Startup Series: Sealed

Today’s guest is Lauren Salz, co-founder and CEO of Sealed, which modernizes houses with the latest HVAC, weatherproofing and smart home technology, while covering the upfront cost to homeowners.

Home efficiency and electrification is a critical front for combating climate change. Incentives for residential heat pump installation are one of the big winners of the Inflation Reduction Act.The often overlooked but critical steps of weatherizing homes via better insulation and sealing is also key to reducing energy consumption. Sealed has been understanding consumer motivations for home efficiency upgrades for nearly a decade. They've learned what consumers care about, what they are concerned about, and what triggers them to invest significant capital into updating their home's heating and cooling infrastructure. And no surprise, climate change and emissions reduction still does not rate as a top motivator. So what does? And are we at the point where these lower emission technologies are just generally better for home heating and cooling? Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.

Cody and Lauren have a great chat about how she came to work on the problem of home efficiency updates, how they assess a home's needs at Sealed and how this compares to the normal way of doing things. We also talk about the innovative model Sealed is using to help consumers finance projects via energy cost savings, how they work with contractors, and how the IRA promises to accelerate this space even more. And most importantly, we hear from Lauren on how to reach consumers and what their motivations are.

In this episode, we cover:

[3:24] Lauren's journey
[6:05] Her early days of figuring out home energy efficiency and her company’s origin story
[11:57] An overview of Sealed
[19:12] Value propositions that are most popular for consumers
[21:33] Process for how Sealed designs custom solutions for each home
[25:54] The company’s performance-based financing model
[31:16] How customers and contractors learn about Sealed's solution
[35:46] The company's role in assessing contractor work
[37:50] Benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act
[45:41] Common changes people need to make with insulation

Get connected:
Cody's Twitter
Lauren’s Twitter / Sealed Twitter
MCJ Podcast / Collective

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Episode recorded on September 14, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant