The HVAC business is changing as the old guard nears retirement, private equity firms consolidate the industry, and Airship develops the next step in HVAC with an innovative software system
A company called Airship is making point-of-sale software for HVAC contractors. This software will teach them about rebates and reward programs for energy-efficient heat pumps that will help them make more sales. Craig Battin, co-founder and CEO of Airship, said that the software is meant to be simple and easy to use since many people who want to become HVAC workers haven’t used technology and still do their work on paper.
Battin said that even though the industry doesn’t use technology very much, Airship wants to build an enterprise-level solution. This will help the company sell to the growing number of HVAC rollups backed by private equity.
Battin said, “Private equity coming into the space is the tip of the spear.” “Software adoption is still in its very early stages.” We can keep making goods because of where we started. The ground under this place constantly shifts, which is good for us.
TechCrunch talked to Michael Sachse, co-founder and executive chairman of Airship. He said that many HVAC companies are trying to get more calls to make more money. Getting more prominent tickets for the business they already have is what he thinks they should do with their time. As of now, the average Airship user has been able to make their ticket 20% bigger, he said.
Sachse said that the idea for Airship came to him while he was CEO of Dandelion Energy, which uses natural heat and cools homes. Sachse noted that this job led him to discover why it was so hard for people to adopt heat pumps.
After giving it more thought, Sachse said, “It became obvious that everything was about the home contractor and building tools, and I had some first-hand experience about how that was limited.”
Last year, Sachse told the early-stage fintech company QED about his idea. They put him in touch with Battin, who had worked as a startup manager for years and was looking for his next project. Last fall, they began building Airship. The business is in testing right now and has ten design partners. They plan to start with a small group of people in November and then expand early next year.
The company has now come out of stealth mode and announced a relationship with ServiceTitan, a giant in the service software market. They also just raised $4 million in a pre-seed round. Four Acres Capital, Twine Ventures, Silence, and Lorimer Ventures participated in the funding round. QED led it.
Airship will use the money to hire people and build its offering. Battin said this point-of-sale software is just the beginning of a platform company that will eventually help HVAC providers with payments, warranties, subscriptions, and more.
Many other businesses also want to make tech for HVAC workers. ServiceTitan is one of them and is now an Airship partner. VCs have given the company $1.5 billion. Jobber is another company that has raised more than $183 million to help HVAC workers with billing and scheduling. Service Fusion is another company that offers tools for managing workers in the field. Before EverCommerce bought it in 2020, it earned $10 million in venture capital.
Airship thinks it can stay ahead in this crowded market by focusing on tools that workers can bring to the job site to make more money with each sale.
“One thing that makes me happy is that we love working with these clients,” Sachse said. “The feedback we get is candid and quick.” They want to improve their companies. “When I think about the next few years, I can’t wait for people to use this.”
