{"id":20474,"date":"2019-12-08T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/?p=61926"},"modified":"2019-12-08T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T20:30:00","slug":"joel-gratz-talks-about-how-he-started-opensnow-and-grew-the-business-to-what-it-is-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/joel-gratz-talks-about-how-he-started-opensnow-and-grew-the-business-to-what-it-is-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Gratz talks about how he started OpenSnow and grew the business to what it is today"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
OpenSnow founder and meteorologist Joel Gratz speaks during an event in January 2018 in Frisco. On Friday, Dec. 6, he gave a talk in Silverthorne about how he started the business.<\/strong>
Hugh Carey, Summit Daily News<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

SILVERTHORNE \u2014 Joel Gratz, founder of OpenSnow, gave a free talk Friday, diving into the intricacies of his forecasting business, including how it got started and how it\u2019s funded.<\/p>\n

The talk at Angry James Brewing Co. originally was meant to be held in conjunction with Startup Weekend Breck, which was cancelled last week<\/a>. The brewery was packed and the energy was high as Gratz started by talking about storm predictions before shifting to his business.<\/p>\n

As a startup, the ski-focused forecasting and snow reporting website was funded by the savings accounts of Gratz and his partner, Andrew Murray.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not raise money. We did not take loans,\u201d Gratz said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with any of those things, but that\u2019s not what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenSnow started with an email list of 37 people, Gratz said. Ten years later, the website serves almost 3 million people. However, the business model remains similar, as Gratz, Murray and a third partner, Bryan Allegretto, solely own OpenSnow.<\/p>\n

Yet, Gratz said he constantly receives accusations of funding from other sources.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get an email a month that says how dare you sell out to \u2018fill in the blank,\u2019\u201d Gratz said. Vail Resorts does not own us; we own us. People sometimes get confused. There\u2019s another website called OnTheSnow. Vail Resorts bought that website in 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowd laughed as Gratz playfully dispelled the notion that his business is a \u201ccorporate sellout.\u201d Gratz said he also is accused of getting paid by resorts to increase their snow forecasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be a really terrible long-term plan,\u201d Gratz said. \u201cMaybe 20 years ago that would\u2019ve worked. But at this point, with social media, there\u2019s no way we\u2019d still be in business or have any trust or credibility if we did that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gratz explained how OpenSnow makes money today, which he said is mainly from advertising, although some revenue comes from customer subscriptions to OpenSnow.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to have equal subscription revenue and advertising revenue, just to balance things out,\u201d Gratz said.<\/p>\n

Gratz said he has more than 100 advertisers, which include most of the major ski areas in Colorado as well as many lodging partners. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would say the highest concentration is (in Summit) and in Tahoe where a lot of our audience is located,\u201d Gratz said after the talk. \u201cSo I kind of find it laughable when people are like, \u2018Oh, Vail Resorts pays you.\u2019 It\u2019s like, yeah, they do. So does Alterra, so does Monarch, so does Steamboat. We work with a ton of resort owners, and that\u2019s kind of by design. If we only worked with one resort owner, then yes, things would look really weird. We work with everybody we possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gratz said he never has been asked by a resort to inflate data. And in order to keep things separate and avoid perceived conflicts of interest, he said he doesn\u2019t do any of the advertising. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an advertising person on our team that does it all,\u201d Gratz said. \u201cI don\u2019t touch the ads. I don\u2019t even know honestly now when the ads are running. \u2026 The only thing I can tell people is that I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, look at 200 images of weather data and post a report.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the talk, Gratz offered some advice for entrepreneurs by explaining a list he made before he started the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is the best accidental thing I ever did,\u201d Gratz said. \u201cWhen I was at a previous job before this, I wrote down the things that made me super pissed off, and the things that made me super happy. After four years, I had a list of about eight or nine things. That\u2019s a pretty good key to what\u2019s going to bring me happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list Gratz shared with the crowd, titled \u201cWhat do I want out of this?\u201d included the following points:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Weather<\/li>\n
  2. Create value and delight through the best, unique products<\/li>\n
  3. Maintain work environment that is empowering, autonomous, challenging and flexible<\/li>\n
  4. Do good for society and give back through education and money<\/li>\n
  5. Run a sustainable business<\/li>\n
  6. If we achieve Nos. 1-5, then add No. 6: Make good money<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u201cWe\u2019re profitable, sustainable, we love what we do, we serve people the best we know how, and it\u2019s delightful,\u201d Gratz said.<\/p>\n

    via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    OpenSnow founder and meteorologist Joel Gratz speaks during an event in January 2018 in Frisco. On Friday, Dec. 6, he gave a talk in Silverthorne about how he started the business.Hugh Carey, Summit Daily News SILVERTHORNE \u2014 Joel Gratz, founder of OpenSnow, gave a free talk Friday, diving into the intricacies of his forecasting business, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 11:16:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}