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42 minute read
Too many heat pump installations start with a homeowner's pain and end with more pain.
DR Richardson knows this firsthand. When he tried to get a heat pump installed in his Boulder townhome — a perfect test case with central ducts — the experience was a disaster. Every single step felt harder than it should have been. Which rebates applied? What equipment would work? How do you size it properly? How do you find a contractor you can trust?
"No joke — that entire experience of trying to get a heat pump was a disaster," DR says. "That whole process really gave us the realization that, man, is there a big opportunity here to just make this a better experience for homeowners."
That frustration launched Elephant Energy, a tech-enabled home electrification platform now operating in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles. The company partners with vetted contractors to deliver heat pumps, water heaters, EV chargers, and induction stoves through what DR describes as "the Uber of heat pumps."
The comparison is revealing. Uber made getting rides seamless for passengers. But it also disrupted an entire industry of drivers.
The Problem: Electrification Is Too Complicated
DR's path to Elephant wasn't typical for HVAC. He spent a decade in private equity at Vision Ridge Partners, investing in decarbonization companies at the scale-up stage — EV charging networks, electric ferries, electric school buses. The pattern was consistent: proven technology, better economics than the old way, and climate impact.
"We invested right at that place where technology was proven and ready to be scaled up and deployed," DR explains. "The economics made a ton of sense. It was dramatically better from a business model perspective than the old way of doing things. And it just so happened to be really decarbonizing."
After a decade of investing in these companies, DR wanted to build one himself. He and his co-founder Josh started mapping where technology, unit economics, and deployment opportunity intersected. The answer: home electrification, specifically heat pumps.
"The technology was there, the unit economics were there. And yet it's not being deployed," DR says. "So we figured, okay, this is a perfect test case. Let's really roll up our sleeves and understand — can we deploy a heat pump?"
The answer was technically yes, but practically a nightmare. Every friction point became obvious: rebate complexity, equipment selection, contractor vetting, sizing confusion, trust gaps. Within a month of that frustrating experience, strangers were cutting Elephant five-figure checks to install heat pumps.
"It's not just that I had a bad experience," DR realized. "It's that every single homeowner and contractor wants to do this thing but can't figure out how to make it work from a great experience for both sides."
The Solution: Software Meets Service
Elephant's approach starts with a deceptively simple question: What if getting a heat pump felt like ordering an Uber?
Go to Elephant's website, answer 10 questions in under 60 seconds, and you get an initial quote — complete with system recommendations and estimated rebate savings. It's shockingly fast compared to the typical HVAC sales process of scheduling a visit, waiting days for a quote, then deciphering what's actually included.
But that initial quote is just the entry point. Behind it sits a more comprehensive process that Elephant calls the "comfort advisor" experience — a blend of remote diagnostics, utility bill analysis, and home assessment that narrows the initial range into a final, accurate quote.
"There's a lot of things we still don't know about your home," DR explains. "What's the actual BTU requirements on the coldest days of the year? We need to understand the mechanics of your home — is it centrally ducted? What are the electrical panel considerations? If it's mini-splits, how many and where are they going?"
Elephant built custom tools to handle this remotely. They ingest historical utility data to generate BTU loads. They use video calls to assess duct layouts and mini-split placements. Some customers prefer in-person visits, and Elephant accommodates that. But the default is digital-first.
"We got to meet the customer where they're at," DR says. "We know we can design a system perfectly remotely. Some homeowners prefer that to be in person, and we're going to meet them where they're at."
Once the homeowner signs the contract, Elephant acts as a white-glove owner's rep — managing rebates, permitting, installation logistics, and post-installation support. The homeowner always works through Elephant. The contractor shows up, installs, gets paid quickly, and moves to the next job.
It's the Uber model applied to heat pumps: Elephant owns the customer relationship and contractor network.
The Contractor Value Proposition: More Margin, Less Hassle
DR's pitch to contractors is straightforward: same revenue with better margins.
"You're going to earn the same revenue with better net margins because we're taking care of the front office and we're taking care of the back office," DR says. "You no longer have to do customer acquisition. You no longer have to do sales. You no longer have to do rebate incentive management, financing, customer service post-installation. Elephant takes all of that off your plate."
The economics work differently than traditional contracting. Elephant purchases the major equipment — condensers, air handlers — using bulk procurement to drive down costs. Contractors supply smaller parts like line sets, pads, and stands. They don't make margin on the box anymore, but they're compensated per-job with pricing Elephant says is fair based on actual labor hours.
"The contractors that work with us over and over, they understand that the pricing is really fair," DR says. "It keeps them coming back."
The proof is in retention: Elephant says they’ve had zero unwanted contractor attrition. They've let contractors go for quality failures, but no contractor has voluntarily left the platform.
For contractors running 2-3 truck operations who see electrification as the future but struggle with front-office and back-office overhead, the model can be appealing. Elephant provides comprehensive scopes of work for every project — equipment specs, installation locations, photos, pricing — detailed enough that most contractors never visit the home before installation day.
"We've given them the confidence that they can show up on the day of installation without ever having set foot in the home and know that they can do an A+ job," DR says.
Change orders get handled through a clear process. If Elephant made a mistake in the scope, they cover it. If the homeowner changes their mind mid-project, Elephant manages that conversation and ensures everyone gets compensated fairly.
The result, according to DR: contractors who've been on the platform for years have earned millions of dollars, with less administrative burden and more predictable workflow than running their own sales operation.
The Elephant in the Room: Commoditization
Here's the harder question: Is Elephant disintermediating contractors in a way that ultimately commoditizes their work?
When asked directly, DR doesn't dodge. He acknowledges the concern and frames it as a feature, not a bug.
"What Uber has done is they've commoditized trust. They haven't commoditized quality," DR says. "It's easy to find somebody who can drive you from A to B, and they can do it at a high quality. But it's actually really hard to find that person. It's a matching problem."
In DR's view, Elephant isn't making installation quality a commodity — it's making the trust layer a commodity. Homeowners don't know how to vet contractors. They don't know if their system was installed correctly until something breaks three years later. Elephant takes on that vetting, quality assurance, and risk.
"Quality is never going to be a commodity," DR argues. "What we're doing is finding and vetting and sourcing high quality contractors so that you as a homeowner, you don't have to."
It's a compelling answer. But it also reveals the tension: Elephant's value proposition to homeowners is that they don't need to know anything about contractors. Elephant handles that. The contractor becomes interchangeable as long as they meet quality standards.
For contractors who've built their business on relationships, reputation, and differentiation, that's a difficult pill to swallow — even if the economics work. For contractors who struggle with marketing, sales, and back-office operations, it might be a relief.
The question is which type of contractor you are.
