Stepwise
Smart Energy Management for the American Home
Client: Stepwise Sector: Energy Technology / Grid Infrastructure Founders: Jane Chen (CEO), Austin Hunt (CTO), Ethan Brewer (Electrician & Co-Founder) Partnership: Columbia Tech Ventures — Relay recommended partner Deliverables: Investor narrative, pitch deck, brand language
The Company
Jane Chen, Austin Hunt, and Ethan Brewer built Stepwise around a counterintuitive insight: the American energy crisis isn't a generation problem, it's a utilization problem. The U.S. already has the infrastructure. 55% of the grid's capacity goes untapped every day — not because the power isn't there, but because homes, which consume 40% of all U.S. electricity, have no intelligent way to manage the load.
Their solution is the Stepwise Tap: a smart controller that installs at the electric panel and manages high-load appliances — EV chargers, water heaters, pool pumps, electric saunas — without requiring the costly panel upgrades that block millions of homeowners from going electric. The Tap feeds into the Stepwise cloud platform, connecting homes to utility coordination programs in real time. The result: grid resilience delivered through the home, at scale.
When Relay came in, the product was already working. 70 installs live across Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, New Hampshire, and Washington D.C. 50% month-over-month growth. $100K in committed ARR. Utility partnerships expanding. The technology was ahead of the story.
The Challenge
The 2024 investor deck opened with a federal regulation.
Specifically, a 2020 rule that created a market mechanism for residential demand response — allowing homes to trade their energy flexibility on the grid. Stepwise's pitch was built around the opportunity this regulation created: utilities and energy software companies were losing $8B+ in value because the average American home couldn't participate. Stepwise bridged the gap.
Every word of it was accurate. None of it made the right first impression.
Starting with regulatory backstory before establishing stakes puts the burden on the audience to care about policy before they've been given a reason to. The deck assumed a reader who was already tracking the energy market. Most investors — and almost every potential customer — weren't. By the time the product appeared, the audience had already decided whether this was their problem to solve.
There was a second issue underneath the first: the story didn't have a clear protagonist. Was this a product for homeowners? For utilities? For energy software companies? The $8B opportunity framing pointed at institutional players. The consumer hardware pointed at homeowners. The GTM pointed at electricians. Each slide made sense on its own. Together they left the reader unsure who was supposed to be excited.
The Work
Rewriting the opening
The first move was to replace the regulatory preamble with the stakes — felt, immediate, non-negotiable:
"Electricity demand will 5X in the next five years. Prices will spike. Blackouts will surge."
Three sentences. Twelve words. No background required. Every person in every room where this deck gets shown pays a utility bill, has read about Texas and California, and already has a version of this anxiety. The deck's job in the first ten seconds is to confirm that anxiety and promise a response — not to explain how energy markets work.
The contrarian pivot
The obvious response to grid strain is building more: more power plants, more transmission lines, more generation. The new deck's second move was to challenge that directly:
"Building more won't save us. We already have the infrastructure — we just don't use it wisely."
This does three things at once. It positions Stepwise against the incumbent solution (infrastructure buildout) without competing in that market. It signals that the founders understand the problem at a systemic level, not just a product level. And it sets up the proof point that makes Stepwise's approach feel like the logical response rather than a workaround: 55% of the grid's existing capacity goes untapped every day.
Clarifying the customer
The original deck tried to serve multiple audiences simultaneously — homeowners, utilities, energy software companies — and ended up landing cleanly with none of them. The revised narrative picked a clear entry point and built from there.
The consumer pain point is the electric panel. As many as 48 million American homes — more than 50% — have panels that need some degree of upgrading to support the electric appliances people already want: EV chargers, heat pumps, induction ranges. A standard panel upgrade costs $4–10K and takes 16+ hours to install. Most homeowners will avoid it if they can.
The Stepwise Tap solves that problem directly: proprietary hardware that gives the electric panel a boost without a full upgrade, installed by a residential electrician in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. The homeowner isn't buying grid participation — they're buying the ability to charge their car and run their appliances without a $7,000 panel job.
The utility coordination, the demand response programs, the platform-level grid impact — all of that happens upstream, at scale, as a result of putting Taps in homes. The consumer story is the entry point. The grid story is the outcome. Keeping them in that order made both stories land.
The go-to-market made legible
The electrician channel had been described in the original deck but hadn't been framed as the strategic asset it is. Residential electricians are the trust intermediary between Stepwise and the homeowner — they're already in the home for panel-adjacent work, they're already the person a homeowner calls when they want to add an EV charger, and they're motivated by a product that lets them win jobs they'd otherwise lose to high costs or panel limitations.
The revised deck quoted a Massachusetts electrician directly: "This is great for projects that I would normally lose to high costs or where an upgrade is not an option." That's not a testimonial — it's a channel thesis. The electrician isn't just a distribution mechanism; they're a converted believer who sells with conviction because the product solves their problem too.
Market sizing that tells a story
The market numbers were reorganized to build an argument, not just report a scale:
$2.1B SOM — homes blocked by panel constraints in the U.S. right now
$10.2B SAM — all grid-constrained neighborhoods in the U.S.
$200B TAM — global opportunity in markets with comparable grid and electrification dynamics (U.K., Australia)
The progression matters. It starts with the immediate, solvable problem — the homes that are actively blocked from going electric today — and expands outward. The global number isn't an abstraction; it's the proof that this problem isn't unique to America.
Brand language
The original deck closed with "Unlock the Power in Your Home" — a consumer tagline that undersold the systemic ambition. The new framing flipped it: "Energy Unlocked."
Two words. Declarative. The company isn't asking permission to unlock anything — it's announcing that the unlock is happening. The phrasing works as a product promise to homeowners, a platform thesis for utilities, and a market thesis for investors. It's the same idea at every level of the story.
What Changed
BeforeAfterOpening2020 federal regulation on demand response"Electricity demand will 5X. Prices will spike. Blackouts will surge."Core argumentHomes locked out of energy trading opportunityBuilding more won't save us — 55% of capacity goes untappedCustomerUtilities / energy software companies / homeownersHomeowners first, utilities at scaleEntry pointGrid participation programPanel upgrade alternativeMarket$8B regulatory opportunity$2.1B → $10.2B → $200BBrand lineUnlock the Power in Your HomeEnergy Unlocked.
The Outcome
With a narrative that put stakes before solution and customer before platform, Stepwise moved into a $3M seed raise with clear positioning and a defined story for every room the deck enters. Utility program adoption has since expanded to 23 Massachusetts service areas, validating the platform-market fit the revised narrative was built to demonstrate.
The traction was always real. Now the story matches it.