Furbnow’s journey of robust growth, helping the UK to meet net zero targets
From a great idea to the UK’s leading home decarbonisation platform
Furbnow was founded two and a half years ago by Becky Lane, an expert in building physics and housing retrofit. The company has now become the leading home decarbonisation platform in the UK, winning key large-scale contracts across local authorities, often against national incumbents, and achieving the highest Trustpilot rating for a decarbonisation platform: a fantastic 4.3
Since its inception, the company has worked on nearly 800 homes across England and Wales and has grown annual revenues to £1.1m. Its mission is clear: to make it simple for homes to achieve net zero – and does this by providing the right energy efficiency solutions appropriate for each home.
Throughout this journey, SuperTech has provided valuable networking, brand-building, and partnership opportunities for Furbnow, including connections with VCs and banks.
We caught up with Becky to find out what is next for the company and advice she would give to others embarking on a Founder journey.
Growing with SuperTech
SuperTech provided multiple touchpoints for us from the very start. We can map our stages of growth to the various ways that we have been supported: networking events, programmes, expertise and mentorship have all played a role.
Our early involvement was attending an event with Pi Labs, which was invaluable for me to get VC insights so early on. And we were also involved in a Hackathon with the School of Code for retrofit, which was designed to help build the local tech talent network.
Through the Connector Series, we benefited from excellent collaboration with one of the participants Chief Commercial Officer – supporting our product validation work and helping us move forward more quickly. We also gained valuable learnings from our participation in the BNP Paribas/SuperTech Innovation Lab.
“SuperTech’s approach provides practical, Founder-focused support. It is the organisation you need to scale quickly, and robustly.”
Our consumer focus has helped us win significant local authority contracts, even against some of the largest incumbent providers. We now have partnerships with Surrey County Council, the Gloucestershire Councils’ Consortium and West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
What advice would you give to others starting out on their founder journey?
We were able to quickly validate our proposition – our first paying customer came two weeks after our website launch! Prove as quickly as you can that there is a market for your product – even if it isn’t perfect - and enjoy the journey!
What next for Furbnow?
We are now closing a £3 million seed round, focusing on growth, building a robust data model for efficient home energy planning and developing AI/ML tools to further streamline our design process. We also plan to expand partnerships and B2B collaborations, similar to our most recent one with Good Energy.
Find out more
For more information visit https://furbnow.com/