Launch Health check-up: Sickweather uses accelerator to diagnose its startup progress

Editor’s note: The following is part of a series of stories on the six cohort companies of the Launch Health Accelerator, powered by Nueterra Capital and sponsored by LaunchKC. Click here to read all the stories published in this series.

Just because your company’s been around the block doesn’t mean you’re done learning, said Laurel Edelman. 

“It was all about timing,” Edelman, CEO of Sickweather, said of the Kansas City-based startup’s participation in the Launch Health Accelerator. 

“Our last CEO and one of the co-founders [Graham Dodge] moved on to a different position back east and I came to take on his role. [Launch Health] has been a good time for me to be around other companies and to learn from other people,” she added. 

One of Kansas City’s veteran startups, Sickweather was part of the innagutral class of the Sprint Accelerator, which saw Dodge move the company to the KC metro from Baltimore, Maryland. 

Click here to read more about Dodge’s exit and the company’s future.

“There’s that camaraderie of talking to people who are in the same position as you, dealing with some of the same frustrations,” Edelman said, detailing her current task: identifying where a company of Sickweather’s age should be in startup life cycle. 

Opportunities to thoughtfully identify Sickweather’s progress and map out how it moves forward were immediate draws for the company as its leadership considered joining Launch Health, she said. 

“My focus right now is on revenue generation,” Edelman noted, detailing ways she’s looking to expand Sickweather’s public presence. 

Laurel Edelman, Sickweather

“For example, I’ve just put together the ‘Under the Weather Report,’ which is basically something I’d like to see literally under the weather [on TV] in every community across the United States,” she explained.

Capitalizing on the significant brand recognition of Sickweather will push the company to the next level, Edelman said. Such a strategy is partly what she’s drilled down on during Launch Health. 

“I’d like it to become more of a national, everyday name where people turn on the news to see not only what the weather is, but what does the Sick Score look like and then think about it when they’re sending their kids to school,” she said. 

“With the accelerator, the fact that Nueterra is so involved in healthcare and it is so intertwined in a number of different healthcare verticals and that that’s their focus … it provides us with expert speakers who come in and talk and opportunities for us to chat with people and really discuss healthcare issues that are somewhat of a science,” she added.

An ecosystem with a more finite context than most, exposure to the inner workings of the healthcare space have proven invaluable for Sickweather, Edelman noted. 

“Being with people who understand that ecosystem and have worked and operated within it for a number of years and have supported it – its very beneficial for us as startup companies,” she said.

Click here to register for Launch Health Demo Day, set for Nov. 20.

This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

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