Cascade raises $3.5 million to help builders find and win projects

Cascadea startup that is building a platform to help architecture, engineering, and construction firms find and win projects, has raised a $3.5 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, Ada Ventures, and Snowball VC.

Launched in 2025, Cascade is the result of its founders, Hania Zea and Joanna Ferreira, seeing first-hand the difficulty construction companies have in predictably securing work.

“My mother worked for a company that sold materials to construction companies, and my uncle built palaces in the Middle East,” Ferreira told TechCrunch. “They are great at their craft but don’t have access to the right tools to get more work done.” “He couldn’t get enough projects to support himself,” Zia recalls of the time her father tried to start a construction project in her native Pakistan.

Zia describes the current process of finding construction projects as a “constant treasure hunt,” where companies have to log into the portals of every state, city, district, county, and federal agency in the United States. “So, if you’re really good at building suspension bridges, you have to find all these opportunities through these disparate portals.”

Cascade aims to help architecture, construction and engineering firms on this front by tracking ongoing and upcoming projects, then using past bid data to predict which developers are most likely to win deals.

Here’s how the platform works: A company signs up to the platform, then Cascade uses AI tools to determine which projects have the best chance of winning. It also forecasts upcoming projects, using different signals and data points across US states, localities, private contracts and federal agencies. For example, if a state announces a $100 million affordable housing grant, Cascade will monitor which developers won the grant the last time it was announced.

“We correlate this data and say to our clients, ‘One of these five developers is most likely to win this newly announced grant, so start talking to them to win projects,’” Ferreira explained.

The duo applied to a16z’s Speedrun last September. They said the pressure to perform well on demo day and be around the other founders’ “shine” helped the company sign contracts with companies that built JFK and LaGuardia airports, the Four Seasons hotels, and some data centers. “Speedrun has given us the vision and stamp of approval to close big deals,” said Zia.

The startup will use the new funds to go to market, host industry events and hire more engineers.

Other startups in this space include GovWin IQ and ConstructConnect, but Ferreira says Cascade is a bit more nimble than these platforms.

“Every time a client wins a bid, they provide feedback, so the system continues to get smarter,” she said. “Over time, we will have a complete map of the industry that our AI can traverse to predict the best projects and leads for each client.”