New Experiements for Momentum Team

I dictated a whole spiel into my phone and then realized it’s unusable because I did it in the subway, and every 2 minutes, it’s interrupted by “stand clear of the clooooosing doors!” So here is an ad-hoc reconstruction.

As Jason says, we’ve been great at winning hearts and minds and wallets, but we’re not sure yet how we’re dong on winning fingers on keyboards. Based on our past conversations, I think ther eare two things we need to do to make the transition from doing well as a company to doing well as a software company, one where the software is the star of the show and sells itself by the problems it solves. Marc’s big challenge coming up is going to be finding the “repeatable sales motion,” as they say. He can only do that if we have both insight into our users and ability to be nimble in meeting them.

First, we need a much clearer and honest understanding of when Momentum is a hero and when it’s not. The metrics we have currently are rather squishy, and we haven’t had success trying to improve user observability through stuff like Google tags or Pendo. But we’ll try again, because it’s super important! Jon will be taking this challenge head-on, with support from Jason and Marc. So happy he started today!

Second, we need to clear out the underbrush so we don’t trip on things while we try to deliver software (esp on the Momentum side) – this means getting more/better tooling so we have strong code quality guardrails, refactor some of the gnarlier bits that we know we will need to touch for NYCA (If not actually doing, then scoping), and starting to use standards as more of must-do than as advised-to-do. To help us with that, we will have some outside help. In addition to Stefan and Marceau, we’ll be engaging Tighten, an OG Laravel agency that is very deeply embedded in the Laravel community. They are quite spendy, so we won’t have them forever, but this, hopefully, will be great opportunity to get that tooling/standards/unfucking agenda well underway. And of course we’ve also augmented the Momentum team with Marceau and Stefan, so in addition to the Tighten swat team, we have literally more hours.

The purpose of all of this is for us to start 2026 (almost here!) really strong – it’s going to be a big, fun, important year!

Metrics

Traction

• Unique Buildings:
• Annual Run Rate: $1.5M

Financials

• Monthly net burn (accrual basis): $68,532 (+7.7% MoM)
• Year-to-last-month net burn (cash basis): $59,232 (+8% MoM)
• 2025 Transaction fees to date: $64,413 (+66%.62% WoW) due to CPC transaction fees of $25,755 on 10/31.
• Outstanding invoices as of today: $262,618 (-2.56% WoW)

Note: Annual Run Rate, Monthly Net Burn and Year-to-Last Month Net Burn metrics will be updated for October after the books close this week.

Development

• Bug Count (P-0 and P-1): 2

Last Week’s Highs and Lows

• Robin’s training session on the Building Data Platform with new users from NYSERDA went really well: folks were engaged, had done their homework successfully on running real analysis aligned with their roles, and provided useful feedback: sparks and fingers! (FH)
• As harsh as it sounds, the “It’s Friday and you’re fired/firing us” seems to be working well to make sure we spend the time on giving/getting feedback, and communicating clear expectations quickly. (FH)
• I had a great time playing The Decarbonization Game at BE-Ex. It was a lot of fun, but lacked some nuance (e.g., it didn’t account for operating costs 🤷). (JB)
• Had a good in person meeting and follow up call with team at our customer First Service Energy about their current and future needs for Momentum (MZ)
• Showed off work we are doing with CPC CC to define ideal markets and retrofit packages to a “Conveners Network” group of non profits that is coordinating the energy and housing offices of ~40 states who still want to do “something” with climate even after the plug was pulled on the federal Greenhouse Gas Reduction program – targeting a presentation to these states in Q1 that showcases Momentum (MZ).

Any missing highlights? Please share in Slack comments.

Crow’s Nest

Looking out for icebergs: What are the risks on the horizon that we’re watching for and navigating around?

Jason’s List

There have been too many things on my watch list, so I’m trimming it down a bit:

• Improving clarity around our roadmap and prioritization process–I really want/need to put more time into this.
• We may have won some minds, and we’re winning some wallets, but will we win their fingers? Which users will actually use our software instead of just looking for the outputs and expecting consultant-style service?
• What is our moat in a world and industry where data wants to be free, especially when some of our largest customers are city and state agencies?
• Politics Local is looking better, but national is really scary.

