Just a few years in the past, Selina Tobaccowala’s daughter began leaving post-it notes round the home, telling everybody to “flip off the lights” and such.
Tobaccowala had simply offered her final startup, Gixo, to OpenFit and was in search of a brand new problem. “I noticed the children and thought, ‘Let me see if there’s one thing there on the sustainability and local weather aspect,’” she informed TechCrunch. “There needed to be one thing greater than like turning our lights off.”
With no background in local weather science or {hardware} engineering, she wasn’t positive the place to start out. So Tobaccowala turned to one thing she knew properly: surveys.
“Given my love of surveys, I surveyed a ton — a ton — of shoppers,” stated Tobaccowala, who was once president and CTO of SurveyMonkey.
What she discovered was that individuals had been struggling to determine learn how to decrease their utility payments.
“After we talked to customers, we heard the identical factor again and again: They get that e-mail that claims, ‘Hey, you spend more cash than your neighbors,’” she stated. “They had been type of caught with what to do about it.”
Tobaccowala co-founded HomeBoost to assist individuals conduct their very own residence power assessments. The corporate was a part of the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
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HomeBoost’s evaluation course of begins by mailing prospects a BoostBox, a small package that features an infrared digital camera, a blacklight and a hyperlink to an app that takes prospects by means of the method. As individuals stroll round their houses, the infrared digital camera reveals them the place chilly (or scorching) air is seeping into their houses; the blacklight tells individuals which lights could possibly be upgraded.
Utilizing information from the scans, the app then robotically generates a report which suggests essentially the most price efficient upgrades, together with rebates based mostly on the place the individual lives.
In lots of components of the nation, utilities provide an identical service. Utilities, that are incentivized to cut back finish customers’ power use, usually work with power auditors to survey individuals’s houses to determine methods to trim their consumption. However the high quality of these providers might be very uneven, Tobaccowala stated.
“We talked to a bunch of customers who’d gotten residence power assessments accomplished, and there this sense that was like ‘all they did was attempt to promote me up an upgraded HVAC,’” she stated.
The HomeBoost app is cheaper and sooner than an auditor, and it helps individuals really feel extra answerable for the method, Tobaccowala stated.
HomeBoost costs prospects $99, which is a couple of quarter the price of a standard, in-person evaluation. Additionally it is working with utilities, which cowl some or all the price for patrons. The startup has signed offers with Central Hudson, Omaha Public Energy District, and extra not too long ago Avista. Omaha Energy, for instance, pays for all however $19 of the associated fee, whereas Central Hudson will cowl the whole price if householders take a look at the BoostBox from a public library.
However not each house owner needs to finish the survey course of themselves, and never each auditor is a pushy salesperson. Devoted auditors can spend between two and 10 hours surveying houses, collating information, and constructing experiences, Tobaccowala stated. For that, HomeBoost has developed a model of its app for professionals, permitting them to serve extra prospects.
The corporate can be testing a function that can hyperlink householders with contractors who can observe by means of on the upgrades outlined within the report. For contractors, it’s one other supply of recent enterprise, and it permits them to get info on a mission earlier than even setting foot inside a house.
By bringing customers, utilities, and contractors collectively, Tobaccowalla hopes that HomeBoost can finally ship on the local weather entrance, too. “It’s a really distinctive scenario the place all people’s aligned to truly decrease the utility invoice, which within the internet result’s enchancment on the local weather,” she stated.
