A few years ago, Selina Tobaccowala’s daughter started leaving post-it notes around the house, telling everyone to “turn off the lights” and such.
Tobaccowala had just sold her last startup, Gixo, to OpenFit and was looking for a new challenge. “I saw the kids and thought, ‘Let me see if there’s something there on the sustainability and climate side,’” she told TechCrunch. “There had to be something more than like turning our lights off.”
Without a background in climate science or hardware engineering, she wasn’t sure where to start. So Tobaccowala turned to something she knew well: surveys.
“Given my love of surveys, I surveyed a ton — a ton — of customers,” said Tobaccowala, who used to be president and CTO of SurveyMonkey.
What she found was that people were struggling to figure out how to lower their utility bills.
“When we talked to consumers, we heard the same thing over and over again: They get that email that says, ‘Hey, you spend more money than your neighbors,’” she said. “They were sort of stuck with what to do about it.”
Tobaccowala co-founded HomeBoost to help people conduct their own home energy assessments. The company was part of the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
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