About

Snugg Pro is an energy modeling and productivity tool for residential energy efficiency programs and home performance professionals. Snugg Pro is cloud-based and works beautifully on desktops, tablets and smart-phones.

Snugg Home, LLC is the company behind Snugg Pro. Founded in 2010, Snugg Home is based in beautiful Boulder, Colorado.

We build software around humans. We’re passionate about helping drive energy efficiency adoption. At Snugg Home, we believe in getting out in the field and learning first hand about the needs and challenges of our customers.

The Journey

Our Origins

Snugg's founders started out helping a strategic partner to make its energy analysis software easier to use for energy auditors.

Somewhere along the way, we asked ourselves: Why not make it easier for anyone to succeed in the energy efficiency space? And Snugg Home was born. We set out on the gargantuan task of normalizing the entire home energy upgrade process with a focus on great user experience for everyone involved.
In the process, we gained a lot of field experience delivering end-to-end solutions for large scale energy efficiency programs. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the focus that could allow us to have a meaningful impact. The problem was too broad and the industry too fragmented...

On The Road

In 2011, we toured the North East amidst Hurricane Irene. We drove far and wide to meet contractors and auditors who participated in the programs powered by our software. Some were mom and pop shops that delivered soup to nuts solutions. Others specialized in home assessments, and yet others were large operations focusing on a specific type of home improvement.
With every new contractor we visited during that trip, we grew increasingly convinced that contractors and auditors held the key to the program success.

The Epiphany

We realized that if we could support contractors in their assessment and sales process, there was a huge opportunity to increase the number of energy upgrades performed in the country. We saw these human-scale enterprises on a perpetual path of business optimization, and were inspired by their entrepreneurial spirit. If we could make trade allies successful, we would also help programs drive participation and meet their targets. It waw a win-win.

Upon our return to Boulder, we made the decision to move away from end-to-end large scale solution to focus on home performance professionals. We went on field visits with countless contractors, we attended their conferences, interviewed them, beta tested with them, and most importantly, we listened to them. We lived and breathed the trade.
But we didn’t stop there. We sat down with numerous homeowners to identify and minimize the friction often found in the sales process. We also worked with program administrators to ensure they had the tools to stay on top of their program while keepign their trade allies productive.

The Result

From the trenches of America’s residential energy efficiency industry, we built Snugg Pro. Our residential energy auditing and sales tool is the fruit of extensive field tests with thousands of home assessments performed by over hundreds of contracting companies in dozens of programs across 40 US states. And we’re constantly making it better with multiple releases each month.

Meet the team

Adam Stenftenagel – Co-Founder / Chief Executive Officer

BA Oberlin College, RESNET Certified HERS Rater, LEED Accredited Professional

Adam is the energy specialist of the company and brings a deep understanding of building science, energy modeling, and the energy auditing profession to Snugg Home. He spends a significant amount of time in product development and customer support, ensuring that the needs of contractors are met by the software. He also manages the day to day operations of the company and handles investor relations.

Adam has a background in television and interactive media and marketing, and excels in energy modeling and building science. He was a founding board member of the Boulder Green Building Guild and participated in numerous committees of the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office sponsored Residential Retrofit Working Group. As a specialist in residential energy modeling software and techniques, he joined Andy Bardwell in 2007 to help develop the OptiMiser Energy Analysis tool. Adam’s other company, Sustainably Built, performs home energy audits and energy modeling for new and existing homes. Additionally, Adam excels in cost-benefit analysis and building science techniques for the purpose of constructing cash flow positive and affordable Net-Zero Energy homes.

Of special note, Adam has provided extensive consulting services for:

The award winning net-zero energy 250 unit development Geos Neighborhood, in Arvada, Colorado
Red-Oak park, an 80 unit near-zero energy affordable housing development in Boulder, Colorado
Paisano Community, a 64 unit net-zero energy affordable senior housing community in El Paso Texas. Sustainably Built was a member of the design team that won a national design competition for implementation of the project.

Jeff Friesen – Co-Founder / Chief Technology Officer

Jeff leads software development, working closely with both our internal team and our top-notch independent contractors. Using modern web technologies such as React, Redux, Node.js, he’s curating a solid stack for amazing products with less money and less time to market than could have been considered even a few of years ago.

Jeff focused his early career on solving energy problems, starting with 6 years in fusion research and low-temperature physics. Unsure if unlimited energy sources would actually play out for the better, he moved on to become a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) developing global warming software models. He earned his Masters in physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder at the Joint Institute of Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA).

Jeff moved into more direct public engagement as producer of a nationally syndicated radio show, Alternative Radio, that explored critical social and environment issues. He later became a producer for Free Speech TV (FSTV), a nationally syndicated television station.

As an experiential educator and outdoor guide with years of teaching experience, Jeff understands that significant, real change takes time. It requires an engaged experience rarely found in most education approaches.

Jeff has created a highly successful track record leading internet marketing efforts. Over a period of 5 years, Jeff applied his experience in education and technology to the travel industry, non-profits, e-commerce and previously unknown niche markets. His specialty was an iterative approach to conversion optimization.

Jeff strongly believes that Snugg Home is the opportunity of a lifetime to initiate meaningful environmental and social change.

Benjamin Mailian – Co-Founder / VP of Product

Ben wears many hats at Snugg Home. He leads the design and development team working on Snugg Pro. Ben focuses on maintaining product integrity by building a stable product with features that are useful and easy to use. His ability to work in design and in code help him make better product decisions. He is also the co-founder of Radiant Labs, and Fuel Switch.

Before co-founding Snugg Home, he led the development of worldwide e-commerce activities for a fine food company. He has worked on web projects for clients in the US, France, India and Thailand, learning to bridge the gap between work cultures in the digital product space.

Formerly head of the Technology Department at Mahatma Gandhi International School, his responsibilities included curriculum development for Information and Communications Technology within an experiential multi-disciplinary framework.