HomeBoost’s app tells you where you can save on your utility bills.

A few years ago, Selina Tobaccowala’s daughter started leaving post-it notes around the house. It was telling everyone, “Please turn off the lights.”

Tobaccowala had just sold his last startup, Gixo, to OpenFit and was looking for a new challenge. “I looked at the kids and thought, ‘Let’s see if there’s something on the sustainability and climate side,’” she told TechCrunch. “There had to be more to it than putting out the fire.”

With no background in climate science or hardware engineering, she wasn’t sure where to start. So Tobaccowala turned his attention to something he was familiar with: surveys.

“We love surveys, so we surveyed a lot of our customers,” said Tobaccowala, former president and CTO of SurveyMonkey.

What she found was that people were struggling to find ways to lower their utility bills.

“As we talk to consumers, we hear the same thing over and over again: They get emails saying, ‘Hey, you spend more money than your neighbor,’” she said. “They were wondering what to do about it.”

Tobaccowala co-founded HomeBoost to help people conduct their own home energy assessments. The company was part of Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.

HomeBoost’s evaluation process begins with mailing customers a BoostBox, a small kit that includes an infrared camera, a blacklight, and a link to an app that guides customers through the process. As people walk around the home, infrared cameras show where cold (or hot) air is seeping into the home. Blacklight lets people know what lighting they can upgrade.

Using the scan data, the app automatically generates a report suggesting the most cost-effective upgrades, including rebates based on a person’s residence.

In many areas of the country, utility companies provide similar services. Utilities that receive incentives to reduce energy use by end users often work with energy auditors to inspect people’s homes to identify ways to reduce consumption. But the quality of these services can be very uneven, Tobaccowala said.

“We talked to many consumers who had completed a home energy assessment and felt like, ‘All they did was try to sell me an upgraded HVAC,’” she said.

The HomeBoost app is cheaper and faster than an auditor and helps people feel more in control of the process, Tobaccowala said.

HomeBoost charges customers $99. This is about a quarter of the cost of a traditional in-person assessment. We also work with utilities to cover some or all of our customers’ costs. The startup has signed deals with Central Hudson, Omaha Public Power District and, most recently, Avista. For example, Omaha Power pays all but $19, while Central Hudson covers the entire cost if homeowners rent a BoostBox from a public library.

However, not all homeowners want to complete the inspection process themselves, and not all auditors are pushy salespeople. A dedicated auditor can spend two to 10 hours inspecting a home, collecting data and writing a report, Tobaccowala said. To that end, HomeBoost has developed a professional version of the app so it can serve more customers.

The company is also testing a feature that connects homeowners with contractors who can complete the upgrades described in the report. For contractors, this is another source of new business and allows them to get information about a project before they even set foot in the home.

By bringing consumers, utilities and contractors together, Tobaccowalla hopes HomeBoost can ultimately contribute to climate issues as well. “It’s a very unique situation where everyone is actually working together to lower utility bills, which in turn improves the climate,” she said.