The Rebate Complexity Problem
One area where Elephant's value is less ambiguous: rebates.
DR describes rebate management as a massive pain point that contractors aren't equipped to handle at scale. Colorado's state tax credit example is illustrative: contractors can pass up to $1,500 per heat pump directly to homeowners as an upfront discount. But the contractor has to float that cost until they file taxes and get reimbursed.
For Elephant, that meant projects installed in January 2024 didn't get paid out until August 2025 — 19 months of working capital tied up in state rebate processing.
"That cost us real money to float that working capital for hundreds of projects," DR says.
Then there's geographic fragmentation. Boulder has different rebates than Denver, which has different rebates than Broomfield or Golden — all within a 40-minute drive. Massachusetts has Mass Save covering 85% of the population, but the 15% outside it have completely different programs. Contractors serving regional markets have to track it all.
"It makes your life hard," DR says simply.
Elephant's approach is to take rebates and incentives off the top, so neither the homeowner nor the contractor has to worry about whether they'll actually get them. That removes uncertainty and simplifies pricing, but it also means Elephant bears the working capital burden and administrative complexity.
For contractors, that's a real benefit. The question is whether it's worth giving up customer ownership in exchange.
The Sugar Rush vs. The Bridge
On rebates more broadly, DR and the hosts dive into a familiar debate: Are incentive programs helping or hurting?
DR lands pragmatically in the middle. He acknowledges perverse incentives — per-ton rebates that encourage oversizing, for example — and agrees that inconsistent on-off programs create the "sugar rush" problem that Nate Adams frequently criticizes.
"Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good," DR says. "We need rebates and incentives to be the bridge to a lower cost future in most climates today."
His long-term vision is clear: make electrification the lowest-cost option regardless of rebates. That means continuing to drive down equipment costs through bulk procurement, optimizing dispatch to reduce contractor downtime, and finding operational efficiencies that benefit everyone.
One example: heat pump water heaters typically take half a day to install, but contractors price them at a full day of labor because dispatch isn't optimized. If Elephant can schedule two water heater installs in one day — one morning, one afternoon — they can pay contractors less per job but more per day, while passing savings to homeowners.
"It ends up being a win-win-win," DR says. "We've lowered pricing for homeowners, we've increased the daily labor rate for our contractors, and we're able to electrify more homes."
That's the vision: systematic operational improvements that make electrification economically superior even without rebates. Until then, incentive programs remain critical.
What Contractors Should Watch For
Elephant Energy represents a real trend in the heat pump market: tech-enabled platforms that sit between homeowners and contractors, managing the entire customer journey while outsourcing the physical installation work.
For contractors, the implications depend on your business model and competitive position:
If you're struggling with sales, marketing, and back-office operations: Elephant might solve real problems. You get consistent workflow, fast payment, comprehensive scopes, and zero rebate headaches. The trade-off is giving up customer ownership and potentially lower per-job revenue (even if margins improve).
If you've built a brand on relationships and trust: Elephant represents a competitor for the customer relationship. They're betting homeowners care more about a seamless digital experience than knowing their contractor personally. You're betting the opposite.
If you're focused on building science and premium service: Watch how Elephant's quality assurance actually works at scale. Can they truly vet and maintain high standards across a distributed contractor network? Or does quality drift over time as they grow?
If you operate in markets with complex rebate landscapes: Elephant's value proposition is strongest here. They're solving a genuine pain point that many contractors don't have the infrastructure to handle well.
The bigger question is whether Elephant's model proves that heat pump installation is fundamentally a software and logistics problem with physical execution as a component — or whether it's a craft and relationship business that technology can support but not replace.
The answer probably depends on customer segment, geography, and what type of heat pump business you're trying to build.
The Future: Expansion and Evolution
Elephant isn't standing still. They recently launched in Los Angeles and continue expanding geographically. They're exploring product expansion into solar and storage, where demand overlaps with their existing heat pump customers. And they're testing channel expansion into new construction and multifamily.
DR is also clear about what Elephant isn't doing: they're not manufacturing heat pumps, and they're not planning to vertically integrate installation at scale. They maintain internal installation crews in Colorado for R&D and process improvement, but those learnings get shared with contractor partners.
"Our goal has been to enable contractors to be the best at their jobs as they can," DR says.
Whether that proves true at scale remains to be seen. Elephant has over 1,000 completed projects and contractors who've earned millions through the platform. But the model is still young, and the heat pump market is evolving quickly.
For contractors, the lesson isn't necessarily to fear Elephant or join their platform. It's to pay attention to what problems they're solving and ask whether you're solving those same problems for your customers in your own way.
Because if the customer experience around heat pumps remains as painful as DR describes, someone is going to fix it. The question is whether that someone is you — or a tech platform creating “the Uber of heat pumps”.
Timestamps:
- [00:00] - Episode Teaser
- [03:18] - Introducing DR Richardson & Elephant Energy
- [04:08] - Founding Elephant Energy: The Opportunity & Vision
- [09:10] - Building a Seamless Customer Journey
- [14:13] - The Digital Experience & Quote Process
- [17:46] - Contractor Partnerships & Operational Excellence
- [27:26] - How Contractors Make Money with Elephant
- [33:13] - The Role and Challenges of Rebates
- [44:33] - The Future of Elephant Energy
- [48:33] - Recommended Resources & Closing Thoughts
Follow DR Richardson:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsondr/
- Elephant Energy: https://elephantenergy.com/
Follow the Hosts:
- Ed Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-smith-5aa8716
- Eric Fitz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ehfitz/
- Amply Energy: https://www.amply.energy/
Listening Links:
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3pJxxoC8fS0HZEf22FQwDX
- Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-heat-pump-podcast/id1747806243
- Podcast Site: https://info.amply.energy/blog/tag/heat-pump-podcast
Transcript
[00:00:00] Guest: DR Richardson: I live in Boulder. I have a small townhome centrally ducted. We figured, okay, this is a perfect test case to deploy a heat pump. Let's really roll up our sleeves and understand. Can we deploy a heat pump? What can we learn about deploying that heat pump that would help us, give us the inkling for what business model would really help unlock electrification opportunities here in the US. And no joke like that entire experience of trying to get a heat pump was a disaster. That whole process of installing our first heat pump really gave us the realization that, man, is there a big opportunity here to just make this a better experience for homeowners. And if we can do that, if we can deliver a better experience, we can build an interesting business that just so happens to have a massive impact on the environment.
