Sickweather Inc., a Baltimore technology company that tracks the spread of colds and flu through crowdsourcing, has filed for bankruptcy after more than 10 years in business.
The company filed to liquidate its assets under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Maryland on Dec. 2. Sickweather declared that it has estimated assets of $27,500 in cash and liabilities of $432,481, according to documents filed in the bankruptcy case.
In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a trustee gathers and sells the debtor's nonexempt assets and uses the proceeds to pay creditors. Michael Selba, of Tydings & Rosenberg, a Baltimore law firm, is representing Sickweather in the case. Charles R. Goldstein of Baltimore's 3Cubed Advisory Services is acting as the trustee. Neither Selba nor Goldstein responded to requests for comment from the Baltimore Business Journal.
Court documents show Sickweather has 47 nonpriority unsecured creditors. The largest creditor is Amazon Web Services with $126,419 of trade debt. Other notable creditors include:
- Maryland Technology Development Corp. or TEDCO; with an unknown claim amount.
- Paul Palmieri, the former head of mobile advertising platform Millennial Media and executive chairman of e-commerce firm Tradeswell, with an unknown claim amount.
- Venture capital firm Logical Ventures in Hunt Valley with an unknown claim amount.
- Baltimore law firm Venable is claiming $89,250 in legal fees.
- Linthicum accounting firm KatzAbosch is claiming $22,615 in accounting fees.
Former CEO Laurel Edelman is listed as a priority creditor, claiming $104,666 in commission and salary.
Sickweather seemed to be on an upward trajectory over the past several years. The company integrated its cold and flu tracking technology into the Weather.com website and the Weather Channel. Sickweather also worked with open-source software company Mycroft AI, to develop technology that can "hear" and track human coughs.
Sickweather raised over $2 million in venture capital funding in its lifetime, according to previous Baltimore Business Journal reporting, including a $1 million crowdfunding round and $1.5 million from seed and angel investors. The company had a presence in Kansas City, Missouri, California, and Baltimore.The company recorded 2021 revenue of $173,250, according to the bankruptcy statement.
The news of the bankruptcy came as a surprise to founder and former CEO Graham Dodge. The company had reached a stable break-even point of revenue when Dodge stepped down in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 also seemed like a natural business opportunity for a company focused on collecting data about the spread of disease, he said.
"It's frustrating because there was a lot of promise still when I stepped down," Dodge said. "I think the pandemic could have been an opportune time for the company's capabilities to really shine."
Dodge said he stepped down from the company because of pressure from investors who wanted more rapid growth.Chief Financial Officer Laurel Edelman took over for Dodge as CEO in 2019. Her Linkedin shows that she left the company in February of this year. It's unclear who, if anyone, has been serving as CEO since then.
Dodge still works in disease prevention as the president of the PathCheck Foundation, a spin-out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that uses crowd-sourced data to track diseases. He hopes that a company will buy the intellectual property of Sickweather. He believes that it could be useful in predicting future pandemics.
For example, a shareholder presentation showed that thecompany's technology mistook the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic for an extended flu season.
"There’s some strong IP there and I hope the right company acquires it and puts it to good use," Dodge said.
