Woosh on Shark Tank: How is the smart air filter company’s story related to the California 2018 forest fires?

This week's episode of Shark Tank will feature a very special air filtration company called Woosh whose products can convert a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning system (HVAC) into a house air filter. Winston Mok, the founder of Woosh, was working as a product manager at Google when the 2018 California wildfires took place.

Google's offices were safe from the after-effects of the wildfires. But when the company asked its employees to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the same indoor air quality couldn't be maintained at home. Mok felt that the air quality in the area had gone very bad (with an AQI level of 150) and spoke to some homeowners about the same. That was when he decided to build a small and accessible air filtration system for houses. His first air filter was made with 3D printers and a team of dedicated innovators.

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About the Woosh air filtration system

Winston Mok felt that several cardboard filters were not convenient enough to ship and lacked smartness. So the Woosh founder and his team made many prototypes before beta testing the filter in 2020.

Mok felt that customers did not know anything about their home's air quality or the fact that the HVAC filters needed to be changed.

The product has not been launched yet but is available for preordering. The product has been beta tested in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Toronto, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia Dallas, Boston, and Philadelphia.

The smart product monitors the air quality and also sends updates on the phone application about the same. The product has an injection-molded frame with a filter medium, both sealed together. The filter is capable of removing any containment from the air. Speaking of his product, Mok says,

"What Nest did for the home thermostat is what we want to do for HVAC air filters. I left my job in 2021 with the goal to ensure everyone has the best air quality in their homes while providing important data to homeowners."

The filter is rated MERV-13 (Out of 20 based on efficiency) and can even catch viruses like COVID-19.

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Cost of Woosh air filter

While the Woosh air filter is not currently available on the market, it is available for preorder. Buyers can choose to either buy a ‘Smart Filter+ Air Quality Monitor Bundle’ for $149 or the ‘Smart Filter’ for $99. Both the products have free shipping.

The ‘Smart Filter+ Air Quality Monitor Bundle’ can transform any ordinary HVAC system and can be connected to a smart thermostat. Smart Filter can be easily replaced with new filters as the sensor detects the life of the old filters.

The company had already raised $1.3 Million in pre-seed money from Alex Haro, Chris Nguyen, and Matt Humphry.

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About the founder of Woosh: Winston Mok

Winston Mok has a Engineering, Computer and Mechatronics degree from the University of Waterloo. He has worked for Blackberry for 7 years as a team lead, manager and an engineering associate.

He is also the co-founder of Techstars, a mentoring agency for entrepreneurs and investors. Mok worked as the CEO and co-founder of Simply Good Technologies for almost 8 years before joining Level One Analytics as a CEO.

Winston worked as a senior product manager at Google for 5 years before quitting to work at Woosh filter company.

He will have to convince the panel of Shark Tank (Robert Herjavec, Lori Greiner, Mark Cuban, Daymond John and Kevin O'Leary) to give him investment money without any real-life market details for his product as it is still not available in the market.

Shark Tank Season 14 Episode 4, featuring Winston and his product, will air on ABC on October 14 at 8 pm ET.