[00:00:52] Host: Ed Smith: Hey everyone, we've got a great episode for you today. We've got DR Richardson, one of the co-founders of Elephant Energy. If you're in Massachusetts or Colorado, you know these guys because you'll be competing with them. And you know, they're tough. If you're not in either of those states, you're going to want to listen to this episode, because elephant is a prime example of some of the innovation that's happening at the bleeding edge of heat pumps. It's worth listening to. And we have two announcements for you. First, we wrote a new article. It's all about how to avoid the race to the bottom on price and win and compete on trust with homeowners. It's been getting great feedback, so we recommend it. The link is in the show notes. Second, the US Heat Pump Summit is coming up. It's November 18th and 19th in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was our favorite event of the year last year, and if you liked this podcast, you are going to love this summit. Some of our favorite guests and friends are there. The lineup looks awesome, the topics look great. It's an awesome conference. You can go to the website. The link is in our show notes, and you can use our discount code amply, amply to get a discount on your ticket. We will be there and I hope to meet you in person. Okay, enjoy the episode. Hi and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith.
[00:03:15] Host: Eric Fitz: And I'm Eric Fitz. We are co-founders of Amply Energy. So today we're super excited that we're joined by DR Richardson. He's the co-founder of Elephant Energy. They are a super innovative home electrification company on a mission to make upgrading to heat pumps, induction cooking, EV chargers just simple and totally seamless. And before starting Elephant, DR worked in private equity and consulting. He's brought that whole mindset and strategy to tackling the challenges of scaling electrification. DR is going to talk a bit more about it, but Elephant Energy partners with homeowners, contractors and utility programs to deliver super high quality, future ready homes. And they're doing it in a way that's winning fans across the contractor community. So with that, I'd like to welcome DR.
[00:04:04] Guest: DR Richardson: Hey, guys. Awesome to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
[00:04:07] Host: Eric Fitz: Excellent. Tell us your story. How did you get into the home electrification space? And where did the idea for Elephant Energy come from?
[00:04:15] Guest: DR Richardson: Great question Eric. So starting from the top, coming out of college, I really wanted to be in climate. I wanted to put my life and my career towards something a little bit bigger than myself. I had no idea how to do that, so I ended up in strategy consulting. I did that for a few years, realized, man, I'm gonna just keep making Verizon another $10 every year if I stay in consulting. Like, that's not inspiring. That's not interesting to me. So I left consulting. I ended up meeting somebody who was starting a private equity firm here in Boulder to help invest in decarbonization companies and platforms, and that seemed like a really interesting place to spend a year. I'd spend a year in Boulder and then move out to San Francisco and join the clean tech community and everything, and one year turned into about ten years. So I ended up spending about ten years with this firm, Vision Ridge Partners. We invested right at that place where technology was proven, and it was ready to be scaled up and deployed, and we would find awesome platforms and operating companies to go deploy that clean technology, where the economics of it all made a ton of sense. It was dramatically better from a business model perspective than the old way of doing things.
[00:05:24] Guest: DR Richardson: And it just so happened to be really decarbonizing. So we invested in a bunch of companies EV Go the fast charging network for electric vehicles. We have a sold a portfolio of electric Norwegian ferries. We invested in a portfolio of electric school busses. So cool. Technology and technology companies again ruthlessly focused on delivering better capitalist outcomes that would also deliver great climate outcomes. Comes. So did that for about ten years. Finally realized, okay, I really want to go build that operating company myself rather than just investing in companies. I want to go actually roll up my sleeves, get my hands dirty and build something. So I left vision. Ridge spent a few years working on a couple different ideas in the electric or broadly in the decarbonization space, and started to realize that there's some things that matter and a lot of things that don't matter when it comes to decarbonization, the things that really matter. Right? It's pretty simple. It's we have to deploy more wind and solar. We have to manage the volatility of wind and solar. We have to electrify vehicles, we have to electrify buildings. And if we do those four things from a climate perspective, we have a really good shot at solving climate change to the extent it can be solved. If you don't do those four things, nothing else really matters.
[00:06:41] Guest: DR Richardson: And so my business partner Josh and I, we really started to focus on what are if those are the things that really matter. Where could we build a business that's really going to help accelerate things? And as we work through all those different categories, we realized the homeowner, the building electrification experience was the one where the technology was there, the unit economics were there. And yet it's not being deployed. And so I live in Boulder. I have a small townhome centrally ducted. We figured, okay, this is a perfect test case to deploy heat pump. Let's really roll up our sleeves and understand can we deploy heat pump. What can we learn about deploying that heat pump that would help us, give us the inkling for what business model would really help unlock electrification opportunities here in the US. And no joke like that entire experience of trying to get a heat pump was a disaster. Every single part of it felt so much harder than it should have been, right? You can open up an app and you can order groceries. You can open up an app and you can order an Uber ride. You cannot do anything close to that with an electrification. Home service upgrade project what rebates and incentives are available for a home like mine? What equipment will actually work for a home like mine? How do I size this? How do I find a contractor? How do I trust that they're doing a really good job? This is a high consideration, expensive purchase that I don't want to ever have to think about.
[00:08:11] Guest: DR Richardson: Ideally for the next 15 years as a homeowner. And yet, the whole experience was left a lot to be desired. That whole process of installing our first heat pump really gave us the realization that, man, is there a big opportunity here to just make this a better experience for homeowners. And if we can do that, if we can deliver a better experience, we can build an interesting business that just so happens to have a massive impact on the environment. And that was really what led us to elephant is deploying that first heat pump, realizing the opportunity. Within a month, we had homeowners, people we had never met before. Willing to cut us a 20 plus thousand dollars check to install a heat pump. And that really helped us understand. It's not just that I had a bad experience, is that every single homeowner and contractor wanting to do the thing, but not able to figure out how to make it work from a great experience for both sides.
[00:09:05] Host: Ed Smith: So that's super helpful and super interesting. Now tell us how you solve that. Give us a little more on elephant. Who's your customer? I assume it's the homeowner, but what experience do they go through and how did you make it closer to the experience that a lot of consumers are expecting when they're making a big ticket purchase? We'd love to learn more about elephant, of course.
[00:09:25] Guest: DR Richardson: So our North Star has always been how do we deliver a more seamless, better customer experience? And can we build systems, tools, technology, software to simplify and deliver a better customer experience? And then how can we partner with the local providers that are doing the work. There's lots of people already making manufacturing heat pumps. We don't need to reinvent that wheel. There's lots of people who actually will do a really good job from a craft perspective and installing the heat pump. We don't need to reinvent that wheel. Instead, the wheels that need to be reinvented are the customer journey. How does a homeowner learn more about what they need for their home? What size heat pump do I need? What brand is going to be a good fit for me, given my effectively custom home and specific geography and how I use my home? What rebates and incentives should I qualify for? How do I finance them? How do I find other financing solutions for what is a big purchase? And how can I trust that the installation is going to be done at a really high quality without having to do all that work myself? So with our North Star then as delivering a simpler, better customer experience, we've really then been focused on how do you productize that trust? How do we build the systems, tools, processes for every part of that customer journey to deliver a simpler, better experience for homeowners? And then conversely, we realize we're actually solving a really big problem on the contractor side as well. All those things I listed, your average HVAC contractor may not have the tools or the interest in doing. If you're in, as an example, if you're in Boulder or if you're in Denver, the rebate regime is massively different.
