In 2016, Kyle Tomek moved to North Carolina for his Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State. Soon thereafter he and his wife discovered a mutual love of mountain climbing, and in no time, they were driving to western North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and other states to grow their hobby.
Throughout these trips, though, they would occasionally be interrupted by bad weather that made planned excursions difficult or untenable. Tomek wished he had better answers for weather conditions, like rain or other precipitation, that could derail a climb—if not a whole trip. And one day, as he listened to a podcast about climbing conditions, inspiration struck.
“I thought, ‘maybe I can predict this better,’” he said. “So I built a small spreadsheet and started sharing it with our climbing crew.”
From there, the NC State graduate and his co-founder began tinkering with the idea of building a weather forecasting tool specifically for avid climbers. In 2024, this idea fully evolved into a startup they named Climbit.
The Climbit platform functions as a decision engine and hyper-local weather forecaster designed to help people make better decisions about when and where to mountain climb, with a particular focus on potential safety implications.
“We continue to see that people, you know, they’re stitching together multiple sources and then their local knowledge… to try to make a mental model or take a good guess at what’s going to happen,” Tomek said, “and we’re really trying to make that and put that all in one location.”
The Climbit user experience
Climbit provides a website and app where any user can create their profile, keep track of their favorite locations, and access features like the startup’s explore page, where individuals can pinpoint climbing areas most desirable to them based on state, region, area and terrain landscape.
Users also have access to the platform’s weather charts and a “Climbit Score,” which is an algorithm-driven chart that informs them of where (or whether) it is favorable to climb within a specified area. The score essentially rates an area from 0-5, taking into consideration past weather, the current terrain, shade, and even sun angles and the user’s personalized preferences for temperature.
The startup’s co-founders designed the Climbit Score feature to depend on previous probabilities for precipitation and accumulation; they also integrated the open source projects Open-Mateo and OpenBeta to calculate precise location and weather data.
Although they used AI tools like Codex in the development process, AI is not ingrained in the user experience. This was an intentional decision they made due to the climate-conscious nature of most climbers.
“I think if it was too AI heavy, there might be some pushback from the community,” Tomek said. “And we’re just trying to listen to our users and key opinion leaders in the climbing space.”
Currently, the website and app are free to use, but the team is working to include a premium subscription in the future, with “high impact” features for users to unlock.
Finding climbers
Climbit’s current market isn’t too traditional agewise, according to Tomek. The platform has attracted everyone from young adult climbers to retirees. But it’s seen the most engagement with high-performance climbers and those with more limited time to get out and climb (the “weekend warriors” segment).
Tomek said some early challenges have included “getting more eyeballs” on the platform and building trust with current Climbit users to show that it does the mental math on climbing suitability for them .
Climbit is tackling these issues through grassroots marketing. On social media, they’re leveraging Reddit and Facebook climbing groups and tapping into climbers’ influence potential. Beyond these approaches, the team is also establishing partnerships with climbing organizations like Kaya and Thecrag.com, both of which now use Climbit as a weather resource.
Tomek says they are continuously seeking partnerships with similar companies and electronic guidebooks, since climbing access is often a limited resource.
“They go away [if] they are closed [or] get mined,” he said. “So, I think people are really aware of being sustainable, protecting areas and being one with nature.”
Early traction
Climbit’s app traffic has quadrupled in the last 12 months and now sits at 6,000-plus monthly active users.
Tomek has also participated this summer in the Andrews Launch Accelerator, which pushed him to think more about Climbit as a fully realized company—not just a tool climbers loved.
“All of the class and coursework we’ve been doing, and the one-on-one mentorship they provided has been super helpful,” he said. “[Especially for] changing that mindset from, ‘what should we keep building?’ toward ‘how should we build a sustainable business out of this?’”
QUICK BITS
Startup: Climbit
Founder: Kyle Tomek
Founded: 2024
Team size: 2
Location: Raleigh
Website: climbitscore.com
Funding: Bootstrapped
In the meantime, the founders will be improving the platform’s weather forecasts and introducing new features like higher resolution shade maps and information on rock surface drying times.
Tomek also hopes to grow beyond six current partnerships through expansion to more national climbing organizations.
“There are about 150 of these different local organizations across the United States that we’ve been in contact with and working towards partnering with,” he said. “We want to keep building that distribution strategy as well.”
Long-term, the team envisions Climbit expanding its forecasting beyond climbing to other outdoor sports and activities like mountain biking, hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, skiing, and golf.
“If anybody has knowledge or an interest or hobbies that are in those spaces, like trail or mountain sports, or [even] connections in those industries, we would love to talk,” Tomek said.
