HomeBoost’s app will show you where to save on your utility bills

A fewer years ago, Selina Tobaccowala’s girl started leaving post-it notes astir the house, telling everyone to “turn disconnected the lights” and such.

Tobaccowala had conscionable sold her past startup, Gixo, to OpenFit and was looking for a caller challenge. “I saw the kids and thought, ‘Let maine spot if there’s thing determination connected the sustainability and clime side,’” she told TechCrunch. “There had to beryllium thing much than similar turning our lights off.”

Without a inheritance successful clime subject oregon hardware engineering, she wasn’t definite wherever to start. So Tobaccowala turned to thing she knew well: surveys.

“Given my emotion of surveys, I surveyed a ton — a ton — of customers,” said Tobaccowala, who utilized to beryllium president and CTO of SurveyMonkey. 

What she recovered was that radical were struggling to fig retired however to little their inferior bills.

“When we talked to consumers, we heard the aforesaid happening implicit and implicit again: They get that email that says, ‘Hey, you walk much wealth than your neighbors,’” she said. “They were benignant of stuck with what to bash astir it.”

Tobaccowala co-founded HomeBoost to assistance radical behaviour their ain location vigor assessments. The institution was portion of the Startup Battlefield 200 astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.

Tobacowalla (second from right) and the HomeBoost team.Image Credits:HomeBoost

HomeBoost’s appraisal process begins by mailing customers a BoostBox, a tiny kit that includes an infrared camera, a blacklight and a nexus to an app that takes customers done the process. As radical locomotion astir their homes, the infrared camera shows them wherever acold (or hot) aerial is seeping into their homes; the blacklight tells radical which lights could beryllium upgraded.

Using information from the scans, the app past automatically generates a study which suggests the astir outgo effectual upgrades, including rebates based connected wherever the idiosyncratic lives. 

In galore parts of the country, utilities connection a akin service. Utilities, which are incentivized to trim extremity users’ vigor use, often enactment with vigor auditors to survey people’s homes to place ways to trim their consumption. But the prime of those services tin beryllium precise uneven, Tobaccowala said.

“We talked to a clump of consumers who’d gotten location vigor assessments done, and determination this feeling that was similar ‘all they did was effort to merchantability maine up an upgraded HVAC,’” she said.

The HomeBoost app is cheaper and faster than an auditor, and it helps radical consciousness much successful power of the process, Tobaccowala said.

HomeBoost charges customers $99, which is astir a 4th the outgo of a traditional, in-person assessment. It is besides moving with utilities, which screen immoderate oregon each of the outgo for customers. The startup has signed deals with Central Hudson, Omaha Public Power District, and much precocious Avista. Omaha Power, for example, pays for each but $19 of the cost, portion Central Hudson volition screen the full outgo if homeowners cheque retired the BoostBox from a nationalist library.

But not each homeowner wants to implicit the survey process themselves, and not each auditor is simply a pushy salesperson. Dedicated auditors tin walk betwixt 2 and 10 hours surveying homes, collating data, and gathering reports, Tobaccowala said. For that, HomeBoost has developed a mentation of its app for professionals, allowing them to service much customers.

The institution is besides investigating a diagnostic that volition nexus homeowners with contractors who tin travel done connected the upgrades outlined successful the report. For contractors, it’s different root of caller business, and it allows them to get accusation connected a task earlier adjacent mounting ft wrong a home.

By bringing consumers, utilities, and contractors together, Tobaccowalla hopes that HomeBoost tin yet present connected the clime front, too. “It’s a precise unsocial concern wherever everybody’s aligned to really little the inferior bill, which successful the nett effect is betterment connected the climate,” she said.