[00:11:11] Guest: DR Richardson: It's thousands of dollars different. The processes are different. What equipment qualifies is different, and yet they're 40 minutes away. If you're a contractor trying to solve the Colorado Front Range or serve the Colorado Front Range, you have to be really on top of all this information that you're not necessarily equipped to do. You have to use new technologies to size systems. You can't just slap in a new 120 K BTU gas furnace. That's not going to deliver the best heat pump experience for your homeowner. And so what we realized is by solving all these issues for homeowners, we're actually also solving them for contractors. We could make their jobs easier. Instead, we could be delivering them. Not leads. Not more complicated processes, but way simpler. Show up to the home, install a project. Get paid right away. Don't deal with any of the paperwork. Don't deal with any of the front office. Don't deal with any of the back office. Just make it easier for them to do a really high quality job on the installation. Again, what elephant is doing is trying to productize that trust layer. Really make it a delightful, simple experience for homeowners to get an electrification upgrade done. Whether it's a heat pump, water heater, EV charger, you name it. And work closely with a network of very highly vetted contractors and OEMs on the back end and make their lives easier as well. Make sure that they're able to do the things that they're really good at and not bolt on the things that maybe they're not quite as good at.
[00:12:37] Host: Eric Fitz: I'd love to walk through. Like, what does that actually look like? In simple terms, I'm a homeowner. I've heard something about heat pumps. My existing HVAC system is 20 years old. I am poking around the internet and I come across elephant energy. What happens from there? From that customer experience, that homeowner experience.
[00:12:56] Guest: DR Richardson: The simplest way to understand it is going through the process yourself, right? It's getting somebody to diagnose and understand. What do you need? Do you have a centrally ducted system? Do you have a boiler? Do you have some other form of heating and or cooling? What are your goals? What are your objectives? What's your budget and how can we design the best system for your home? We have a number of tools on our website and through our what we call our home comfort advisors or sales team to work with homeowners to say, okay, based on your goals and your budget, we think this is the right solution for your home. Based on your geography and the equipment, we're going to maximize all the rebates and incentives. Therefore, here's your price. This might be a $25,000 price. We found all these rebates and incentives. It's a $12,000 project for you out of pocket. Here's some financing options when you're ready to move forward. Sign the contract and then we will fulfill the project. So you always have elephant as your delivery mechanism. Uber is right is a super simple analogy. Overly simplistic, but it's the same idea, right? You're always going to work through Uber to get from A to B, you're always going to work through elephant to get go from A to B in terms of a gas furnace to a heat pump, and we're going to fulfill it with our network of again, licensed that highly vetted contractors and manufacturers.
[00:14:12] Host: Eric Fitz: Got it. So the homeowner has this like key point of contact, this Elephant Energy comfort advisor that's helping them along the way is that initial. So like they go to your website and then someone from elephant comes and visits their home. Like how do they interact? Is it over video. What does that.
[00:14:30] Host: Ed Smith: Let me layer on here because you said it briefly there. DR, Like anyone listening who wants to see it should go to the Elephant Energy website. Yeah. And hit the button to get an initial quote, because I show like a 45 second video of filling that out. Eric and I have been doing a bunch more trainings, and so I show it to give contractors a sense of, whoa, like, what is the bleeding edge look like? Like, it was amazing to me. I go to your website, I hit get a quote, I answer ten questions 60s or less, and I have a system and I have a quote, and I have rebate numbers. And then it like tease me up to talk to someone. So it's worth checking out because I think you have something that is very unique and not at all common in the typical HVAC sales process. And like that level of tangibility is what we're going for. So if I just teed up what happens on the website, then for what Eric said, after I get that initial quote, like, where does the elephant process take over from there?
[00:15:21] Guest: DR Richardson: Thank you. Ed, that was very helpful. I think that initial quote is going to be a range of pricing, because there's a lot of things that we still don't know about your home. What's the actual BTU requirements on the coldest days of the year? It gets down to -13 to 15. Here in Colorado, Massachusetts it gets down to zero. You have to design for those 99% temperatures. So we have a custom tool that we built that ingests a bunch of historical utility bill information and gives you a custom BTU load. We also need to understand the mechanics of your home. Is it centrally ducted? We need to understand the spacing in the utility room and closet. Electrical panel considerations if it's mini splits, how many mini splits and what rooms are they going in? So there's an additional layer of work that we do. Can't quite be software ized yet. That is all done through our Home Comfort Advisor team. That narrows that initial quote into a final quote for you. Once you're then ready, you sign the contract and we act as effectively a white glove owner's rep, where we're managing the entire experience for you as a homeowner through the rebate and incentive process, through the permitting process, through the installation process, to where at the end you have an installed heat pump at a hopefully much, much better total customer experience than you would have gotten on your own.
[00:16:39] Host: Eric Fitz: Super helpful. And just to clarify again, so the Home Comfort advisor, they are making that next level of assessment, figure out, say mini split placements remotely over video, or is it an employee of elephant going to the person's home and like double checking these details and what does that look like?
[00:16:58] Guest: DR Richardson: Yeah, one of the things that we say all the time, Eric, is we got to meet the customer where they're at. The three of us today, right. We're on our computers. That's where most people are. More and more homeowners are getting comfortable with the idea that we can, and we know we can because we have hundreds of homes where we've done this, but we can remotely design a system perfectly for your home. Some homeowners prefer that to be in person, and we're going to meet them where they're at and go in person. So it really depends on the customer and what their preference is to where we're either going to do it fully remotely or whether we're going to go into the home.
[00:17:32] Host: Eric Fitz: Amazing. Got it.
[00:17:33] Host: Ed Smith: And on that. I don't know if you mentioned this before. Where are you guys actually operating today?
[00:17:37] Guest: DR Richardson: Yeah. So we cover the Colorado Front Range, the Boston Metro market, and we recently just launched in Los Angeles.
[00:17:43] Host: Ed Smith: Okay. So focus on those specific areas. So you're working with vetted contractors. You've mentioned that a few times. I got like a multi-part question. But basically what does it take to be an elephant contractor, and what's the pitch to elephant contractors like? Why do they you teed up before that? Like you're solving some key problems for them, but if you had a bunch of contractors in a room and were telling them, like, here's why you should work with elephant, what would you tell them?
