Andrei and team are awesome. We were customers of a Fogbender ancestor (a chat app that became SameRoom) and are excited to be customers for Fogbender!
For a growing customer success org, being able to generate tickets from these chats is super useful.
Vaguely related: I’ve been using NextDNS for a while now, and it’s wonderful. I subscribed to a paid plan just to support the company. Recommended, if you haven’t already checked them out.
A really good resource is the water heater chapter in the Rewiring America guide linked above. Another good resource (for the US): https://www.yellowtin.com/yt-faq-hpwh/
There are a lot of heat pumps on the market that can produce hotter water. For example, a popular Rheem model heats to 145 F / 62 C:
I hear you about problems with a server/subscription-based model, but a) it's the least of all evils, and b) I've come to enjoy financially supporting them (i.e. my subscription means they can keep making great software, which is definitely valuable to me).
There are already some startups working on this, including Pivot Bio (nitrogen-fixing for corn using microbiomes in the soil): https://www.pivotbio.com/
Manu invested in card.io and is absolutely fantastic. He is extremely tactical, constantly pushed us to focus on the numbers that matter, and most importantly, provided gobs of awesome counsel. He should be your first call if you're looking to raise money.