Giving every small HVAC business owner the office management solution they deserve.
We're excited to share that WorkHero has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Navitas Capital, with participation from York IE, Workshop Ventures, and several strategic angels including a former ServiceTitan executive.
Small business owners are the foundation of our economy. Nowhere is that more true than in the skilled trades, and HVAC in particular, where 85% of businesses have fewer than 20 employees. We rely on these businesses to keep us comfortable in our homes, create good local jobs, and install the heat pumps needed to accelerate our clean energy transition.
The Problem We're Solving
There are over 80,000 small HVAC businesses in the US. Data from a recent survey that WorkHero conducted with HVAC School shows that these owners spend more than 20 hours per week on administrative tasks such as invoicing, permitting, rebates, equipment registration, warranty claims, and updating pricebooks.
For many contractors, this means long days followed by nights doing paperwork, and losing time with their families. But it's not just about the time. When the office work doesn't get done right, their businesses suffer. Late invoices choke cash flow. Rebates worth thousands of dollars never get filed, or get rejected due to errors. Jobs aren't priced predictably and costs aren’t tracked, so owners don’t know their numbers. These small business owners need help.
Unfortunately, there aren’t good solutions out there. These businesses are too big for the owners to manage all the administrative work themselves, but too small to afford an experienced full-time office manager who can truly help them succeed. Traditional software doesn’t solve their problems either. Field service management platforms require clicking through rigid workflows and still leave them with hours of work to do. QuickBooks doesn't understand job costing and rebate portals demand 50+ fields of data entry. Small business owners need something better.
How We're Different
＊
These owners don't need another tool to learn. They need a partner that handles the work for them.
WorkHero's platform executes back-office work autonomously through a combination of AI agents and experienced industry experts.
Our AI agents can accomplish tasks like generating invoices from messy technician notes, scraping data from the Manual J and Installation photos to submit a rebate, and updating a pricebook using the latest supply house pricing—all without the business owner ever opening their laptop.
Behind the technology are our Senior Office Managers, who are experienced industry professionals with over 50+ years of combined experience in HVAC operations. They act as trusted business coaches for our customers, advising on key financial and operational decisions while ensuring our agentic systems work for their businesses.
Real Impact
Aco at ABL Comfort Solutions came to us after firing four prior office managers. We built custom automations that monitor job completion, extract billing details from technician notes, and generate invoices to send to his property manager clients. What required a full-time admin is now 75% automated, and now his invoices go out on time. Aco recently took his first two-week vacation in years while our system handled everything.
Robin, who runs Pinnacle Building Performance in Colorado, was spending every weekend on paperwork—warranty registrations, rebate submissions, and invoicing for his building performance contracting business. With jobs booked out 6+ weeks and wanting to hire a third technician, he couldn't afford to keep losing his weekends to admin work. We built a systematic rebate workflow for Colorado's Quality Install program and took over equipment registrations and invoicing. Robin finally has his weekends back and can focus on growing his team instead of drowning in paperwork.
What We're Building Next
This funding will help us scale in two critical ways.
First, we're doubling our engineering and product teams. We're hiring a CTO to lead technical strategy and expand our agentic systems to handle the complexity of small HVAC operations. Our top priorities include accelerating the creation of automations that directly impact a business owner's livelihood, building interfaces that meet contractors where they are, and ensuring our AI agents collaborate seamlessly with our human experts.
Second, we're expanding our service offerings. We're adding call answering and bookkeeping to cover the full spectrum of back-office operations. For small HVAC businesses that can't afford to hire a dedicated full-time office manager, having someone handle everything from answering calls to closing the books means they finally have the partner they need to accomplish their goals.
Why This Matters
At WorkHero, we like to say Keep HVAC Local. There are tens of thousands of small businesses in this industry. The question is whether we build AI tools that empower these businesses or leave them behind. We're choosing to build technology that gives independent owners the same back-office efficiencies as larger PE-backed companies, so they can compete and stay independent.
When local contractors have the right support, everyone wins. The business owners get to build wealth and sustainable businesses without sacrificing family time. The HVAC industry stays strong and distributed across local communities. And customers get better service from contractors who can focus on delivering quality instead of administrative headaches.
If you're a small HVAC business owner, or if you're a talented engineer or product person who wants to build AI that solves real problems for SMBs, we'd love to hear from you.
