We were lucky to catch up with Paxton Calvanese recently and have shared our conversation below.

Paxton, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Well, don’t tell the ex but I almost got myself and my kids killed flying out to the bad lands. As a pilot I was flying a small plane from Chicago to Rapid City to take the kids on a vacation in the Bad Lands. In a small aircraft you are more susceptible to bad weather so it is not only legally required to evaluate weather but it is life and death. So making sure I had the full weather picture was always the top priority. It was supposed to be clear the whole way, but it wasn’t.

About 1/2 through iowa I saw a cloud layer up ahead, and although I am IFR rated (meaning I can fly through the clouds) for simplicity sake as it was clear the whole way I decided to fly VRF – visual flight rules – stay away from clouds. Many pilots end up in fatal accidents getting lost in the clouds when flying VFR. So about 1/2 through Iowa I saw a cloud layer up ahead, at that point I could have chosen to go above or below it to avoid the clouds, I chose below, long story short I got stuck in the clouds and could not get out. As I initially chose to go below I was close to the ground – about 1200′ AGL. The cloud layer kept on descending and pushing me lower, then all of a sudden I was in the clouds and unable to see anything. Thankfully my IFR training kicked in and I started flying by my instruments, which was a good thing as after my initial shock of being in the clouds and trying to get out when I check my instruments I was at a 35 degree bank and was unaware of it. That’s the danger of flying in the clouds, you have no sense of orientation. So thanks to ATC I got out of that mess.

Prior to that experience as a pilot I had this idea about how to visualize all the weather data required for a flight, and visualize in on one screen. I used to check 4 or 5 different websites and apps to piece everything together. But I really didn’t want to start developing again. I was an IT consultant in Chicago for the past 15 years and didn’t want to develop anymore. But after that experience I thought if I were to keep flying I need to realize my vision and develop the app that would present the weather in such a way that it would relieve a lot of stress and provide for a safer flight.

I designed and developed the wx24 Pilot app. marketed it and sold it for a while then after a few years decided to offer the same technology and presentation method of displaying the forecast at each step of a route calculated at the time I arrive to drivers. So I made Drive Weather and removed the aviation jargon and made it simpler and started promoting that.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always had and interest in the visual arts and for some reason had a knack for explaining things visually – maybe because I did terrible in English class. Being visually skilled doesn’t mean you become an artist, there are a ton of very different careers that encompass visual skills. But with no real guidance or knowing the landscape of different careers I decided to become miserable and go into IT – but at least it paid well!

I was a software developer for about 15 years and consulting for about 10 of those years and got good at coding. So combining my ability to code and my natural ability to explain things visually I develop this app that would take 4 different weather reports and visualize them, over time and distance. It took a 15 minute process of weather planning down do just seconds.

Now my most successful offering is the Drive Weather App. It shows motorists weather along their route at the time they will be at each point. It communicates a ton of weather information very easily and all visually.

Have you ever had to pivot?

After releasing and selling the wx24 Pilot app for a while I was getting discourage because it was a hard sell. Anytime you introduce a paradigm shift to conventional ways, well lets just say good luck with that.

I was at Oshkosh, I had a booth presenting and selling my app, So the wx24 pilot deals with one of the most difficult parts of flying – dealing with the weather, understanding the weather, and making decisions based on the weather. Life and death decisions. One time a wife came up to me and thanked me for making the app because her husband always used it. That was satifiying. But sales were hard and the app at that time was about $18/year – not much at all, but for an app that is expensive.

Meanwhile the booth next to me was selling shirts with customers plain embroidered on them for about $70 each and they were killing it. I sat and watched the constant flow of customers and sales and looked an my innovative product, that no one else in the industry had come close to doing, something – that could save lives – and it was like pulling teeth.

So, I decided to sell the same concept to drivers, and I made Drive Weather and it worked and drivers love it. It took about a year to bring Drive Weather to market after I made that decision.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

In school we are trained to get A’s. Everything has to be perfect all the time. I find life is more like the art class where you work on a piece over iterations, improving each step. In app development you never really are done, there is always more to do, things to improve, features to add and it takes some discipline to release something that isn’t perfect. If I would have waited to make the app great it would never have been release. So I started off humbly and and a simple version of my vision, then slowly improved it, added features, listened to customers and so forth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://driveWeatherApp.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paxtoncalvanese/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paxton-calvanese/