Selina Tobaccowala: 0:38

We send you a thermal camera to your house and you walk around following in our app, a very guided experience. In our homeboost app, to take specific things like exterior doors, we show you how to spot problems, any problems that you see, and then we're able to evaluate all of that imagery to figure out where you are having problems in your home, to figure out where you are having problems in your home.

Ryan Grant Little: 1:03

Welcome to Another Climate Tech Podcast, interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. Selina Tobaccowala is Silicon Valley royalty, having founded or led story tech companies ranging from Evite to SurveyMonkey. Today, she's just as focused on bringing technology into consumers' lives, but this time in service of reducing energy wastage through her startup HomeBoost. I reached Selena in San Francisco. I'm Ryan Grant. Little Thanks for being here, Selina. Welcome to the podcast.

Selina Tobaccowala: 1:34

Thanks for having me on.

Ryan Grant Little: 1:36

You are the co-founder of HomeBoost, which is a company started in January 2023 to help people make their homes more efficient. Where did the idea for that come from?

Selina Tobaccowala: 1:45

So it wasn't some sort of like big bang idea we had. It was really a concerted effort with a lot of consumer and market research. I spent many years of my career working at SurveyMonkey, so I love surveys, I love market research and so my passion on a personal level is really focused on using technology to help consumers in the real world, and so we wanted to look at and wanted to see about how we could help with climate. And that did come from my kids. My daughter has little post-it notes around the house that says, like turn your lights off and stop eating meat for a while. And so really started to see okay, this is something that my family passionate about, my kids are passionate about and I'm passionate about. But like, how can I make an impact? And so really started to dig into the consumer side.

Selina Tobaccowala: 2:32

And when you look at consumer greenhouse gases, there's three core areas there's transportation, there's food waste and there's residential energy.

Selina Tobaccowala: 2:47

So I'd spent my last job trying to help consumers with their fitness and health and really know how hard behavioral change is on the food waste side and so I wanted to stay away from that.

Selina Tobaccowala: 2:52

On the transportation side, we did a huge amount of research and just kept finding that the number one issue for consumers is around range anxiety and concern around maintaining the car, and those items require such massive capital investments. And that's not experience that I have. And then we started really digging also into residential energy and we just kept hearing the same thing from consumers, which is that they want to save money on their bills. Their homes are uncomfortable, especially as their housing stock is getting older. People are spending more times in their homes because of hybrid work and they do not know what to do about it. We just kept hearing the same thing. I get that email that says I'm spending more money than my neighbors on my bill and I don't know where to start. And that's what got us excited in terms of there was a clear problem where the customer incentive to save money and our incentive to save greenhouse gases was completely aligned.

Ryan Grant Little: 3:47

I want to talk a little bit more about that. I think that those are some really interesting observations and I hadn't really even thought of that. Also that, as people are, you know, with hybrid work and work from home, that they're literally looking at their light bulbs and their radiators and thinking kind of more like I don't know how this whole thing works. And it makes total sense. Just talk a bit about the flagship product, boost box, and how that works, cause I think that will help kind of set the scene for a little bit more of the discussion as well. And basically, what you've done is you've made it possible for people to do their own energy audits, basically with like an attachment on their smartphone, if I understand correctly, and kind of some like filters on it, and I think people would be surprised to hear that you can do this as a non-energy audit professional. How does the thing actually work?

Selina Tobaccowala: 4:34

Yeah, so that's absolutely right.

Selina Tobaccowala: 4:36

So our first flagship product is called the BoostBox and it's a DIY home energy assessment.

Selina Tobaccowala: 4:42

So when you think about the home energy assessor that comes to your home, they're essentially evaluating a whole lot of items in your home. One of the key things that these BPI home energy assessors do is they do what's called a blower door test, so they create a bunch of pressure in your home and then they're trying to look and see where there's leaks, where there's drafty windows, where there's insulation issues. And what we've been able to do using a combination of AI, is that when we send you a thermal camera to your house and you walk around following in our app a very guided experience in our HomeBoost app to take specific things like exterior doors, we show you how to spot problems, any problems that you see, and then we're able to evaluate all of that imagery to figure out where you are having problems in your home. It does require a 10 degree difference between the inside and the outside in order for us to evaluate the imagery effectively, and so we let you know, like here's a good time to scan.

