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When Paul Lambert was on paternity leave following the birth of his second son, he found himself pondering his next move. An entrepreneur at heart, he’d founded companies before, worked at Twitter, and was a partner at Google’s Area 120 when he had an epiphany.
“I realized I had to work on whatever problem I genuinely believed was the most important problem to my kids’ generation – really the whole next generation of humans. It sounds a little cheesy, but it’s totally true,” he said. “It’s pretty clear climate change is that problem.”
With his background working in consumer technology, the area in particular he thought he could best have an impact was on the residential level, helping ease the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy in the home.
“My family all worked in the fossil fuel industry. I’m from the part of Canada where the oil companies are really the only game in town,” he said. “My dad literally was the CEO of an energy company, and I just feel a lot of responsibility to be part of the solution.”
From consumer tech to clean energy
He learned that in terms of carbon emissions from homes, heating and cooling is responsible for the lion’s share.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, electric heat pumps (which have both heating and cooling capabilities) are an energy-efficient alternative to furnaces and central air conditioners in all climates. The California Energy Commission states that electric heat pump HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems are significantly more efficient and generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional furnace systems.
“If you want to make an impact, you want to start with HVAC,” Lambert said. “It turns out that electrifying HVAC and creating a really compelling product around it was the single biggest thing I believed I could do for climate change.”
An ‘appealing’ concept
The product? Meet Quilt, the new Redwood City startup aiming to make the process of ditching gas furnaces and adding ductless electric heat pumps to your home a lot, if you’ll pardon the pun, cooler. It does that, Lambert said, by handling everything from installation to rebates, using cutting-edge tech to improve comfort and efficiency, giving prices upfront, and making units that are more stylish than what customers may be used to.
When it came to thinking of ways to make the transition to heat pumps more appealing, Lambert, who co-founded Quilt with Matthew Knoll and Bill Kee (also former Googlers), started, appropriately enough, at home.
“What I did is, I went and got a heat pump for my house, and it was a disaster. I had to call multiple contractors to even find one who would sell me one,” he said. “I live in Redwood City and, as you know, it doesn’t get very cold here, especially to a Canadian like me, and I had contractors tell me that it gets too cold to work!” He also was unsatisfied with the look of the heat pumps he was able to get.
“They’re really big; they’re ugly; you have a remote that looks like it’s from 1985; you have no way to control it from your phone … it’s just kind of a janky experience,” he said. “All the alarm bells went off: This is a broken end-to-end user experience.”
Lambert and his team set out to improve that, both in terms of the physical product and by making the process less of a hassle.
A sleek and unobtrusive design
Quilt’s mini-split ductless heat pump units are built to be sleek and unobtrusive (a little under 8 inches tall, fitting in spaces other heat pumps usually can’t, such as over windows). The system uses room-by-room temperature control, so that energy isn’t wasted on empty rooms, and each space’s unique microclimate is accounted for. Temperatures can be controlled via phone app, which also runs live system reports, as well as by the small dials installed with each indoor unit.
“Central systems do a really poor job, which is what most Americans have, of providing even comfort to every room,” as each room has different characteristics and conditions, he said. According to Lambert, Quilt’s tech allows for precise customization, and its efficiency scores are leading the industry. The company’s engineers developed occupancy-detection technology based on a low-frequency radar so that the system can tell when a room is being occupied (capability that’s much more sensitive than the motion-sensor lights, for example, most people are familiar with).
Lambert is particularly proud of the product’s low noise volume. Quilt’s indoor units “usually operate around 30 decibels; that’s like leaves falling,” he said. The 28-inch-high outdoor unit is typically around 50 decibels, “which is actually less than most conversations.”
Each matte black outdoor unit can heat and cool two rooms. The refrigerant used, R32, was chosen because of its lower environmental impact compared to other options.
Quilt units are also designed to be aesthetically pleasing, with rectilinear angles, built-in accent lighting and front panels in white oak veneer or a white option that can be painted (or wallpapered) to match the room’s look.
“People don’t want to sacrifice their quality of life when they upgrade products in their home,” Lambert said, recalling how the Tesla Model S changed the electric vehicle industry. “That’s because it wasn’t sold as a ‘climate car,’ it was sold as just a freaking cool car,” he said. “People are happy to do the thing that’s good for the planet but not if they’re sacrificing their quality of life.”
Changing people’s mindsets
HVAC systems might not be the most glamorous part of the home, but Quilt is hoping to change people’s mindsets a bit.
“We’re trying to shift it from something that people kind of accept that they need to do to something they’re excited to put in their room,” he said. “We’re trying to change that narrative from, ‘Oh, I needed to put in a heat pump’ to, ‘Wow, I got to upgrade this room by putting a Quilt in it,’ so we had to make it attractive. We had to make it desirable.”
Lambert said he wants customers’ engagement with the company to be a more “modern” experience than the typical process of finding contractors, getting estimates and doing things piecemeal, and prices are clearly listed on the website. Quilt costs $6,499 per room, with eligible rebates being applied upfront when possible, rather than relying on consumers to have to track them down and apply on their own.
“Any high-efficiency heat pump could get the rebates but often it’s actually a lot of paperwork and most contractors won’t do it for you, so even though the rebates are there, they’re not always realized by people because people are busy and it’s complex,” he said. “Often, to do that, we have to move the existing heating source because a lot of the rebates are predicated upon getting off of fossil fuels. We remove the furnace, we document that, we send it all in.”
From Redwood City to HGTV
Quilt recently popped up in an episode of HGTV’s “Celebrity IOU,” in which Drew and Jonathan Scott of “Property Brothers” fame helped skateboarder Tony Hawk with a workspace remodel for a friend. Drew Scott, Lambert explained, is a Quilt investor (and, as it turns out, the brothers are from the same area of Canada as Lambert’s family).
The company has done 16 installations at “beta homes” so far over the past year, including Quilt’s office and Lambert’s own Redwood City residence, which has been using Quilt for about six months (of the beta homes, most have been local, with two in Los Angeles and two in Massachusetts). The company had its launch event in Los Altos in May, and in early October starts its first paid customer installations. The company plans to focus on the Bay Area first, then expand to Southern California, followed eventually, Lambert hopes, with expansions nationwide.
Still, “we’re very much a local company,” he said, recalling how he recruited co-founder Knoll, who also lives in Redwood City, to the project by talking over ideas while on walks at the city’s Stulsaft Park.
“I’ve been here for a decade now. Both my kids were born here. I own a home here, Matt (Knoll) does as well. We’re really proud to be here,” he said. “There’s a lot of cool stuff happening here. There’s a lot of interesting new companies, especially climate tech companies, starting here, so we feel like we’re part of a movement.”
Lambert said he hopes Quilt is the last company he’ll ever start – something that he can spend the rest of his career working on.
“Someone might look at us and say, ‘Look, it’s a local HVAC startup,’ and that’s true, but the bigger picture is that we’re trying to really move the needle on something we think is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and sort of the biggest defining problem of our era.” More information is available at quilt.com.
This version corrects the number of “beta homes” and updates the information on the start date for paid customer installations.
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