How Blue Frontier Uses Humidity Control to Make Competition Irrelevant

How Blue Frontier Uses Humidity Control to Make Competition Irrelevant

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Daniel Betts, CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Frontier, an air conditioning company that’s raised $47.8 million, explained why B2B hardware decisions aren’t as rational as founders think. Specifications don’t close deals. Experiences that customers can’t unsee do.

The ROI Trap

Every B2B hardware founder learns the same pitch: demonstrate ROI, highlight efficiency, quantify savings. Blue Frontier has all of this—three times the efficiency, 50 to 90% energy reductions.

But Daniel understood something most miss. “You must provide technology that is for the user much better,” he explains. Numbers matter for buying committees. But they don’t create the visceral pull that makes customers evangelize. They don’t make going back feel like suffering.

For that, you need something people can feel in their bodies.

Why Humidity Matters More Than Temperature

Most people think air conditioning is about temperature. They’re wrong.

“It just so happens that humidity control is more important to your comfort than temperature control,” Daniel reveals. “But temperature control is what the conventional air conditioner doesn’t do very well with. Humidity.”

Daniel breaks down the science. “Your body is designed to regulate its temperature through transpiration.” When sweat evaporates, it works. “The evaporation of water carries 900 times the energy than changing the temperature of that water by 1 degree Celsius.”

Your body is an evaporative cooling machine—but only if humidity allows sweat to evaporate. This is why Las Vegas at 100 degrees feels tolerable while Miami at 85 feels unbearable. “It was hot, but it was dry heat, right?” Daniel notes about desert climates. “But if you are in Miami and it’s like 85 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, the humidity is almost 100% and you are dying.”

The Broken Compromise

Conventional air conditioning handles humidity terribly. “The lack of control of humidity by your air conditioner makes it such that the band of temperatures that you can feel comfortable in becomes very narrow and very particular to you,” Daniel explains.

This creates thermostat wars. “People fight over a thermostat, but if you take away the humidity, that band of temperatures where everybody’s comfortable suddenly opens up.”

Even worse, you’re cold and sweaty simultaneously. You wear sweaters in summer offices. The air feels clammy at 72 degrees. These aren’t minor inconveniences—they’re daily reminders that something is broken.

The Independent Control Breakthrough

Blue Frontier’s liquid desiccant system does something conventional air conditioning physically cannot: controls humidity and temperature independently.

“Our technology uses this salt solution, which is called a liquid desiccant,” Daniel explains. “These salt solutions are designed to absorb humidity right out of the air.”

The salt solution dehumidifies without over-cooling. Then, in separate channels, water evaporation creates temperature control. “The fact that we’ve combined those two processes into a single device makes it such that now I can control the humidity to the levels that you want, put the temperature at the levels that you want.”

The result: three variables under independent control. Humidity. Temperature. Outdoor air ventilation. “I can do them intelligently and independent of each other and actually track your actual needs.”

The Unsee Moment

Once someone works in a Blue Frontier-conditioned space, conventional air conditioning feels obviously broken.

“No longer you have to wear a sweater when you walk into your office in the summer,” Daniel promises. “No longer are you cold and sweaty at the same time.”

Daniel draws the parallel to electric vehicles. “While electric vehicles were initially sold because they’re good for the environment…once you drive an electric vehicle and you get that very fast acceleration, linear acceleration that is visceral…you can’t go back to it.”

The specifications justified the purchase. The experience created the lock-in.

Designing for the Unsee Moment

For B2B hardware founders, Blue Frontier’s approach reveals a framework:

Identify what people tolerate but shouldn’t. Everyone accepts cold offices and thermostat fights. But acceptance isn’t satisfaction—it’s resignation. Find what people have resigned themselves to.

Understand the physiology, not just the spec sheet. Daniel understood why humans feel uncomfortable and eliminated the cause. The deeper you understand the actual human need, the more obvious the solution.

Create independent control of coupled variables. Conventional AC couples humidity and temperature. Decouple them, and you create experiences that feel like magic.

Make the old way feel broken. The goal isn’t just to be better—it’s to make going back feel like suffering.

Let the experience sell, not just the ROI. The ROI gets you the meeting. The experience closes the deal.

Why This Matters for B2B Hardware

B2B founders often believe buying decisions are purely rational. Buying committees, ROI analyses, multi-quarter evaluations—surely experience design doesn’t matter here?

Daniel’s insight challenges this. Yes, you need the numbers. Blue Frontier’s efficiency gains are real and quantifiable. But those numbers get you into consideration. They don’t create customers who refuse to go back.

The experience does that. The moment someone realizes they’re comfortable at 74 degrees instead of freezing at 68. The moment they stop fighting over the thermostat. The moment they visit a conventionally air-conditioned building and immediately notice the discomfort.

These moments make your product defensible in ways specifications never can. Competitors can claim efficiency. They can’t replicate an experience built on fundamentally different physics.

“We have to make an air conditioner that once you’re inside this air conditioned space that I am creating, you cannot go back to the old way of doing things,” Daniel explains. “Because you will notice the difference.”

For hardware founders in mature markets: specifications justify the purchase. Experience creates the moat. Design for the moment customers can’t unsee, and competition becomes irrelevant.