Quilt

nice!

Hey Product Hunt! I'm Paul, co-founder and CEO of Quilt.I started Quilt on paternity leave with my second son. I'd been a partner at Google's Area 120 for a few years and knew I had another company in me but was struggling. I made a rule that I would only start something if I would commit at least a decade to it. Tech moves so fast – how can you get confidence you're betting on the right thing, that you won't spend years attached to some wrong bet? I witnessed this going wrong first hand early in my career. It scared me.The solution sounds quite simple, but took me years to find and was personally very significant: If I worked on whatever problem I genuinely believed was the most important to my kids' generation, there was no way to fail. The worst case? You spend a decade trying to make the world better for them. Zero regrets. The best case? You help solve the defining problem of our time, because by definition that's what you're working on.It didn't take long to land on climate — and specifically on homes, which account for 20% of U.S. emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels for heat. Heat pumps are genuinely magical technology — 400% more efficient than gas furnaces — but the products on the market were bulky, confusing, and stressful to adopt. That's not a technology problem. It's a product problem.So I did what any reasonable person would do: I went and got a heat pump for my own house. And it was a disaster. Multiple contractors just to find someone willing to sell me one. The unit was huge and ugly, controlled by a remote from 1985. No app. No intelligence. No joy.I grew up in Alberta, Canada — the heart of the fossil fuel industry — and spent my career in consumer tech. So the question kept nagging: why hasn't anyone applied what we know about building great products to the single biggest emissions lever in the home?My co-founders Matt and Bill (ex-Google, Nest, Google X) and I started building in 2022. At the time we wrote a fake Wirecutter review (Amazon style) to capture the vision (and just two weeks ago the real one came out!).Here's what Quilt is today:A deeply integrated SW/HW home climate system with industry-leading efficiency (SEER2 25, HSPF2 12) — 20% more efficient than the next best ductless system on the marketIndoor units only 7⅞ in. tall — they fit above doors and windows where traditional mini-splits can'tRoom-by-room control through the Quilt Dial and App, with occupancy detection that automatically saves energy in empty rooms500x more processing power than traditional HVAC. Last fall, we shipped an OTA update that boosted heating capacity 23% and cooling capacity 22% to every installed system. No service visit. No new hardware. No cost.Now in 21 U.S. states and 6 Canadian provinces — and we're just getting startedFor the PH crowd: think of Quilt as what happens when you build HVAC the way you'd build a great consumer tech product — beautiful hardware, intelligent software, continuous improvement. We're building what we hope is the Model S moment for home climate — something people are genuinely excited to bring into their lives because it's a better product, full stop. As Quilt has gained momentum, the decade commitment now seems much too short. Something I learned a year in: the youngest of the major HVAC manufacturers is over 100 years old. 100! (Trivia: Rheem, founded 1925.) Like so many other industries being reinvented by technology, HVAC is overdue — and the opportunity is massive. Humans spend 90% of our lives indoors. These systems (air, water, heat, cooling) are what make buildings livable. There is so, so much to do here when viewed through that lens.Happy to go deep on anything — the product, the tech, the HVAC industry, or the founding journey. And if you're curious about upgrading your own home, check out quilt.com.— Paul

Quilt is a Silicon Valley startup, founded by a handful of former Google employees (and alum from Nest, Tesla, and Apple), is building "the smartest and most efficient heat pump on the market". They announced a $20M raise last December.Wirecutter says, "The Quilt heat pump’s handsome fit and finish is an obvious departure from the mini-split status quo."As a homeowner with solar, I've become interested in heat pumps as my next home upgrade. Energy is one of my biggest expenses, and improving my home's efficiency would unlock great savings.Here's how Quilt compares:With Auto-Away automatically adjusting empty rooms, real-time energy usage tracking, and over-the-air updates that make your system smarter over time, Quilt is at least:20% more efficient than the next-best ductless heat pumps available80% more efficient at cooling than what most North Americans have in their homes today400% more efficient at heating than what most North Americans have in their homes today