The HVAC industry is undergoing change. While seasoned traders are approaching retirement, private equity firms are consolidating the industry. Airship is building software solutions for the next chapter of HVAC.
Airship is building point-of-sale software that helps HVAC contractors close big sales by providing knowledge such as incentive programs for energy-efficient heat pumps that can offer rebates to customers. Craig Battin, co-founder and CEO of Airship, said the software was created to be intuitive and easy to adopt because many potential HVAC contractors have yet to adopt any technology and still rely on pen and paper to conduct business.
Battin said that despite the industry’s low level of technology adoption, Airship is looking to build enterprise-grade solutions that it can sell to the growing number of private equity-backed HVAC rollups.
“Private equity entering the space is just the tip of the window,” Battin said. “We are currently in the early stages of software introduction. We can now continue to build products from where we started. “We take advantage of the land beneath this ever-changing space.”
Michael Sachse, co-founder and president of Airship, told TechCrunch that many HVAC companies are focused on fielding more calls to drive business. He believes a better use of his time would be to increase the ticket size of the business he already has. He added that so far the average airship user has been able to increase their ticket size by 20%.
Sachse said he got the idea for Airship while working as CEO of Dandelion Energy, a residential geothermal heating and cooling startup. Sachse said this role led him to consider why heat pump adoption is so difficult.
“I started thinking about it more and it became very clear that it was all about home builders and construction tools, and I experienced firsthand how limiting that was,” Sachse said.
Sachse mentioned his idea to early-stage fintech company QED last year, and the company referred him to Battin, who had years of experience running startups and was looking for his next project. The two started building the airship last fall. The company currently has 10 design partners and is operating in beta. They are planning an initial launch in November before a wider rollout early next year.
Now the company is coming out of stealth, announcing a partnership with services software unicorn ServiceTitan and raising $4 million in a pre-seed round. The funding round was led by QED with participation from Silence, Lorimer Ventures, Four Acres Capital, and Twine Ventures.
Airship plans to use the capital to hire and continue building its products. Battin said this POS software is just the first component of the company’s final platform to help HVAC contractors in areas such as payments, warranties and subscription management.
There are many other companies looking to build technology for HVAC contractors. Airship’s new partner ServiceTitan is one of them. The company has raised $1.5 billion in VC funding. Jobber is another company that has raised more than $183 million to help HVAC contractors with scheduling and invoicing. Service Fusion is another company that provides field management tools and raised $10 million in venture capital before being acquired by EverCommerce in 2020.
Airship believes it maintains an edge in this crowded market by focusing on the tools contractors can bring to the field to generate more revenue from each sale.
“One of the things I’m most excited about is that we really enjoy working with these customers,” Sachse said. “We get really honest and quick feedback. They are very interested in making the business better. We’re excited to have our customers using this as they look forward to the next few years.”
