AirEx

We found the Better Futures Project extremely valuable because they helped us overcoming these challenges, exactly when we needed the most: just before commercialisation.

Our Company

AirEx is a smart ventilation control that helps reducing heating energy demand without compromising damp and air quality. It measures (and predicts) environmental conditions and its smart algorithms automatically regulate the air flow. As a result, it saves money on residents’ energy bills, improves thermal comfort and protects the home from condensation and damp.

Our core team has previously led the delivery of 30,000 energy assessments in social housing, which made us realise that the market is lacking low-cost yet high-impact solutions to tackle fuel poverty and climate change – this is why we developed AirEx. We are a small, but dedicated team of engineers, product designers and built environment professionals who are truly passionate about tackling fuel poverty.

Background of founder: Agnes Czako

After graduating from the Economic University of Budapest, Agnes moved to London to kick-start her career in cleantech sector. Just over 6 years ago, Agnes joined the first spin-out company of Sustainable Ventures: The Sustainable Home Survey Company (SHS) and quickly trained up as a Domestic Energy Assessor and soon after as a Passivhaus Consultant. During this 6 years Agnes led the delivery of SHS’s energy assessments across fuel poor communities in London and South-East England. The company’s in-house energy surveyors completed 30,000 energy assessments during the first phase of ECO, and Agnes has personally surveyed over 2,000 of these households. This helped her gaining a deep insight into the struggles that many vulnerable families face at home: cold draughts, damp and subsequent health problems, due to the lack of energy efficiency in their homes. Having this hands-on experience helped Agnes and her co-founders design and develop a solution that is significantly cheaper than alternative energy efficiency products: AirEx can pay back in 2-3 years via reduced energy bills.

Alongside of leading the commercial side of AirEx, Agnes also completed a part-time master’s programme in “Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment” at the University of Cambridge, which largely helped her gaining further insight into sustainable design.

What challenges have we faced?

We are a small but passionate team of engineers, product designers and built environment professionals. However, the problems we are facing as a small start-up are not uncommon: how to grow our team, how to build up our sales pipeline effectively, how to turn trials to paid customers, etc.

Furthermore, obtaining private sector investment without a rigorously tested and approved product is often challenging.

Working with Better Futures.

Better Futures organised valuable networking events and thanks to their extensive network in cleantech they managed to put our team in touch with the relevant experts in this field. Particularly the “Sustainable Entrepreneurs – Building Tech” events proved to be helpful, where like-minded founders from very similar sector had the opportunity to share their own experiences and challenges they face and brainstorm collectively to come up with a solution.

The introduction to the UK-GBC proved to be very valuable too – their membership provides multiple benefits for cleantech start-ups.

Furthermore, Better Futures helped us with numerous one-on-one sessions when we discussed fundraising strategy, sales pipeline, customer proposition, or partner development. These aspects are incredibly useful at an incubation stage. BF’s extensive network in cleantech helped us gaining more exposure, participate on events, pitch our company in front of influencers in the cleantech industry.

They also helped an incredibly lot by offering interns from relevant masters courses. These interns turned out to be super helpful in prototyping and meeting tight deadlines!

Lastly, thanks to Better Futures’ support we had exposure to the “Women in Cleantech” series of workshops organised by the London Commission for Sustainable Development: a perfect opportunity to meet like-minded female founders in such a male dominated industry – which we believe can be changed!

What's next?

The next steps for AirEx will be to raise a next round of seed investment, grow our team and prepare for our market launch!

I would highly recommend the Project for other start-ups that are truly committed to tackle climate change. If your business is at a stage of seeking for a network of investors and potential customers, or government stakeholder groups, then Better Futures can certainly help!