Ryan Grant Little: 5:43

Interesting and one of the things you just kind of mentioned is that the people care about the climate, but they're more looking at their bills, right, and they're seeing that they're paying more than their neighbor. I also have this in like my Airbnb rental. I'm like why is this 50% more than it was last year? And you just don't know kind of and and the consumer behavior isn't going to come just because people want to do like the right thing. It has to also be driven by the pocketbook and I think you know probably are like. Your research bore that out as well. How much money on average? Can you put some of the stuff in numbers, like how much are people overpaying or wasting on? You know, choose your own adventure as to what you, whether it's an apartment in San Francisco or like a house in middle America, but what does this look like in terms of wastage?

Selina Tobaccowala: 6:30

Absolutely. So. I'll start just thinking about a single family home and in general, and so in a single family home right now the average bill is around $3,000 for a customer. Now we can generally help a consumer save about 20% on their bill annually with some expenditure, like you have to spend some. And some of those key things that we can help you figure out is, you know, changing your HVAC filter regularly? Are you eligible for a smart thermostat upgrade?

Selina Tobaccowala: 6:59

There's a lot of utility rebates available for you to get a smart thermostat, as well as the building envelope. So 45% of a person's utility bill is generally from heating and cooling, but over 20% of that is generally wasted with leaks from the home, whether that's insulation on top, whether that's around. So we are really able to help you figure out how to seal those things. And in the US there's also rebates available for home weatherization. There's the government federal level rebate, which is up to $1,200 per customer, as well as state and utility level rebates. So we help you both figure out what is the work you should do that's going to be ROI positive. What are the things that's going to be ROI positive Like? What are the things that are going to make sense for a customer, as well as how to access the money that's literally sitting there and available for you.

Ryan Grant Little: 7:50

And is that built into the app. So you're finding ways to access that funding, basically because it is a maze, right? It's challenging for the average person to figure that stuff out.

Selina Tobaccowala: 8:00

It is a maze. There are a number of companies that are working on APIs to access that, so we are partnering with a load of different companies in terms of trying to access all the different rebates that are available, as well as Rewiring America, which is this awesome nonprofit in the US, has all of the federal IRA rebates available.

Ryan Grant Little: 8:20

You talked about, like the HVAC filter, and I'd be interested to hear you know whether people are using a product like Homebox or not what are some of the best things that people can do to reduce the wastage. You know, if they're listening to the podcast right now, they can get up and walk around Like what are some things that they could do to reduce the wastage?

Selina Tobaccowala: 8:39

So definitely feel that really taking. We have a very nice video on our blog about how to change your HVAC filter. That's something that you should do every three months and if you just think about it, your HVAC system is trying to push air through something that is literally dirty. It just has to work so much harder to get the air out into your home. So that's a very simple thing. It tends to say 5% to 10% on your bill and makes a real difference. What people don't know is, and don't feel empowered to do, is how to do it themselves. So in our HomeBoost app, we guide you through in a very simple way. How do I change my filter? How do I find it? How do I make sure? Like we help you, we automatically, with the photo, figure out the right size so we can help you order the right one. So we try to guide you on that experience, but we also have a video on our blog for how to do it yourself.

Selina Tobaccowala: 9:27

The other thing people really worry about is all the machines in their home. So it's like all the appliances, their HVAC system, their hot water heater. Our philosophy generally is that you really want to change those items, for the most part, when the lifespan is close to breaking or when the ROI makes sense. So I'm so far into my heating and cooling system that it makes sense to swap out, and unless you're really focused on climate and electrification like if you're really focused on electrification you're going to go get that heat pump today.