[00:18:07] Guest: DR Richardson: The pitch is you're going to earn the same revenue with better net margins, because we're taking care of the front office and we're taking care of the back office. You no longer have to do customer acquisition. You no longer have to do sales. You no longer have to do rebate incentive management. You no longer have to do financing, no longer have to take care of the customer. Post-installation elephant takes all of that off your plate, and we're going to pay you based on our. We have a set of requirements around a commissioning checklist and everything to make sure that this was done at a high quality job. But assuming you do a good job, which again, we trust our contractors to do, you're going to get paid really fast and you're going to go on to the next installation. So that's our rough basic pitch ed to our contractors. Does that answer your question?
[00:18:57] Host: Ed Smith: It does. But I got like the next level down if that's okay.
[00:19:00] Guest: DR Richardson: Yeah.
[00:19:01] Host: Ed Smith: All right same revenue better margins I got all of that. Who is the contractor buying the equipment. Because when I hear same revenue like basically you make it off the box and you make it off the labor, do they still make it in the same way or something about that different.
[00:19:16] Guest: DR Richardson: We're buying the big parts because what we found is we can use our buying power strategically to drive down equipment prices. We can pass that on to customers. So we take care of the big stuff the condensers, the air handlers. Instead, we're asking our contractors to supply the smaller parts and said, hide snow stands, the concrete pad under the snow stand. You know, the stuff like that's a little bit harder to supply and where there's fewer opportunities for cost downs.
[00:19:43] Host: Ed Smith: Got it. Okay. So top line revenue might go down. Yes. But margins will be higher because you've taken out a bunch of other stuff. Can I ask about the a bunch of people are going to wonder like what is labor compensation look like? And you don't need to get into specific numbers, I guess. But this is often like the most mispriced thing in contracting, right? Labor. Mispricings like, how do you guys think about pricing labor for your contractors?
[00:20:05] Guest: DR Richardson: So one of the things that we did when we started elephant and that we continued to revisit every six months or so, is really what are the labor hours requirements to install a project. And are there ways that we can help our contractors do things more efficiently and effectively? So as an example, one of the things that we've done is we know essentially ducted system because we've done and managed thousands of projects at this point. We know how many hours that really takes. So we can find opportunities to reduce that time. We can share that knowledge with our contractors. They can do more work per week. They can do more projects with less time spent. So there's a bunch of other benefits that we provide as part of being on our platform. We don't price it on a per hour basis. We price it on a per job basis. And the contractors that work with us over and over, they understand that the pricing is really fair. It keeps them coming back. We have lost zero contractors from unexpected churn. Some contractors we have let go from our platform because they did not fulfill our quality requirements. But everybody who's on the platform stayed on the platform because they know it's delivering them really attractive margins where we're effectively taking care of an entire crew. We're keeping them full and busy doing 2 to 3 projects every single week of the year, day in and day out, and that provides a huge amount of value to a HVAC installer.
[00:21:26] Host: Ed Smith: You've had zero unwanted attrition from contractors.
[00:21:29] Guest: DR Richardson: Correct.
[00:21:31] Host: Ed Smith: That's super impressive.
[00:21:33] Host: Eric Fitz: That's very telling. That's amazing. Yeah. And so this is perfect. I wanted to dig a little bit more into the contractor experience, because we did a pretty good job of looking at what does it feel like from a homeowner perspective. So you're saying you're purchasing the big components, the outdoor unit, the indoor units, are you drop shipping those to the homeowners location. Is that going to your partner contractors shop? What does that look like? And then what is the rest of the like? How do they even learn about the project? What information is shared with them? What is that experience?
[00:22:03] Guest: DR Richardson: Yeah. So on the physical side of things, Eric, we are go back to what I said before. We're meeting the customer where they're at. The contractor is a customer of ours. If they want things delivered to their shop, we're going to deliver it to their shop if they want it delivered to the home. Most of the time we can fulfill that. At other times, we're keeping things in our warehouse and they're picking up either on a daily or weekly basis, but just trying to make things as simple and as smooth as possible, and again, taking care of our contractors, of our customers to make sure that they have a great experience installing these elephant projects. That's on the physical side. Try to manage the supply chain to reduce costs and reduce overhead and reduce work for ourselves and for our contractors. And then on the. What other information is provided to do a job? We're providing what we think are industry best in class scopes of work. So for every project that we do, our project management team is creating a scope of work based on what was sold to the homeowner that details the equipment, where it's going. A bunch of pictures around the home. Any other parts that the. We're expecting the contractor to supply, the price that they're going to get paid. But it's a very comprehensive document at this point that provides the contractor literally everything that they need to know before installing the project. And what that does is that actually means that most contractors don't have to visit the home before they install. They can show up. We've given them the confidence that they can show up day of installation without ever having set foot to the home and know that they can do an A+ job, and that's what they really care about is, again, we're reducing their work and we're enabling them to deliver a very high quality outcome.
[00:23:40] Host: Eric Fitz: Sounds fantastic. That's totally turnkey. Show up, get the project done. That's awesome. What happens in the rare scenarios where like team gets there and you, there's something totally unexpected. How do you deal with change orders? Is that like on the responsibility of the contractor? Do you deal with that? What does that look like?
[00:24:00] Guest: DR Richardson: We are not perfect, right? It's very hard to be perfect in this space, as you well know, Eric. So we do make mistakes and we have a very clear process with our contractors where if the change order was avoidable by us in the first place, we'll cover that. There's no need to go back to the homeowner, and we're going to make up any difference with the contractor for any extra work that's required beyond what was in the scope. If, on the other hand, the homeowner wants something moved, which does happen, hey, you can't put the condenser here. I know I told you you could put the condenser here, but you have to put it in a different location. Then we have a change order process with the homeowner and or making sure that everybody is fairly compensated for those changes. So it all comes down to a change order process, Eric, making sure that everything is very well documented, transparent and fair for all parties. And so far that's been a very effective process for us.
[00:24:47] Host: Eric Fitz: It's just clear from your responses, like you guys, you've seen a lot of different projects, different regions. You've been through a lot of different scenarios. You've got a process, a protocol really streamlined the experience for everybody involved. That's super, super appealing.
[00:25:00] Host: Ed Smith: Yeah, great. Since we're on this topic, we can hit it again at the end. If a contractor is interested in reaching out to you guys, how do they do that?
