JULY 2019 FORBES INDONESIA | 59A B E V Y O F I N N O V A T I V E S T A R T U P S A R E
LEVERAGING LOW-COST SENSORS, CHEAP
P R O C E S S I N G P O W E R , A I A N D A D V A N C E S
I N M A C H I N E L E A R N I N G T O R E V O L U T I O N I Z E
HOW WE PREDICT AND MODEL T H E
WEATHER. B U S I N E S S E S R A N G I N G F R O M
A U T O - R A C I N G T O A G R I C U L T U R E S T A N D T O
B E N E F I T W H I L E A G I N G S T A L W A R T S L I K E
A C C U W E A T H E R H A V E T H E M O S T T O L O S E.C L O U D
WA R S
BY SUSAN ADAMS
PHOTOTGRAPH BY JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES“N
asty.” That is the professional opin-
ion of Joel Myers, the CEO of Accu-
We a t h e r, a b o u t t h e we a t h e r o n Mo t h-
er’s Day in New York City, as rain
pelts the pavement nonstop and temperatures drop into
the 40s. From the corner of 50th Street and 3rd Avenue,
he shoots a text to company headquarters in State Col-
lege, Pennsylvania, suggesting employees use the word
in the day’s New York forecast. “I’m always looking for
ways to make the information we communicate better
and more accurate,” he says.
Wiry and fit at 79 with a full head of dyed brown hair,
Myers runs America’s oldest independent private weath-
er forecasting company. He founded it in 1962 while
studying for his master’s in meteorology at Penn State.
His first client, a local gas company, paid him $150 to
forecast three months of winter weather so it could plan
for home heating demand.
Today conservative estimates of AccuWeather’s an-
nual revenues exceed $100 million. Customers include
hundreds of TV and radio stations across the country
plus major print outlets like the New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal and USA Today. More than 1,000
companies use Accuweather’s private weather forecasts
to improve their bottom lines. Those range from the ob-
vious—railroads and amusement parks like Six Flags—to