Selina Tobaccowala: 9:59

But most consumers 80% of consumers are only going to change out their heating and cooling system when it has a problem or it's close to its lifespan. So what we're really doing with our product is we're letting you very quickly inventory all of your appliances so that we can help you create that roadmap of like, hey, you need to save up because your washer and dryer is about to expire and you are going to need to buy that soon, and here are some good products that you should consider. And so that's really where we're headed is building out that full ability for you to connect to contractors, financing products across that marketplace. But right now we are starting with that first thing, which is what are the things I need to do in my home?

Ryan Grant Little: 10:40

It's interesting also. I mean, there's so many cultural aspects to this. I was just back home in Canada and seeing how the way people live I think is very parallel to the US from a built environment standpoint and stuff like that. And you'd see lights on in rooms that people aren't in and stuff like that as kind of a norm, whereas in Germany, where I lived for 11, 11 years, you turn the lights off when you leave a room. Usually people are like closing the doors of the rooms that they're in and only like basically like spot heating where they are in the place. And then you know even further, like I've got a place in italy and there people unplug everything all the time, like so you wouldn't leave't leave like a blender plugged in unless you're blending right and so because of this, like ghosts, whatever they call it losses that vampire yeah yeah, exactly.

Ryan Grant Little: 11:29

So I mean it probably and I would imagine you know, as a North American myself, there are a lot of opportunities for stopping wastage there.

Selina Tobaccowala: 11:38

And it is even lights like people really like. It's not that people LED lights last longer. They make more financial sense, but people don't know which of their lights are LED versus incandescent. So the other thing that comes in our boost box is a very simple black light and allows you to just point at your light bulbs and see which ones are LED versus incandescent. So if you have LED lights and you happen to leave it on, it's not going to take nearly as much energy and it's not also going to go out nearly as quickly as an incandescent light.

Ryan Grant Little: 12:06

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Ryan Grant Little: 12:07

Let's switch gears just for a second, because I know that you have a really incredible Silicon Valley pedigree and it goes all the way back to your university days, when you were studying computer science at Stanford university days when you're studying computer science at Stanford and then you're actually one of the co-founders of Evite, which is an app that probably everyone who's listening to this has used before.

Ryan Grant Little: 12:26

You ran the tech at Ticketmaster also something that everybody's used before and you were the president of SurveyMonkey, which is definitely something that I've used a lot over the years as well, and I actually ran a customer satisfaction feedback company for several years in Berlin as well. So I know the space pretty well and that's been a force of nature. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what it's been like, as you know, from the entrepreneur's standpoint, as someone who's been at the epicenter both you know in space and time, Because if I go back we're talking late 90s and 2000s, 2010s it's really, I mean, you've seen incredible things and you've been kind of at the forefront of this and in the place where this is happening. I wonder if you could just maybe talk a little bit about that for some of the founders that are listening, or some of the aspiring founders.

Selina Tobaccowala: 13:19

Yeah, so there's definitely been a lot of ups and downs from a market perspective in the Valley for the past 20 years. I think you did just age me a little, but that's okay no, I'm just kidding. But basically. But everything does tend to go in a little bit of waves, so right.

Selina Tobaccowala: 13:36

So when in Evite back in, you know the dot-com boom, all anybody could talk about was eyeballs, which was like traffic, like how do you get traffic to your site? And then when we were at SurveyMonkey, you know, our CEO, dave Goldberg, who was a phenomenal leader, was very disciplined about we want to keep very high gross profit, gross margins, even at the expense of like. He was like we need to consistently hit a 25% year over year growth target. And a lot of people who are comparable businesses were going growth at all costs and weren't worrying about profitability at that time, and that was the mantra if you're thinking about the early 2010, 2012, 2013. And then Dave proved correct, so going back and focusing on profitability and fundamental financials, and those are the waves that you'll consistently see, which is like focus on traffic, focus on growth at all costs.

Selina Tobaccowala: 14:31

But ultimately, I think the thing I've learned across the journey and what I'm really trying to take into place now is that you have to have strong unit economics Like that, whether it's LTV over CAC or it's your gross margin percentage like that, ultimately as a founder, will save you from having to just pour more capital and more money on the business in an unprofitable way.