[00:25:09] Guest: DR Richardson: The simplest way is to go to our website, and we have a simple form for contractors to fill out and send us their information. We have a process. Eric, you mentioned process and protocol. That's key to scaling a business with a great while achieving great customer outcomes, both homeowner and contractor outcomes. And so we really hang our hats on having great processes. So we have a pretty thorough process and protocol for finding vetting onboarding contractors. At elephant we lean hard into elephant acronyms wherever we can. So we have the ivory process here at elephant Ivory stands for identify vet on board ramp yield. That's our process. We've iterated on it improved on it a bunch over the years. But it's a pretty well-established process for us where it gives us and the contractor that we work with really high confidence that this is going to lead to a successful partnership. Not every contractor makes it through the process. We just had one that unfortunately didn't make it all the way through the process. They weren't meeting our quality objectives and outcomes. And so they didn't make it through the process. They're not onboarded onto our platform and we've moved on. So it's a really good process at this point for finding and ensuring that you get quality outcomes for our homeowners and that contractors know what what we expect of them at every step of the process.
[00:26:28] Host: Ed Smith: Awesome.
[00:26:29] Host: Eric Fitz: And speaking of elephant themes, why elephant energy? Where did that name come from?
[00:26:34] Guest: DR Richardson: Great question Eric. So for us, it's always been really important that if we're going to build a category defining business, to have a look and feel that's a little bit different, stick out in customers minds. And every company in the HVAC space is, you know, Bob's Heating and Air, Joey's Electrical. We wanted something that felt a little bit different. That's going to really resonate in the eyes of customers and elephants. Pretty cool animal. There are keystone species. They carve the path through the environments that they're in, and that had a lot of resonance for us. There was also the happy accident that climate change is the elephant in the room, and we felt like that was a fun play on words for us. So Elephant Energy is meant to be a consumer facing brand that is resonant and different than the competition for homeowners.
[00:27:24] Host: Eric Fitz: Very cool.
[00:27:25] Host: Ed Smith: Love that. Awesome.
[00:27:26] Host: Ed Smith: I want to get into rebates and whatnot because I assume it's not an accident. You're in Colorado, Massachusetts, and California. But before we go there, this is like a really good section for like contractors. What's the is there anything else you'd want a contractor audience to know about? Elephant? The process, the experience that we didn't ask.
[00:27:44] Guest: DR Richardson: I think you did a thorough job. We talked about onboarding. We talked about the value proposition. One other thing that I'd love to add, Ed, is just the financial reward for being on the elephant platform at this point. We've done over a thousand homes for electrification projects across these geographies, and the contractors that have been around with us for years at this point have all earned millions of dollars just for being on our platform. And again, right. We've removed the front of office. We've removed the back office work. This is free revenue and margin effectively for them. And that's a very valuable upside to contractors that where this is a good fit for their business.
[00:28:25] Host: Ed Smith: Are you disintermediating contractors in a way that could potentially commoditize them by taking the customer and they just do the install? Is there any risk of that? Have you heard that from customers or no. Sorry. Have you heard that from contractors?
[00:28:38] Guest: DR Richardson: Of course, we've definitely heard that fear. And our value proposition does not resonate with every contractor editor. The private equity roll ups, they're really focused on expanding their margin, increasing their prices to customers. And some are focused on quality. But that's less of a concern. Where we found really strong resonance with our contractors is in the contractors, who have 2 to 3 crews who see that electrification is the future, where they've gotten to a point where the front of office and back of office is more than they can handle with just the founder. They'd love to keep growing their business, and they don't have the tools to do so without hiring admin staff. We make that so much easier for them. That's from a product market fit perspective. The other angle is the commoditization. I think that what Uber has done as an example is they've commoditized trust. They haven't commoditized quality. It's easy to find somebody who can drive you from A to B, and they can do it at a high quality, regularly, transparently. But it's actually really hard to find that person. It's a matching problem. And so what Uber has done is said that driving from A to B is a commodity. So what we can do is we can commoditize the trust that we've done the work to verify that this person is going to get you from A to B and do it at a transparent price, at a high quality every single time.
[00:30:06] Guest: DR Richardson: And we think we're doing the same thing where quality is never going to be a commodity. Instead, what we're doing is finding and vetting and sourcing high quality contractors so that you as a homeowner, you don't have to. Exactly. To your point, Ed, it's very hard for a homeowner to know. Was this installed at a high quality? It either works today or it doesn't work today. That's the first touchpoint you have. But is it going to work in three years? Is it going to work in seven years? Is the condensate running? Is mold building up very slowly in the backs of your walls, like these things that you now have to think about as part of an electrification project. Very hard for a homeowner to know those things, but we can know those things, and we can hold our contractors accountable to delivering a very high quality. So no, I don't think quality will ever be commoditized. I think there's always going to be value in the sourcing and vetting and holding accountable the installation process of a project. Does that answer your question?
[00:31:06] Host: Ed Smith: It was a Great answer to a tough question. Well done.
[00:31:09] Host: Eric Fitz: Yeah, I'm getting more excited about elephant energy every minute here. My last question, just to round this whole model, we've heard lots of information about what's the homeowner experience, what's the contractor experience. But the last I think really important stakeholder in this process is elephant. So how does elephant energy make money. What's your business model?
[00:31:30] Guest: DR Richardson: At the simplest level, Eric, our business model is very similar to Uber. We deliver a comprehensive, great customer experience. The customer pays us, we pay the contractor, we pay for the equipment. And what's left over is our cut. Because we've done hundreds and now thousands of projects. We know all those costs very intimately before we sell a project. We can deliver margin very reliably. There's a bunch of things. It's not just a middleman, though, right? Part of the things that we're doing, some of the things that we are doing are really helpful for the entire customer journey in both sides of the marketplace to be delivering a great financial outcome for homeowners. We are financing and streamlining rebates and incentives. We take those off the top so that you, as a homeowner or a contractor, never have to think about whether you're going to get them or not. We are using our bulk procurement processes to drive down the price of equipment. We can pass those savings on to homeowners. And because we're providing a reliable, regular business for our contractors, they don't have to go out and quote things. They don't have to run the risk of a customer saying, oh, sorry, guys, we actually can't install today. Can you install tomorrow? You're not running the risk of callbacks because of our commissioning process, which delivers a higher, fewer callbacks over time. All those things create cost in the equation that are priced into an average installation, because our systems and tools pull those out. We're actually able to deliver very competitive pricing for homeowners and pay contractors a very fair price against their labor hours on the project.
[00:33:13] Host: Eric Fitz: We'd love to switch gears and talk a bit about the rebate and policy issues around this space. You mentioned a red flag. This too, that you're operating in California, Massachusetts and Colorado. Those are states that have significant utility programs, state and local rebates even. How important are federal, state or local rebates to your business model and to what you guys are doing?
