The HVAC world just got a little hotter, and not because of the furnaces. WorkHero, the Boston-based AI-powered back office platform built for small HVAC contractors, just raised $5M in seed funding led by Navitas Capital, with Workshop Ventures, York IE, and a former ServiceTitan exec joining the round. That’s not just cash, it’s confirmation that someone finally noticed the contractors grinding 60 hours a week to keep America cool, warm, and running.
Founded in 2023 by Furman Haynes, Kyler Evitt, and Gerald Chertavian, WorkHero spun out of Workshop Ventures, the venture studio launched by Chad & Eleanor Laurans (yep, the SimpliSafe co-founders). Their mission is clear: free small HVAC contractors, the 2-to-4-truck shops in the $1–2M revenue range, from the admin chokehold that eats 20+ hours a week. WorkHero’s mix of AI and experienced office managers runs the back office like clockwork: tackling invoicing, permits, rebates, and warranty submissions while the owners get back to the work that actually pays.
This isn’t another SaaS tool that dumps a new dashboard on your plate. WorkHero executes. The AI handles the repetitive stuff; human experts fine-tune the details. Founding Office Manager Valeria Velázquez, who helped scale one HVAC company from $500K to $5M, knows the game inside out. The result? Contractors save 16–20 hours a week and cut office costs by 60%. Clients like Resilient Retrofit (OR), ABL Comfort Solutions (MA), and Mountain West Heat Pumps are already hooked. As one customer put it: “Hiring WorkHero was one of the best business decisions I’ve made.”
Navitas Capital Partner Jenny Song, who led the round, knows how to spot undervalued industries. With the U.S. HVAC market topping $50B and 85% of shops employing fewer than 20 people, the gap is massive. Globally, the HVAC industry is projected to grow by $90.5B from 2025–2029, exactly the kind of expansion that screams for automation and smarter ops. Workshop Ventures doubled down as both incubator and investor, while York IE brought its deep bench of SaaS scaling, GTM, and finance expertise.
The $5M seed will supercharge WorkHero’s product and engineering teams while adding services like phone answering & bookkeeping to complete its all-in-one ops suite. Through its partnership with HVAC School, the industry’s top education hub, WorkHero has already surveyed 1,300+ pros, quantifying the paperwork pain throttling growth. And by automating state heat pump rebate submissions across CO, OR & NY, the team is quietly fueling the clean energy transition one approval at a time.