Erika’s List

Same categories - different issues

• Budget and cash management - we’re doing okay It is still important that we collect payments in a timely manner and that our customers are conditioned to pay us on time (e.g. our predictability in cash flow and proving our ability to collect). Also, going into year end and 2026, spend across categories will be analyzed more closely so we can budget efficiently. Overall, our spending is consistent YoY, just distributed differently. But, we also want to automate what we can so we can focus on other things. A little up front work and feedback from the teams will facilitate this moving forward.
• Onboarding - also okay but there are still a couple of kinks to work out to make sure all hires (contractors and permanent employees)are aware of what is expected of them during the onboarding and their time with the company. Extending 15 minute onboarding calls to all should help along with the checklist for everyone and not just FTE and PTE. I will also need to be clear on what the expectations and timelines are for new hires sooner.

François’ List

• Baton passing: we are purposefully unscrewing the three legs of our platform stool (the BKB, Calc Service, Momentum), turning them into as many batons with which we can move faster as separate pieces, and possibly into separate products. Whether between people or between systems, baton passing is hard. We need to build the structure to make it work.
• Getting ready for more traffic/scrutiny/requirements: NYCA is triggering a list of new infrastructure requirements: higher traffic, system resiliency, additional scrutiny on the security of our systems.

Marc’s List

Carry-over:

• Execution We are the dog that caught the car with NYCA and other stuff brewing. Stakes of everything we do will be increasingly high. So many eyes will be on us. How do we best expand the team?
• Continuing to stay ahead of the curve that is turning into a hockey stick* How much of scope builder will be able to be recreated by an AI native start up in the mid term? What are we doing to build the flywheel so that our customers experience every project making the next one easier and we deepen our moat?
• Process orchestration What tasks should be done by AI, what tasks should be done by AI + humans and what tasks should be done by humans? I don’t have as much of a handle on this for our development work… but this framework has gotten me thinking about how Momentum fits into the wider industry. Where and how can we disrupt things? And where and how can we be disrupted?
• Mamdani!!! Wants to do something biggish and boldish with building decarb… NYC bulk buying window heat pumps has been floated. With a new wave of people in city government… how do we stay relevant and also exert our influence to set up any city scale program for success?

Bomee’s List

• Product development process for NYCA, ConEd Recompete and HPD Don’t want to count the chicks before they’re hatched, but they are SOOOO close to hatching
• Getting Marc a product he can sell We need Marc to be confident that we can make things he can sell, and I think a big contributor to that is taming our sprint / release practices. I think we’re making progress there. What do the rest of y’all think?
• Team dynamics Maybe it’s because we’ve been doing a lot of 360s recently, but I feel like there is a lot of communication going on – another positive trend! Let’s no one disappear into any caves!
• Planning for growth on the team We’re welcoming 4!! new folks shortly – data engineer, devops, and two Laravel devs. Whoot!
• Uptake of AI tools - I love AI. I’d like to see more of how folks are using them.
• Cash. We have deployed about half our cash in hand and have 16 months of runway.

On Deck for This Week

• Jon’s first day! 🙌 (JB)
• Welcome, Marceau – working w. Maksym this week (BJ)
• Election Day on Tuesday 🤞 (JB)
• 2026 Operating Budget for review (EP)
• Testing out how Momentum works in non NYC geographies for our customer CPC Climate Capital (MZ)

Upcoming Release

107 – this Wed – is:

• SSO (code only)
• Program admin infrastructure
• Parameterizable PTHP + Window Heat Pump measures - ability to select payer for heating and cooling

108 is

• Team and Program permissions
• Soft-launch Freemium version

Please Leave Feedback

Please note your reaction to this update in the Slack channel. It helps us to know what is resonating, what is unclear, etc. Thanks!

• What are your highlights / low-lights?
• Did we miss a highlight? Something else you want to react to?