It’s game time for Ecovent.
The local startup, which has designed a smart HVAC zoning system that delivers complete climate control over each individual room in consumers' homes, is hot off closing a $6.9 million Series A round, has just moved into a bigger office in Charlestown, and is steadily starting to grow out the team.
“We’ve been cranking on this for years,” CEO and co-founder Dip Patel told BostInno. “It’s really exciting to see it all finally coming together.”
Patel’s company, a grad of the Techstars Boston spring 2014 class, produces a wireless system of vents and sensors that can identify factors affecting how warm or cool any room is, and then automatically adjust airflow to each as needed to achieve the desired temperature. Ultimately, that translates to lower utility bills.
Carefully calculated traction
At the end of July, Ecovent closed its Series A, a round that was led by the HVAC industry giant Emerson Climate Technologies. Back in October, the startup banked $2.2 million in seed funding from Techstars Boston managing director Semyon Dukach (via Accomplice) and other angels Stewart Alsop, Julia Austin, Will Herman, Warren Katz and Michael Mark. With that backing, Ecovent was able to begin accepting pre-orders through its website. (Ecovent also raised $605,000 in angel funding back in April.) Thus far, the firm has racked up more than $1 million in pre-orders and counting for their smart vent system, which Patel says will be shipping out in the fourth quarter of this year.
“When we raised our seed round, we didn’t want to raise too much,” says Patel. “There were a lot of unknowns, so we wanted to raise just enough needed for technical maturity.”
The main challenge to production, Patel explained, is that homeowners are dealing with different sized vents.
That means the systems all have to be customized to fit their needs. Right now, anyone can still preorder on the site, and there’s a discount that will apply into the near future (until the shipment date nears). Patel emphasized that customers also don’t get charged until the product is actually shipped out to them. Pre-orders have helped the company to figure out what size vents to focus on, and where the majority of the need is. Eventually, once manufacturing catches up, he says they’ll switch over to immediate order fulfillment. And over the next few months, the company will be testing out its systems further in various labs around the country.
Certainly, what they’re trying to do isn’t easy. Patel noted that there are a lot of issues around integration—which they had to resolve before Emerson would pull through on investing in the Series A round.
“In the home, with so many disparate parts, it’s difficult to ensure seamless integration,” said Patel. “There are so many variables to take into account. If we close one vent, all the other vents get a different kind of pressure, and air moves around differently depending on the pressure, temperature, and whether windows or doors are open.”
Even aspects like daylight savings and foliage can come into play here.
“We’re not expecting a system that’s completely perfect, but one that works out of the box. And it’s a lot more complicated under the surface," Patel said.
That’s why customer service will be paramount in this first run—and Ecovent just just hired a new director to head up that department.
Adding talent and strengthening culture
“All of us came from big companies where culture was secondary to the mission. So it’s very important to us.”
Beyond executing on preorders, Patel says the top priority with their most recent funding round is growing the team. Right now, they have 22 employees, but are in the process of bringing on several more, and aim to reach at least about 35 by year’s end. Current open positions range from engineering in software and hardware to quality assurance, marketing, and product. The startup also consistently has eight to 10 interns, which they recruit from the Northeastern COOP, MIT and the like. Recently, the company moved into new digs that are three times the size of their former Seaport office space (which they shared with NVBOTS) to accommodate for this employee growth.
If there’s one thing that Patel is adamant about, it’s company culture.
“All of us [cofounders] came from big companies where culture was secondary to the mission,” he explained. “So it’s very important to us.”
Trust, he says, is a core aspect of that culture.
“I’m a firm believer that everyone is a LeBron in something,” added Patel. “Whether it’s marketing, or design, or something else.”
Patel—who is Indian, was born in Africa, and grew up in a Philly suburb—says bluntly: “When I first came to Boston, I hated it.”
He originally came to the area about 10 years ago. While working as an engineer for Lockheed Martin, he was sent up to the Cape to help out a company it had acquired.
“I didn’t think this was the place for me to grow,” he explained.
Patel continued to shift around at Lockheed on various projects—until he was accepted to MIT (where he received his MBA in 2014).
“That’s when my mega man crush on Boston started,” Patel told BostInno. “And at first, I thought it was an MIT thing. Any time I had a harebrained scheme, everyone asked: ‘How can we help?’ I was used to one person always saying: ‘But this is why it sucks.’ Then I realized it wasn’t just MIT—it was Boston as a whole.”
While The Hub isn’t a massive city, Patel noted that it has incredible resources and a strong influx of talent.
“In Boston, no one dwells on why an idea isn’t going to work—they make it work. And the beauty of the culture here is that everyone knows someone’s got their blind spot, someone’s got their back.”
“In Boston, no one dwells on why an idea isn’t going to work—they make it work. And the beauty of the culture here is that everyone knows someone’s got their blind spot, someone’s got their back.”
For these reasons, Patel says he’s determined to keep the company local. Of course, they’ve had their fair share of temptations to move elsewhere.
“Capital can be easier to come by in other places sometimes,” said Patel. “But at the end of the day the way I see it is, if you can’t get it done in Boston then how are you going to survive? Geography shouldn’t matter, and it definitely shouldn’t impede you from achieving your mission.”
Most of Ecovent’s lead investors aren’t in Boston, and Patel admitted that several have tried to lure the startup to other regions, promising that they can offer more value in the Valley or elsewhere. But Ecovent just isn’t biting.
All images via Ecovent.