Selina Tobaccowala: 14:55

And so I think from my perspective like that's one of the biggest learnings I've had is like is that regardless of sort of the trend at the time and there's the contrary side to that and where you might consider differently is when you really have a massive network effect that if you go first, so if you think about like LinkedIn or Facebook or any of these companies, if they didn't pour capital on to build that network first, somebody else would have built that network and the switching cost is so, so, so high.

Selina Tobaccowala: 15:26

And so that is the scenario where you sort of say, and I see that with, like the chat agents today, like once somebody gets using a chat agent, they're not switching that much. Like I know people that are like I'm Claude, you know I'm I'm chat GPT, and so it's like you understand why those companies might be really focused because the switching cost starts to get pretty high, because you're like building up all your history in that system. But if you don't have that, then right from the start, of making sure that you're being cost conscious with your capital and that you're growing in a way you know you're always going to be unprofitable to begin with, but you're growing in a way that is measured is a much better approach to take.

Ryan Grant Little: 16:06

Yeah, that's a really, really good point, and I think a lot of times, founders don't think about what type of company they are, you know, in that sense, and so, like you know, I've one of my investees. I have a portfolio of about 25 climate tech, mostly in food tech companies, and some of them were you're like, you're spending money, like you're a biotech company that's trying to find an invention, but you're actually not doing any product development and like, basically, what you have right now is the thing that you're selling. So like, shouldn't you just focus on sales and selling the thing right and so like, and people get it in their heads like, like, oh yeah, we have to own the market. We have to be the number one brand out there. I mean, the amount of money that Instagram ads and Facebook ads must be making from some of these startups that have no business spending like 50K a month on this stuff is incredible, right, and so you're in the Valley right now. Both you're working there and you're there as we're speaking.

Ryan Grant Little: 17:04

My sense is and I'd love to get your kind of view on this is that there's a bit of a shift in the past few years away from some of the climate tech startups and of course, ai is the kind of number one topic right now. But it feels to me like I was watching plug and play startup pitches, you know, kind of once a week for the past few weeks and it feels to me like there's less and less happening coming out of the valley that's in climate tech and I wonder, is that just like? Do I have just sort of a biased view of this based on the information that's filtering my way, or does it feel like there is kind of a bit of a loss of momentum recently with climate tech startups out there?

Selina Tobaccowala: 17:42

I mean statistically, you're correct of momentum recently with climate tech startups out there. I mean statistically, you're correct, like I think I recently read a PwC report that said that climate tech investing is down pretty significantly. So I do think that I mean just across the board. I do think that's correct. Now I do think, for there's also this overlap, a very interesting overlap. I think that there's about 15% of climate companies are also AI companies, and so I do think there's an interesting and obviously we're using a huge amount of AI and computer vision in terms of trying to automate our findings, and that is exactly why we can price what's normally a $500 cost point per an energy audit at $99, both, obviously, because we're not rolling the truck, but also because it's not taking us human capital to do all of the findings, but also because it's not taking us human capital to do all of the findings. And so I do think there's this intersection of AI and climate. But ultimately, ai companies are easier to fund because, very you know, when you think about software only solutions, you can get to revenue faster, and so when you're looking at VC multiples and the traditional VC firms, you know those companies are going to be a lot more attractive than climate companies.

Selina Tobaccowala: 18:48

So what we're seeing, or what I'm seeing, in terms of, like, investment on the climate side is coming more from the funds that are were intended to be, climate funds, and understand that you have to be more patient. There's more hardware investment, so you know whether that's like. You know, one of our main funders is GigaScale, which is a newer fund, but it's like Mike Schrapp, who was the CTO at Facebook, and he's amazing, he's brilliant, and he's investing both his time and his capital in the climate space. And then you have, you know, Obvious Ventures, galvanize. So you have all of these funds that are like, very focused on climate, and those ones aren't going away. It's just more. When you look at your like traditional series, abc, they're not really going to fund climate.