[00:33:38] Guest: DR Richardson: Big picture. Eric. Our goal is to make electrification the lowest cost option. Anytime you're comparing the price of an electric solution versus a fossil fuel solution, our goal is to make this lower cost. Today, it's pretty hard to do that against the lowest cost fossil fuel installations today, because the technology is a little bit more expensive because the installations are a little bit more complicated than a standard fossil fuel alternative. So rebates and incentives are really helpful for bridging that gap. Based on the markets that we're in today, rebates and incentives reduce the upfront price for a homeowner to something like 50% the cost of an average fossil fuel installation. So it is just the no brainer, cost effective solution for you and your home. We've chosen our market specifically because that is it's so easy to win there. Longer term, we know that as a business, we've got to continue to find additional ways to drive costs out of the equation. We're working closely with our OEMs. We're working closely with our contractor partners to find and identify those opportunities. How can we create more work for our contractor partners while reducing pricing to homeowners? One example for you, Eric, is a heat pump water heater. A heat pump water heater can typically be installed in about half a day.
[00:35:03] Guest: DR Richardson: But because contractors don't always dispatch and optimizing dispatch isn't necessarily a superpower of theirs, they're going to price it out to the homeowner at a full day labor rate. But if we can be really good at dispatching, if we can say, hey, we can do two heat pump water heaters in one day, we have two customers in North Denver. We can line those up for the same day, do one in the morning, one in the afternoon. We can pay our contractors less per job, but more per day than they were earning before to do two installations. We can pass that savings on to homeowners, and we can drive that installation price down, where it ends up being effectively a win win win. We've lowered the pricing for homeowners, we've increased the daily labor rate for our contractors. And we're able, therefore, to electrify more things and more home. For us, it's super important long term to find ways to continue to drive cost out of the equation such that ignoring all incentives and rebates, electrification is going to be the lowest cost option. That is the future we're building towards that every single day.
[00:36:08] Host: Ed Smith: Eric and I have become split rebates. I think Eric is more of a rebate fan, and as we've become better and better friends with Nate Adams and we've also just worked with more whatever, we've got hundreds of customers in over 40 states at this point. It is very interesting to pick up tidbits about what's going on in all of these states, and I think I have become more and more compelled that, yes, rebates drive some of the behavior you want, but there are always perverse incentives, like you always end up with people gaming the system, and I actually worry about the scale of gaming the system. It's also like some of these studies on prices of installing a heat pump in a state that has rebates versus a state that does not have rebates. It's like what is driving the why is it more expensive like top before rebates in a state that has incentives. So like it's a tricky thing. So like I know that your answer is super compelling on let's make electrification the no brainer. I'm fully on board with that. The perverse incentive thing more and more keeps me up at night. And so I'm just curious about your what are your thoughts on that.
[00:37:15] Guest: DR Richardson: At at the top level, I am a firm believer of don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. We need rebates and incentives to be the bridge to a lower cost future in most climates today. But you're right, there are a bunch of perverse incentives. Rebates make contractors lives hard. Here's an example. There is a state tax credit in Colorado up to $1,500 per heat pump. The homeowner cannot claim it. This is intentionally designed to reduce the price up front for homeowners and pass that on. And the contractor has to bear that financial risk Ask if I install a project in January of 2025, I'm going to get that rebate back whenever I pay my taxes and maybe get cut. A check from the Colorado Department of Revenue for us. That happened a couple of weeks ago. We installed projects in January of 2024 that we got paid out from the state three weeks ago. It's August.
[00:38:21] Guest: DR Richardson: Of 2025, right? We had to float those costs. That was the one way to design a program to reduce cost for homeowners. And yet that made contractors lives so much harder and expensive. Rebates have a cost, right? Like that. There's no way about that. That cost us real money to float that working capital for hundreds of projects that we've installed in Colorado over the course of 2024, to not get paid until August. We filed our taxes April 15th like we filed them or sorry, before April 15th. We filed our taxes in late March, So there are real costs when you're implementing rebate programs. But yet from a don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. That's part of the value proposition of elephant is we're going to take that off our contractors hands. They're not equipped to do that. We can a little bit better. We can find sources of capital to float those rebates and incentives. We can find ways to manage through the working capital challenges of those rebates and incentives. But it's a pain when you're doing that. I mentioned before, if you're in Boulder, the rebate regime is very different. If you're in Denver, that's different. If you're in Broomfield, that's different. If you're in Golden, right. The mass save program is one of the best in the country. It covers 85% of the Massachusetts population.
[00:39:34] Guest: DR Richardson: If you're in the 15% of the population that's not covered by mass, save your rebate regime is totally different. But contractors aren't there. Businesses are built regionally. It's not whether you're in mass save or not, it's based on what region are you in. And the pockets are mean that you, as a contractor might be doing business across both. And that makes your life hard. So I could give you endless examples of how rebates and incentives are really hard for homeowners and really hard for contractors. And yet, at the end of the day, if you want to accelerate electrification, additional rebates and incentives are important. And Nate Adams has been a huge mentor to elephant on the first year, especially when we were getting started, we were pestering weekly, if not daily on questions that we had to make sure we got the building signs right, that we made sure we got the quality and commissioning right. And he's been incredible. And I completely agree with him on the sugar rush point. But yet, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good is my personal belief. And these are super valuable to bridging that gap between just the simple fossil fuel world that we live in and the much better outcomes electrification world that we live in.
[00:40:43] Host: Ed Smith: It's a very compelling answer, but the most compelling part was why elephant is even more valuable to contractors and homeowners in these scenarios, which that's the sign of a good co-founder. Like no matter what question you're asked, like, help sell your company a little bit more. But it was it was compelling.
[00:40:56] Guest: DR Richardson: Thank you, I appreciate that.
[00:40:57] Host: Ed Smith: All right. Fitz, do you have a rebuttal to my very pessimistic rebate question?
[00:41:02] Host: Eric Fitz: So I'm with DR on this one that for sure rebates net are a good thing. Their rebate programs for energy efficiency, whether that's for heat pumps or weatherization in some form, have been around for decades and decades now. Certainly there are many stories of early days, things not not going well. And I think there's a lot of very smart people working hard on this, trying to figure out this balance between super prescriptive, very specific program design, where it's very quick and easy to get access to money with programs that are more performance based and have more complex requirements and more careful vetting. And so they're trying to shoot for higher quality and lower volume, and there's trade offs with both of them. I think net net, most of the the big programs that are out there, whether that's in Massachusetts or New York, programs like in Maine, they are really learned a lot from having consistent policy over, in some cases, decades, so that contractors and the market, they have certainty. The biggest challenge with rebates, I think, for in terms of disrupting a market in a really negative way, is the Nate Adams refers to as the sugar rush, where they're like turned on and off. That's super confusing. You can't build a business around it. It's it's bad for everybody. For any policymakers out there, make things consistent. Listen to contractors get their feedback. And as best you can, continue to iterate and learn. And I think things overall are going in the right direction. Is it perfect? No, but it's gone in the right direction.
