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Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Choose markets ripe for revolution:
Blue Frontier targeted air conditioning because it uses 150-year-old technology and is controlled by a small group of large players. Betts explained, "The market is ripe for disruption, but it also means that disruption will be very difficult... you have to have technology that is way better than the existing technology."
Create unfair advantages through multi-dimensional value:
Blue Frontier's technology delivers 3x efficiency gains while enabling grid flexibility and superior comfort. This combination of benefits creates value streams that incumbent technologies cannot match. B2B founders should look for opportunities where their innovation can unlock multiple, complementary value propositions.
Target strategic entry points:
Rather than trying to serve all market segments immediately, Blue Frontier focused on commercial building ventilation systems where their technology could deliver the highest impact. Betts shared their criteria: "Choose a market that will give you enough replicable product that you get to learn and have generational improvements that occur fast... but that is on the premium side of things and it's not a market that is so large that it overwhelms the company."
Leverage institutional partnerships:
Blue Frontier's breakthrough came through licensing technology from the National Renewable Energy Labs. For deep tech founders, national labs and research institutions can provide foundational IP and validation. However, commercial success requires translating that technology into products that solve real market needs.
Balance user experience with system-level benefits:
While Blue Frontier's grid benefits are compelling, Betts emphasized the importance of user experience: "You must provide technology that is for the user much better... once you're inside this air conditioned space that I am creating, you cannot go back to the old way of doing things." B2B founders should ensure their innovation delivers clear improvements to end-user experience, even when selling to businesses.
Conversation
Highlights
When Air Conditioning Becomes the Problem You Can’t Ignore
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 in funding, shared how an annoying problem became a world-changing opportunity.
Daniel didn’t set out to revolutionize air conditioning. With a PhD in mechanical engineering focused on thermal sciences, he spent his early career working on hydrogen fuel cells, lithium-ion batteries, and electric vehicles. But every project had the same frustrating bottleneck. “Air conditioning was always the thing that would turn on at the wrong time when it was hottest,” Daniel explains. “So you get this air conditioning at the hottest period. That’s when everything else is running at lowest efficiency.”
The problem went deeper. “Air conditioning sizes, everything. So the entire grid, the entire power generation system is all sized to give you the power necessary for your air conditioners,” Daniel notes. “Your average power is much smaller, much lower, but your peak power is much higher. So that means that you’re overpaying for your infrastructure in order for us to have air conditioning.”
After years of complaining to peers in the advanced energy space, Daniel stumbled upon solutions from the National Renewable Energy Labs that could change everything.
From Phone Call to Global Exclusive License
The turning point came through a conversation with friends at the National Renewable Energy Labs about what would make their technology commercially successful. Months later, they called: “Sign an NDA and come over to Colorado and we want to talk.” When Daniel arrived, they had technical solutions for almost everything he’d mentioned.
They offered him a global exclusive license. “National Renewable Energy Labs basically pushed me into saying, like, hey, become an entrepreneur,” Daniel recalls. On his way to the airport, he called his wife: “I think I’m going to become an entrepreneur and I’m going to start this company. And that means I’m bringing no money home for a while. What do you think?”
Building the Right Team in a Thai Restaurant
Daniel assembled a founding team that could execute. He called Matt Graham, the best mechanical engineer he knew. Then Dr. Matt Tillman, a thermal analysis expert. And Greg Tropsa, who had founded Ice Energy. They met at a Thai restaurant, shook hands, and Blue Frontier was born in December 2017.
“We were working from our homes and were also using the National Renewable Energy Labs as a little place where we could do some experiments,” Daniel remembers. They secured grants from NYSERDA, Southern California Gas, and Oak Ridge National Labs—”just enough money for us not to pay ourselves, but to reinvest into the company.”
The Strategic Wait for Venture Capital
Blue Frontier didn’t rush to raise venture capital. For nearly two years, they advanced the technology using grant funding. “We didn’t feel ready right at the beginning to raise venture with any sort of strength to negotiate a good equity deal,” Daniel explains.
The breakthrough came in 2019 when they joined Rocky Mountain Institute’s third derivative inaugural cohort. This validation led to a $1.25 million convertible note, followed by a $20 million Series A.
Choosing Hardware When Software Dominated
Daniel saw hardware differently than most investors. “Hard tech gives you that mode of technology that is very difficult for someone to come in and just copy and just implement around you,” he notes. “You can create new services and growth spurts that you couldn’t follow with that conventional technology.”
But he’s clear about challenges. “You’re bound by the laws of physics. In the world of physical things, only if the physics enables it will it do what you want it to do.”
The key was creating unfair advantage. Blue Frontier’s technology delivers three times the efficiency of conventional air conditioning while embedding energy storage. “We’re three times the efficiency,” Daniel states. “So now you’re in a very different world.”
The Market Entry Strategy
Picking the right initial market proved critical. They needed replicable products, economies of scale, premium pricing, and manageable market size. “All these things are competing with each other in terms of picking,” Daniel acknowledges.
They chose commercial building air conditioning, specifically dedicated outdoor air systems—units providing ventilation air. Every commercial building owner has multiple buildings with substantial air conditioning needs, creating high customer lifetime value.
Dedicated outdoor air systems offered the biggest impact. These units bring humid outside air into buildings constantly. “That humid air basically is a river of water into the space, and you need to get rid of that water,” Daniel explains. Conventional systems over-cool to remove humidity, then reheat—incredibly energy-intensive.
Blue Frontier’s liquid desiccant technology removes humidity without over-cooling, delivering 50 to 90% energy reductions. “You’re gaining like 30% reductions in energy consumption, plus the fact that our unit is more efficient from a fundamental standpoint,” Daniel notes.
Creating the Revolution
The advantage goes beyond efficiency. Blue Frontier controls humidity and temperature independently while providing outdoor air ventilation. “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.”
This creates an impossible experience with conventional technology. “No longer you have to wear a sweater when you walk into your office in the summer. No longer are you cold and sweaty at the same time,” Daniel promises.
The Utility Partnership Vision
Looking ahead, Daniel sees air conditioning fundamentally changing utility operations. “Because air conditioning is the thing that sizes the entire infrastructure of the utility, it is very convenient for a utility to become involved in the provision of advanced energy, storing air conditioning into the market,” he explains.
Utilities can deploy energy storage through advanced air conditioning faster and cheaper than traditional batteries. “It will better for utility to become a hero of their community by providing people with the capacity to escape increasing temperatures with advanced air conditioning while at the same time making money off of it,” Daniel predicts.
Blue Frontier’s journey demonstrates a crucial lesson: the most annoying problems often hide the biggest opportunities. By waiting for the right moment to raise capital, building unfair advantage, and choosing entry points where competitors can’t follow, they’re reimagining how we cool buildings and power cities.
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