Ryan Grant Little: 20:24

And I wonder if there's also a matter of nomenclature happening here, because you know, to date myself, you know I was working. My first startup was in the 90s and back then, like it was like you had an internet startup, you know, and nobody talks about having an internet startup now anymore. Maybe that's the point with climate. It's such a big and broad space that we're talking about. Instead of deep tech, we're talking about AI, maybe focusing on the customer type or the problem that it's solving, or something like that, and also looking at the global appetite for terms like climate. You know, with the political situations in a number of countries, maybe that's becoming less attractive to be talking about climate, even if we're doing the same things.

Selina Tobaccowala: 21:11

You really need to ensure that on an economic basis, that your solution makes sense. Even things to me like people making voluntary ESG commitments or voluntary into the carbon markets like companies aren't necessarily trending to do that anymore. So it needs to be that you are legitimately driving economic value while you're also taking away the great house gases. And the primary pitch is is this the better, cheaper solution for you?

Ryan Grant Little: 21:47

Yeah. So, trojan, horsing the impact into this? And I mean, you know, in a lot of cases, being more efficient should be cheaper. So, if you can, absolutely. Yeah. You mentioned some of your investors. You raised $4 million in seed funding in October 2024, and that was with True Ventures, gigascale and Insightorg. That's a great seed round and I just wonder you know there are other companies that are trying to solve the same problem. What do you think it is about? Homeboost that got you across the finish line with those investment committees, which is maybe another way of saying like, what's your secret sauce? I mean founding team and you're not exactly a first time founder and you've got an incredible track record, so that's definitely part of it. But what else do you think was it that got you across the finish line?

Selina Tobaccowala: 22:36

So I mean, as you said, I think the team it's not just me. We have an amazing founding team with a broad array of experience from a bunch of different consumer startups. So I do think that team is a big factor in terms of funding for really early perceived startups side, in terms of and we had actually tested on meta ads, like driving people to a landing page, making sure that we tested a bunch of the messaging and then sort of said coming soon. So really you know how do we validate customer interest. And then also on the distribution side, you know it's very hard for B2C startups to succeed, just given all the advertising on meta and how difficult a lot of that is, and especially when people don't really know what's going to happen with TikTok and that's another big channel.

Selina Tobaccowala: 23:27

So there's a lot of factors on the direct-to-consumer side that I think make investors nervous. But in our scenario there's also other distribution channels like utilities that have home energy assessments, and so it's really trying to make sure that you have a diversified distribution plan, which is one of the things that's like most nerve wracking in today's environment. And so I think both bringing together. You know it's a large TAM. We had a pretty strong founding team, which I'm really excited about, and then really making sure that you've done some market validation on distribution. I think all those factors have to go in to making the pitch. And then just a little plug but I help support a day called Elevate for Female Founders and we do it annually but we help women, female founders, practice their pitches. I mean, I think it's extremely important to practice your pitch on people and get that feedback, because you know you have a very limited window when you're pitching investors to make an impression.

Ryan Grant Little: 24:27

Let's talk, maybe, a little bit about the approach. So I think, like bundling with utilities makes tons of sense and using them as a distribution model you mentioned before ratios like the LTV over CAC, which is, lifetime value of the customer over customer acquisition costs, and you have a $99 purchase price, as you mentioned. It's really hard to kind of stand out on meta on these types of platforms. It's expensive, right To try to advertise there. What does that look like for like, are there any ratios or what does the thinking go into there? For you know, for people who are thinking about B2C but are just terrified when they see kind of what a click costs in 2025?.

Selina Tobaccowala: 25:10

Yeah, absolutely so, if you have. So our model right now is just a one-time purchase, and then we have many opportunities over time, which is building out both consumer subscriptions in terms of like, really helping you maintain your home as we start to collect all this information, as well as connecting you into marketplaces. But our first product is 99 bucks, and so we are very focused on how, with whatever cogs we have in terms of like, one thing I should have mentioned with the BoostBox is we send it to you and then you use it and you send it back, so we have shipping in both directions. Like we're not. You don't need to keep a thermal camera and black light in your home, and so we're trying to make sure that this first purchase is absolutely, from a unit economic perspective, at a very basic level, break even with our marketing dollars, and so then, as we're building on these ancillary products, that we have an engine where we can make gross profit.

