The flight tracking page existed to generate inbound links to the founders' Swedish price comparison service.

“this was like an easier search engine optimization project to get more links to this price comparison service”

Aviation enthusiasts who had seen the screenshot page contacted the founders to ask how it worked, and the founders answered by shipping them receivers, first in Sweden, then Norway and Poland.

“we started to send out receivers to initially Sweden, later Norway and then Poland”

TV stations used the Flightradar24 map to show European airspace emptying during the volcanic ash shutdown. The founders did no outreach for it.

“in April 2010 we had the Icelandic ash cloud, and that was the first time that we got media coverage”

The media wave converted into supply rather than only traffic: people worldwide wrote in either to run the data sharing software themselves or to be sent a free receiver.

“After the media coverage, there was a lot of people from all around the world contacting us”