Mediated by Momentum, an owner finds that choosing the retrofit package is a matter of answering a short questionnaire.
They can, if they choose, follow a guided path with or without their own energy consultant through a technical evaluation process that resembles the consultant-led decision process of the 2010s, but in a fraction of the time.
Alternatively, they can go straight from choosing the retrofit package to "buying" the retrofit, inclusive of financing and construction. In the "buy," the owner knows not only how much the work will cost, but also how long it will take and has already set a start date, guided by Momentum.
For the contractor, the bid process has become one-step: Momentum automatically checks their availability (based on the jobs it already knows about) and only offers jobs that fit their scope, pricing, and scheduling capacity.
They can, if they choose, still bid competitively for the projects they want, the way contractors won work in the 2010s, but now against real demand rather than guesswork.
Alternatively, they can let Momentum route steady work into their open capacity, filling slack periods with predictable revenue without ever having to bid at all.
A participating contractor (still typically an SMB or MWBE) now depends on Momentum for 30-80% of their business, and at that volume even their non-Momentum jobs benefit from the scheduling and cashflow stability that Momentum enables.
The contractor is thriving because their crews no longer have a boom-or-bust cycle.
Retrofit projects are also moving faster because Momentum provides meaningful lead time for infrastructure and regulatory streamlining.
Instead of guessing where demand will land, a utility gets retrofit-activity forecasting from Momentum that lets it provision capacity ahead of demand. Its long-lead bets, like new substations and where to site the next upgrade, used to be educated guesses; now they are made against a pipeline it can read months out.
At the City, permitting and rule-making are now data-driven.
Fifty near-identical projects are no longer treated as fifty separate cases.
The patterns are visible early, so the City can clear a class of retrofits once and let everything that fits move without re-litigation.
What used to be a queue is now a standard, and the program's whole purpose, getting owners to act, is finally what the process delivers.
The net result of these changes is that owners reach go/no-go decisions within a week on average, with firm pricing, financing, and schedules locked in within 6 weeks.
Cadence started out as a platform for energy efficiency programs. Each customer, whether a utility rebate program or a city retrofit hub, depended on Momentum to deliver data and workflow to help owners get started on retrofits. Contracts varied in size but were generally large, multi-year engagements.
With the platform customers bringing in owners, Cadence was then able to transition to a marketplace strategy, providing consultant matching and construction contractor procurement.
The pivot to market maker began with a small experiment in 2025, running a managed procurement program where Cadence created standardized documents and processes for a rapid, unit-priced contractor procurement. Outcomes included bids that could close within 2 business days of opening, and bidder variance of 5-10%, down from the typical 40-60%.
As it gathered meaningful empirical data, Cadence launched its first market-making program, quoting both sides of the transaction for a spread.
Own the owner the demand
+
Own the data the visibility
→
Market maker see both sides, earn the spread
Cadence could be that party because it owned the owner and owned the data. Being the easiest way to buy a retrofit made Cadence the owner's default, so it held the demand. Running the data backbone for regulators and utilities gave it the visibility. No one else sat on both, so only Cadence could stand in the middle, make the market liquid, and carry the spread for it.
The market maker was a bigger swing than the alternatives. Taking a cut of each deal (a marketplace) or selling tooling to the condition-setters (a platform) were both real businesses, and both fed this one — but the market maker captured value across every party and every transaction at once, and the position only deepened with volume.
The full argument — how the owner's "yes" decomposes into risk, why everyone's flying blind, and what Cadence is today — is in The Market-Maker Memo.
Strategy Notebook
Picks up from The Story v.1 — the future history we set out to write.
In 2030, Momentum has become the market maker for building retrofits in 3 of the top national markets.
How Momentum has changed the market #
Mediated by Momentum, an owner finds that choosing the retrofit package is a matter of answering a short questionnaire. They can, if they choose, follow a guided path with or without their own energy consultant through a technical evaluation process that resembles the consultant-led decision process of the 2010s, but in a fraction of the time. Alternatively, they can go straight from choosing the retrofit package to "buying" the retrofit, inclusive of financing and construction. In the "buy," the owner knows not only how much the work will cost, but also how long it will take and has already set a start date, guided by Momentum.
For the contractor, the bid process has become one-step: Momentum automatically checks their availability (based on the jobs it already knows about) and only offers jobs that fit their scope, pricing, and scheduling capacity. They can, if they choose, still bid competitively for the projects they want, the way contractors won work in the 2010s, but now against real demand rather than guesswork. Alternatively, they can let Momentum route steady work into their open capacity, filling slack periods with predictable revenue without ever having to bid at all. A participating contractor (still typically an SMB or MWBE) now depends on Momentum for 30-80% of their business, and at that volume even their non-Momentum jobs benefit from the scheduling and cashflow stability that Momentum enables. The contractor is thriving because their crews no longer have a boom-or-bust cycle.
Retrofit projects are also moving faster because Momentum provides meaningful lead time for infrastructure and regulatory streamlining.
Instead of guessing where demand will land, a utility gets retrofit-activity forecasting from Momentum that lets it provision capacity ahead of demand. Its long-lead bets, like new substations and where to site the next upgrade, used to be educated guesses; now they are made against a pipeline it can read months out.
At the City, permitting and rule-making are now data-driven. Fifty near-identical projects are no longer treated as fifty separate cases. The patterns are visible early, so the City can clear a class of retrofits once and let everything that fits move without re-litigation. What used to be a queue is now a standard, and the program's whole purpose, getting owners to act, is finally what the process delivers.
The net result of these changes is that owners reach go/no-go decisions within a week on average, with firm pricing, financing, and schedules locked in within 6 weeks.
How Cadence OneFive has changed #
Cadence started out as a platform for energy efficiency programs. Each customer, whether a utility rebate program or a city retrofit hub, depended on Momentum to deliver data and workflow to help owners get started on retrofits. Contracts varied in size but were generally large, multi-year engagements. With the platform customers bringing in owners, Cadence was then able to transition to a marketplace strategy, providing consultant matching and construction contractor procurement.
The pivot to market maker began with a small experiment in 2025, running a managed procurement program where Cadence created standardized documents and processes for a rapid, unit-priced contractor procurement. Outcomes included bids that could close within 2 business days of opening, and bidder variance of 5-10%, down from the typical 40-60%. As it gathered meaningful empirical data, Cadence launched its first market-making program, quoting both sides of the transaction for a spread.
the demand
the visibility
see both sides, earn the spread
Cadence could be that party because it owned the owner and owned the data. Being the easiest way to buy a retrofit made Cadence the owner's default, so it held the demand. Running the data backbone for regulators and utilities gave it the visibility. No one else sat on both, so only Cadence could stand in the middle, make the market liquid, and carry the spread for it.
The market maker was a bigger swing than the alternatives. Taking a cut of each deal (a marketplace) or selling tooling to the condition-setters (a platform) were both real businesses, and both fed this one — but the market maker captured value across every party and every transaction at once, and the position only deepened with volume.
The full argument — how the owner's "yes" decomposes into risk, why everyone's flying blind, and what Cadence is today — is in The Market-Maker Memo.