the numerous and very obvious mistakes that I had made. The first one? Offering my friend stock in the company. This could have just been a fun project that we could have worked on on the side. Being that he was my friend, the thought of having to pay him was probably the wrong decision.

Mistake #2 - Incorporating a company that wasn't even yet a company. Legally, I had a company. Realistically, I just paid a law firm to file paperwork with the government so they could keep track of a project I was working on. The site only had 20 users, wasn't even finished, was making no money, and no one knew about it.

Mistake #3 - Paying just over $1000 to fly out to Silicon Valley to try and sell stock for a company that, again, wasn't even a company. If we had actually managed to get and meet with anyone with most of these companies, I have no doubt that they probably would have thought that it was an interesting and cool idea, but I also have no doubt that if we actually tried to sell them stock that they would have laughed in our faces and told us to get out. Let us not forget the just over $1000 we paid the driving company to drive from LA to SV and back.

Mistake #4 - Letting my friend go in without me (at Yahoo), the actual inventor and the person behind the idea because I wasn't feeling well.

Mistake #5 - This ties into #4. I should have made sure my friend had the company info down and was ready to properly answer any questions that were asked of him. Technically mistake #5 wouldn't count if I hadn't made mistake #4 and would have just gone in with him.

Mistake #6 - Although we weren't nearly anywhere ready to present our company to these Silicon Valley companies, if we were, we definitely should not have ended our endeavors at Yahoo. We should have gone straight to Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, which were right down the road, after Yahoo. We should have also tried The Weather Channel, which is actually not located in CA.

Mistake #7 - With companies like Facebook and Twitter, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to create any type of social network these days. Especially since these are two of the most modernly used ways of communicating.

So, what did I learn? A lot. I learned that I dived way to fast into this company that was just a project at the time. I got too excited about the idea, pushed it too far too soon, and ended up losing money over it.

I'll be honest. I do have another company idea, but I assure you I learned my lesson with WeatherSOCIAL. This idea stems from a passion I have had since I was little. I am going to roll out this new idea of mine very slowly. I hope to launch the idea publicly in November, and maybe if it's successful and creates a reasonable amount of revenue, I will turn it into a company. I already have all the equipment I need so it should cost me little to no money in present time.

No, it has nothing to do with the paranormal. I have absolutely no desire or interest in making money off the paranormal field.