Backed by the National Science Foundation, Sensible de-risks the weather for travel & hospitality brands and their consumers
Sensible Weather, a climate risk technology company, announced $4 million in seed funding led by Wonder Ventures and Walkabout Ventures. This new investment, combined with a research and development grant from the National Science Foundation, and significant new debt capacity to support underwriting, brings the company’s total financing to approximately $10 million. Sensible’s first product offering, a partner-branded Weather Guarantee service, automatically reimburses travelers when bad weather impacts their in-trip experience.
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This new capital will allow Sensible to continue building out its team of engineers and scientists, increase investment in its proprietary climate data and risk analytics platform, and accelerate expansion of its Weather Guarantee offerings into new travel verticals. Additional participants in the round include Group 1001, Spencer Rascoff’s 75 & Sunny Ventures, Raj Gokal of Solana Labs, Spike Lipkin & Gordon Wintrob of Newfront Insurance, and Kiran Bhatraju of Arcadia Energy.
Sensible’s Weather Guarantee service is built upon its proprietary Climate Risk Platform, a high-performance data, analytics and risk assessment engine. The platform’s architecture allows Sensible to fulfill same-day reimbursements for rain and will soon allow partners to offer their consumers protection for additional weather events such as snow, wind, and air quality. The platform’s bespoke parametric policy management system ensures Weather Guarantees are proactively identified and programmatically fulfilled on an hourly basis – in most cases before adverse weather events occur.
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“With climate increasingly impacting vacations, in-destination experiences, and outdoor events, Sensible’s Weather Guarantee service offers consumers assurance when booking reservations online as travelers can now recoup their experiential losses when bad weather interferes with their plans,” said Nick Cavanaugh, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Sensible Weather. “Our embedded fintech service helps customer-centric travel brands increase conversion rates and ancillary revenues, while at the same time decreasing last-minute cancellations and enhancing their guest experience.”
Consumers purchase Weather Guarantee protection when booking travel reservations and event tickets from Sensible’s growing roster of experiential brand partners. Sensible’s proprietary Climate Risk Platform calculates Weather Guarantee pricing in real time, generating new revenue for partners and enhanced experiences for travelers. If a weather event such as rain is forecasted to occur during an outdoor experience, Sensible automatically texts the customer a link to easily collect their reimbursement the morning of their experience. Guarantee payments are processed immediately, with payouts based on the number of hours the experience is negatively impacted by weather. For example, three hours of rain on any day of a covered hotel stay results in an automatic 100% payout of the hotel reservation’s average daily rate.
Sensible Weather was founded in 2019 by Nick Cavanaugh, Ph.D., a climate scientist and fintech entrepreneur with a successful track record of forecasting price fluctuations in weather-impacted markets as a hedge fund quant. The company is currently live with its travel-oriented Weather Guarantees and has plans to roll out consumer-focused climate finance products to other industries soon.
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