Cumulonimbus is looking for funding, unsuccessfully. How can we move faster?

Give up on this idea. This project is cool, really cool, but it is not a venture backed startup project. Not unless you can prove it makes serious money, or pivot it into something that does. Do not spend another 1.5 years working on this. Give yourself a deadline, of N months, and if you can't make it ramen profitable or raise funding just move on to something else.

If you do give up on this, use the skills you gained on it for your next project. Maybe you learned how to make a successful Android app? How did you do that? Do it again with something that makes money, even if it's only enough to support yourself.

P.S. I mean this in a positive, helpful, and sincere way.

From a scientific perspective, PressureNET is very cool. If I had more time, it'd be fun to play with the dataset, particularly to tease precision results from the necessarily messy dataset.

It's not immediately obvious how it will make money, which is ultimately what any investor will care about. Is the plan to sell data to NWS? Weather Channel? Agribusiness forecasters? Who? (needn't tell HN, but you will need to tell your prospective investors)

Everyone wants better forecasts, but few people want to pay for them. What's PressureNET's killer app?

> We're growing our active user base 40% monthly and are currently receiving about 250,000 measurements per day

I think it's a stretch to call these people "users," in any sort of monetary-potential way. Nonetheless, definitely use that number in any pitches you give.

> 1.5 years

That is a big red flag, and I hope you never mention that to investors.

> are now waiting on 3 VCs / incubators to get back to us

This is fairly standard in the VC community. "Yes" means maybe, and "maybe" means "no." And "no" means "hell no." VCs are notorious for saying no very politely and in a way that doesn't burn bridges, while leaving you hanging.

> We plan to apply to three funding sources per week, every week. Will that be enough?

Clearly that is not enough. You need to be out networking.

> To be clear, I have extremely high confidence that we will find funding. It's obvious to me that we need it and that others will be excited by us and want to invest. But since we want to gather springtime and summertime thunderstorm data in the USA, we're running out of time fast.

I want to be brutally honest with you. I have a fairly high confidence you won't find funding. Looking at this from a VC perspective, the only way you are going to make money, it seems, is selling the data to weather companies. That's not exactly a huge business. Most VCs do not know anything about the weather/meteorological business. Even if a VC thought your idea was interesting, they would not invest because they don't have domain experience. VCs are very conservative. VCs want to minimize risks (paradoxically). Why do you feel others will be excited by what you do? Why do you feel it's obvious that others will be excited? Because it's not obvious to me. I don't want to seem pessimistic, but why would I feel excited about this? I check the weather maybe once a week, to figure out if it'll rain in the next few days. That's it.

I agree with staunch. Give yourself a deadline (6 months?) for either finding funding or becoming ramen profitable, and if you don't make it, pivot or shut down. Applying through online forms is the worst way to apply. Those forms get passed to Associates, who have no power to make the deal happen (only Partners have that power). Even cold-emailing partners at VC firms is a better path than that path. You need introductions. Go out and network. Go to meetups. Maybe even come down to the Bay Area and try to meet people and pitch what you're doing. The startup investing climate down here is much warmer (for better or for worse) than any other place in the world.

How are you applying? Maybe this goes without saying, but it's not nearly enough to go on a VCs website and fill out a form. Having managed dealflow for a while at a VC before, I can tell you that they will often mostly ignore the applications from their webform because there's so much noise/junk from it.

Find a way to get an intro. Talk with people at their portfolio companies. Meet with non-VCs in your space that likely have VC connections, make them advisors in some capacity, and ask them who they can introduce you to. Send them something exciting, that they'll talk about. You have to find a way to make yourself a qualified lead, or at least interesting.

If you're getting the meetings, but no interest, that's a different issue.

That's excellent advice, thank you. Yes, we're primarily applying by filling out forms on websites. I'm glad I asked, since I was planning on keeping this up as my primary task. I do have a few connections that know VCs in Toronto and Vancouver and we've spoken a bit already, but we haven't pursued those options completely yet. We'll look for introductions and to keep the conversations going. Thanks!

Read the Venture Hacks book (it's $9 from http://venturehacks.com/ or you can get it from amazon, etc.) as it gives you a lot of the basic advice on pitching VCs.

A very cool idea with interesting science applications. Maybe you can partner with a university or the government as a data source?

maybe you should look at indigo or kickstarter. maybe there a $5,$10,$25 things you can offer to contributors.

How do you plan to profit?