[00:42:43] Guest: DR Richardson: Let me share a couple other thoughts, Eric. One is be careful of unintended consequences. Right. When you have a per ton rebate, you're going to encourage contractors to install larger systems. Well, larger systems may be less efficient. They may be more expensive. They may not work as well for the home. Right. So in my opinion, like the mass save program as it was conceived last year at least, where it was a flat fee for removing a fossil fuel burning appliance and replacing that with a heat pump no matter the tonnage. That was good program design that made it very clear, provided a lot of certainty, and there was no gaming that you were instead just encouraging contractors to install actually the smallest equipment, because that would be the lowest cost for homeowners and delivered a very transparent, fair rebate on it. I think the other thing about electrification that's been really challenging outside of the rebate specific regime is how do you price some of the benefits of electrification? How do you price comfort? How do you price better air quality? How do you price reduced carbon emissions? Those things are not priced well in the market today. And so rebates are a bludgeon to help bridge the gap of here's these things should be priced better. So like just from an econometric perspective I think there's additional value that rebates create that don't tie to the dollars and cents of the benefits created by electrification.
[00:44:15] Host: Ed Smith: Let it be known that's the first time the word econometric has appeared on the Heat Pump podcast. I hope it's not the last, but definitely that was the first.
[00:44:22] Guest: DR Richardson: I'm here to break some rules Ed.
[00:44:24] Host: Ed Smith: I appreciate it, it's awesome.
[00:44:26] Host: Ed Smith: All right DR. Super fun. Thanks for taking some questions out of left field with good faith and great answers. What does the future look like for elephant? The big beautiful bill just got passed. Or just opening up in California. Like, paint us a picture or whatever you want next year or two years. Five years. Like, what do you hoping happens for you guys in the coming, coming years?
[00:44:50] Guest: DR Richardson: Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I could see the future, I can't. So let me share a couple of things that we spend a lot of time thinking about. First and foremost is, is continuing to be focused on delivering a great customer experience. And again, customer for us is both the homeowner and the contractor. I forget exactly the Jeff Bezos quote, but as long as we continue to focus on delivering a better customer experience, the lower pricing and better value, that is never going to go out of fashion. So that's our North Star. How do we continue to make electrification simpler, easier, better for homeowners and for contractors? Everything we do is in service of delivering on that North Star. For us, in terms of what that means practically, I think for us, we've been expanding geographically. That's been really interesting. It's been fascinating to learn what's different about Colorado versus Massachusetts. We're just getting started in California. That is obviously not a cold climate. And yet heat pumps have a massive opportunity in California. So we're really excited to be there. And we're really excited to be growing our presence in California. What we've seen is that this model, therefore can resonate and can work in most major metro areas of the country, if not all. So we're going to continue to expand geographically. One of the key questions that we spend a lot of time thinking about is, are there opportunities to expand either product or channel segment? For us, product would be adding potentially solar and storage.
[00:46:18] Guest: DR Richardson: If you get people tend to get heat pump curious after they've installed solar or after they have an EV. But really, from a operational perspective, you shouldn't install solar until after you get the heat pump so that you can cover the maximum amount of electrical load. So we know there's a bunch of people out there who don't have solar, who do have heat pumps, who would love to get solar at some point in the future. How can we make their lives easier? Again, being very focused on that North star of customers simplicity and then segment. We primarily operate in the single family retrofit business today. We know there's a lot of demand for services like ours in the single family new construction space. Starting to explore that a little bit. We know there's a lot of demand for services like ours in the multifamily space, so we're starting to dip our toes in there and understand if the capabilities that we've built can still solve those channel segments at a high value. So those are the things that we're focused on geographic expansion. And then thinking a lot about channel and product expansion. I don't have any news for you there yet, but stay tuned because there are things that we spend a lot of time thinking about and and seeing if our North star of simple, better customer experiences will translate well to those areas as well.
[00:47:34] Host: Ed Smith: Cool. And I didn't hear anything about vertical integration, so not moving into install yourselves and not moving even upstream to designing your own heat pump and that sort of thing.
[00:47:44] Guest: DR Richardson: There's so many manufacturers of heat pumps that in the medium term, that's certainly not on the roadmap. Vertical integration. We actually do have a crew or a couple crews here in Colorado. We found that to be incredibly powerful for learning and taking those learnings to help our contractors. So that team is responsible for sort of R&D, adding new products, figuring out how do we reduce time spent on things. If we do some multifamily work, we're going to task our internal team to optimize and figure out the process and then share those learnings with our contractor, our contractors. So right now, there's no plans to fully, vertically integrate. We see that as a value add to the network. And as I said before, I think there's lots of great contractors out there. And our goal so far has been to enable them to be the best at their jobs as they can.
[00:48:31] Host: Ed Smith: Awesome.
[00:48:32] Host: Eric Fitz: Good luck. Awesome, awesome. DR, we love to close the conversation with this last question. Are there any specific resources you'd recommend to contractors who are looking to improve their heat pump expertise? Get into heat pumps at all just to build successful electrification businesses.
[00:48:55] Guest: DR Richardson: I think for us, Nate Adams has been the godfather of electrification for us. So taking some of his courses, learning more, reading his home comfort book, we have every employee who starts at elephant read Nate's home comfort book. We think it's the Bible of starting with good building design first and foremost, and then getting into electrification. So I think those are very important resources that everybody should be thinking about reading, ingesting. We have a lot of information on our website, so always happy to point people there. Your guys's podcast has been really educational for me, so I'm not trying to toot your horn, but I think that's been really valuable source of education as we've continued to learn and grow. Our craft at Elephant.
[00:49:40] Host: Ed Smith: Check is in the mail. Thank you DR. That was great, DR. Super fun. Congrats on the success. Keep it going. Thank you for being on the heat pump pod.
[00:49:50] Guest: DR Richardson: Thanks, guys. This was so fun. Really appreciate all the work that you're doing to advance electrification. So thanks for inviting me on.
[00:49:56] Host: Eric Fitz: Thanks. It's been great.
[00:49:58] Guest: DR Richardson: All right. Thanks, guys.
[00:50:02] Host: Eric Fitz: Thanks for listening to the Heat Pump podcast. It is a production of Amply Energy. And just a reminder that the opinions voiced were those of our guests or us, depending on who was talking. If you like what you've heard and haven't subscribed, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out! You can reach us once again at hello@amply.energy. Thanks a lot.
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