Joel Gratz is having a bluebird day at a time when the rest of the Colorado ski industry is foundering.
His weather app, OpenSnow, which does mid-seven-figure annual revenue, has seen a 40% increase in business.
“Thankfully, we have a bunch of rabid fans that are always interested in snow,” the 44-year-old said. “And even with dry weather, we still had more traffic this season and were more successful financially this season than past seasons.”
That jump, which is among the highest since Gratz started the business in 2011, is fueled by powderhounds subscribing to get the latest in-depth weather updates for their favorite ski hills across the world.
Though Gratz didn’t share exact subscriber numbers, he said OpenSnow reaches in the high hundreds of thousands to low single-digit millions of people each year. Of those, like most software companies, a single-digit percentage are subscribers.
Subscribers have tripled in the past five years, he said, and sales have quadrupled during the same period. Thatap been largely driven by a 500% increase in subscription revenue — a bigger number than Gratz projected because of the surprisingly good 2025-26.
Another reason revenue increased was because prices jumped from $35 a year to $50. Gratz also rolled out a higher-priced premium tier for the ultimate weather nerd that comes to $100. Gratz said 30% of OpenSnow’s new subscribers purchased the high-end plan and, when factoring existing customers who switched, that level makes up 10% to 15% of total customers.
Those figures have allowed him to sustain a full-time, remote staff of 15 along with 10 contractors during the winter busy season. They put together forecasts, write blurbs on mountain conditions and offer 3D maps of conditions across the globe.
“I’m cognizant that not everybody’s going to pay $49.99 or $99.99. There are a lot of weather apps out there that are free or lower cost,” Gratz said. “But we’re trying to go for the enthusiast part of the weather market, where people are actively making decisions outside that cost them a lot of time and effort.
“If you’re going to go skiing, thatap a full day and quite a bit of time and money. If you’re going to go hike a 14er, itap the same thing,” he continued. “So this is less about whatap the current temperature at the bus stop today and much more about impacting people’s decisions.”
This season’s success is exactly what Gratz envisioned when he introduced a paid tier 13 years ago.
Back then, Gratz pivoted to paid subscriptions after having 80% of his sales come from ads — an unpredictable market, he said. Much like ski titans Vail and Alterra did by rolling out the Epic and Ikon passes, Gratz sought to protect OpenSnow with a more solidified runway.
“Just fundamentally to make sure that the business works from year to year, we need to be in charge or have more control over our revenue stream,” he said. “The goal is more stable, predictable revenue to allow investment and stability in the business.”
It took awhile to see the lion’s share of business come from subscriptions. For most of the 2010s, plenty of OpenSnow’s features were still available through the free version. But five years ago, that changed.
Gratz made the decision to put more features behind the paywall, and overall subscription revenue quickly grew to 80% of OpenSnow’s total sales.
“When we changed the subscription and put a lot more features behind the paywall, we got hundreds of angry emails,” he recalled. “But we also got way, way, way more than that of people that happily signed up and sent us notes and said, ‘Hey, we’re thrilled you’re doing this. We want you to stick around and make the business work.’”
Along the way, he also increased pricing. What started at $20 a year eventually became $30 before getting to the recently changed $35 annual charge.
“I am cognizant of how lucky we are to have kind of a niche product that doesn’t need to have millions of subscribers to be financially successful, and I never take that for granted,” he said. “I’m also glad that we became a little bit more aggressive and confident in our pricing and our packaging to make the business work.”
With the built up cash, Gratz said OpenSnow plans to improve and implement more models like avalanche detection by using artificial intelligence. The app also rolled out an AI-generated blurb detailing conditions for the top 200 mountains this year – something he’d like to expand to all of OpenSnow’s weather models.
But the computing costs could be a challenge for the business, and he doesn’t want to cut too much into its profitability or raise money. So far, itap been largely self-funded outside of a $3 million cash infusion in 2022, SEC filings show.
But Gratz said that was due more to restructuring ownership and not growth capital after his co-founder was ready to leave the company. He brought on several advisers to the business through that raise, he said.
“We did have a little bit of extra money in that transaction to kind of pad the bank account and make things a little less stressful,” he said.
Heading into the summer, Gratz is hopeful that next season will bring more snow. He said Colorado got hit with the “double whammy” of low precipitation and high temps. While most of the West saw the latter, the former stayed relatively consistent, Gratz said, suggesting that next season should bring good news for powderhounds.
He said he got 50 days out on the slopes this season across the Centennial State, Washington state and a powder-filled trip to Japan. His best local days were in January at Steamboat and when a 2-foot storm rolled into Wolf Creek in mid-February.
“The ski areas in Colorado will continue. And next year, at least statistically, has a much higher chance of being better than this year,” Gratz said. “But if next year is worse, we will have pulled off a very amazing statistical feat in the wrong direction.”
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