360Chestnut

360Chestnut is building an on-line community dedicated to helping members make radical improvements in the energy efficiency of their homes.

Members get personalized access to the 5000+ generous federal, state, utility and manufacturer rebates and free services that pay them to make their homes more energy efficient. 

Members receive expert information about what to do to their homes, as well as a connection to those who can do the work.

The initial focus will be on the $13B HVAC market which is extremely fragmented with too many interfaces for homeowners and few consumer-focused companies.

The two founders are serial entrepreneurs who recently created a successful residential energy efficiency business.  The content editor has already created a green-focused website and has key sources and content contributors in place. The CTO has worked for numerous start-ups, most recently cofounding a successful green website. Our Advisory Board is led by a veteran producer of This Old House, and includes noted experts in HVAC/geothermal service providers and online customer acquisition.

360Chestnut will generate revenues rapidly from the selective marketing of customer leads to trustworthy, qualified service delivery and product partners, and over time, by participating in larger segments of the value chain.  Beginning with lead generation, 360Chestnut will in time extract value from lead qualifying, lead nurturing, project finance, equipment purchase and other services.

Whether it be start-ups (RecycleBank, OPower, etc) or existing players (Home Depot, Sears) they all fall down in the residential energy efficiency space (EE) for some combination of reasons, including: lack of focus on energy efficiency, no content or direction on what to do, not a trusted source, lack of consumer understanding (believing “green” is the motivator), difficult to scale business models and others.

We believe a key advantage for us is our deep experience in this space.  Prior to founding 360Chestnut, we created Green Guild, an energy audit and weatherization company.  In this capacity, we serviced approximately 1000 customers over the last two years.  Through this experience we have learned much about our customers.  From this we know many things about the residential energy efficiency consumer including that money, not “green,” is what drives action.  By having some veterans from This Old House on our team, our content will be unparalleled in terms of clarity and direction.  We see this as a sustainable business advantage.