Selina Tobaccowala: 26:00

At my last startup, where we had a health and fitness app, we had a recurring subscription, and so what people really wanted to see from an investment perspective is that you know, in terms of your LTV over CAC, is that you really were able to get back within a six to nine month period that your acquisition costs versus what you were earning, and so that was really when you start to see what investors want to look at. And then, on a subscription basis, it's also obviously when you calculate that LTV. You're not necessarily going to have a huge amount of data yet in terms of what you're like, especially if it's an annual subscription, in terms of your like annual subscription rate, and so you really need to try to get at least one cohort of where you're seeing what the renewal rate is in order for you to calculate out that LTV.

Ryan Grant Little: 26:48

Right, ok, that's really good advice.

Selina Tobaccowala: 27:08

Right, Okay, that's really good advice. Some more advice for people who are in tech and who are interested in getting kind of moving from traditional tech and into the climate tech space, as you've done. What would you tell them? Could I add value into this space?

Selina Tobaccowala: 27:17

And I was very fortunate enough to go to a Climate Draft Happy Hour and I can't recommend Climate Draft enough. It's this amazing site where they have a bunch of the jobs and you can look at everything. But additionally, so I went to this happy hour, this actually this conference event and I met a bunch of these, a bunch of people in the space, and I was so impressed by all this innovation, like whether it was, you know, net zero, the consumer about it. How are you thinking about pricing? And I just kept hearing which is like, oh, I'm in there, like tell people it's net zero, and in my mind all I kept thinking was like, well, consumers don't care that things are net zero.

Selina Tobaccowala: 28:01

And so I realized that, like, my expertise is like around building like consumer products and tech experiences to bring a consumer along a journey, and whether that journey is sending a survey, going to a party, buying a ticket or exercising, which were kind of like my career and I was like I know that I can build experiences and think about how do I talk to a customer at the top of the funnel to get them to do something that then explains and gives them empowerment to take action.

Selina Tobaccowala: 28:30

And so I started to think about what is my skillset or what is my team skillset that we can do to make an impact. And that's what I encourage anybody to do, whether you're in finance, whether you're in your marketing, whether you're in BD, these different companies they do need your skillset. And so it's figuring out. It's like, okay, don't worry about I don't know the space. I mean I took a class on Terrado, I listened to podcasts, I read books. Like you can learn a new space. It's like think about what are your strengths that you can bring and how do you apply that into a new field.

Ryan Grant Little: 29:02

I love that You're like, what can I bring to Climatex? Like, oh, I can actually teach these people how to make money yeah, yeah, always a very welcome skill and so how can people get involved with your mission You've funded. Now you've done some hiring. What do you need?

Selina Tobaccowala: 29:20

Yeah, so we definitely need any sort of distribution partnerships, Like we are. You know, again, as I was mentioning, distribution is the hardest part of any consumer startup. So whether it's people who are already going in the home, already talking to homeowners, like if there's any good partners people have that we should talk to, like, my philosophy is like every conversation is a good one and then obviously try out the product. I'm a huge believer in product feedback and customer feedback and obviously we send you a survey at the end of after we deliver your personalized findings, we deliver you-.

Ryan Grant Little: 29:52

Who's that powered by?

Selina Tobaccowala: 29:54

Survey Monkey, of course, but we have a personalized video that we send to each customer with their findings, and that's a huge impact for a customer to be able to see exactly what they should do. We walk them through. Here's the exact place on your window to cough, and but, tied to that, we also send you a survey with feedback. So, yeah, buy the product, test it out, give us feedback.

Ryan Grant Little: 30:14

Very cool. The company's called HomeBoost and, as always, I'll have the links in the show notes. Selena, thank you so much for joining me today.

Selina Tobaccowala: 30:20

Thank you, ryan, really appreciate it.

Ryan Grant Little: 30:23

Thanks for listening to another Climate Tech Podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at hello at climate tech podcom. Find me, ryan Grant little, on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.