Chloe Smith

This transcript has been edited for better readability: Henry Harrison Podcast — Entrepreneurs, Business & Finance Guest: Chloe Smith Company: Mercator AI Henry Harrison Well hello, Chloe. Thank you for coming on the show, Entrepreneurs, Business and Finance. We’re very happy to have you here. Your name is Chloe Smith, and you founded a company called Mercator AI. A lot of people are interested in how AI can help them in their businesses. They’re also interested in the entrepreneurial journey, and for people in construction, they’re going to be especially interested in what you can do for them. So we have a lot of good things to talk about. How does that sound? Chloe Smith That sounds awesome. Let’s get into it. Henry Harrison Why don’t we start with a little introduction? Since you’re an expert in AI, I’ll call it demystifying AI for business professionals who may not be as familiar with it — and helping them understand how it could help their businesses. Chloe Smith Absolutely. It’s a big topic, but I’ll do my best to summarize it. AI feels very magical right now, and one of the reasons we talk about demystifying it is so people can think about AI in a more practical way and solve problems from the perspective of what AI actually is. If you understand the core basics of how it works, you’re much more likely to implement it in ways that genuinely help your business or improve your workflow, instead of just saying, “Why don’t we throw AI at it?” I’ve been on the other side of that conversation many times, where executives say, “Let’s just toss AI at the problem,” but AI isn’t always the solution people imagine it to be. So what helps is breaking it down to the fundamentals. I’m going to oversimplify here, but at the end of the day, AI is largely about mass pattern recognition. We’re either recognizing patterns to predict outcomes, or recognizing patterns in order to generate something new. You can see that in the major categories of AI that people interact with today. Whether it’s numbers, images, or language, what we’re really doing is identifying patterns. That’s how you get things like machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. From there, AI can either help classify and predict outcomes, or generate new content — which is where you see tools like ChatGPT and image generators. One of the biggest misconceptions is that we already live in a world of truly general AI that can understand everything and reason across domains the way a person can. But that’s not really the case. For example, if you ask ChatGPT to do math, it’s not actually a math system by nature. It’s recognizing language patterns. It’s not general intelligence in the way people often assume. So I think one of the most helpful things we can do is take AI out of the realm of magic and make it more tangible. Henry Harrison That’s a terrific explanation. Speaking of tangible, you started this company and you’re helping a lot of people. What was your background, and what led you to starting Mercator AI? Chloe Smith For the entrepreneurs listening, my path has been pretty meandering. I actually have a degree in public relations. I came out of university in Canada and started building websites and learning how to code. That led into analytics and user behavior tracking, which turned into building analytics departments for different marketing and advertising agencies. From there, that expanded into data science, data strategy, and ultimately into becoming a head of innovation. So it’s been quite a meandering path to eventually deciding to build my own company. Henry Harrison I hear a lot of stories like that. People don’t just wake up one day and suddenly decide to do what you’re doing. There’s usually a long learning curve and a lot of different experiences that eventually come together. So let’s talk about the company now. What exactly are you doing, how are you helping people, and who might be a client? Chloe Smith Absolutely. We are effectively AI-powered business development, specifically for mid-sized general contractors in the commercial and industrial construction space. What our platform does is allow users to identify the kinds of projects they want to pursue and the stage at which they want to enter those opportunities. For example, looking at the path that a tenant improvement project might take, early-stage opportunities are much more valuable because that’s when a general contractor has the greatest ability to influence the return on investment and the outcome of the project. So our customers can say things like: “I want to get in when drawings are 25% complete.” “I want to know when my ideal client is buying land.” “I want to know when a project is still at an early stage where I can build the relationship and influence the direction.” We help them identify those opportunities in real time and deliver them directly to their inbox. They can then click through and see the project details, who has been involved so far, what has happened at that location historically, and additional company details — including other projects that company may be working on and contact information so they can get directly into the conversation. We’ve essentially taken a process that traditionally takes six to eight weeks of networking, golf games, conferences, and manual research, and condensed it into about five minutes. Mercator can surface a viable project at exactly the right stage for a contractor to go in, build the relationship, provide value, and ideally win the work. Henry Harrison That’s terrific. And you’re not just regionally bound forever. This is something you intend to do across North America, correct? Chloe Smith Yes, although today we are still geographically focused. We originally built and grew the product in Canada. We’ve now opened our first U.S. market in Austin, Texas, and we are pre-selling into additional markets such as San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston. We’re also starting to look outside of Texas as well. So today, we’re live in Austin and growing from there. Henry Harrison So Austin first, then the rest of Texas, and eventually beyond. And I assume this is not something that a construction company could easily replicate on its own. Even a large company would have a hard time building this internally, because you’ve got specialty expertise, data integration, and a lot of infrastructure behind it. Chloe Smith Exactly. On the surface, what we do can seem simple enough that someone might think, “Maybe I could build that myself.” But one of the biggest challenges is that the data we need in order to reveal what’s actually happening in a construction ecosystem often doesn’t already exist in one neat place. We have to go out and build it. Our data comes from multiple sources. We work with government, regulatory boards, outside vendors, and in many cases we create the data structures ourselves. That’s one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest advantages we offer. There’s also the issue of cost effectiveness. We had talked earlier about the build versus buy conversation. The challenge with building something like this internally is the cost, the team required, and the technical expertise needed. Our proprietary project identification system is really what powers a lot of the platform, and it’s built around the data strategy we’ve developed ourselves. We also have access to certain types of data that a general contractor simply wouldn’t be able to access on their own. For example, a contractor can’t just become a realtor in order to gain access to certain real estate data sources. So what we’re really doing is bringing together a whole world of data that would otherwise be unattainable or extremely impractical for a contractor to build independently. That gives our customers economies of scale, access, and intelligence that would be very hard to replicate on their own. Henry Harrison And by the way, it doesn’t seem simple to me, but I wanted to make sure people understood that this is much more than ordinary lead generation. You’re providing an enormous amount of information that would otherwise be unavailable, and I can absolutely see why you’re building market by market, because just building the data layer sounds like a massive project in itself. Chloe Smith It absolutely is. And every time we move into a new geography, it looks a little different. So part of what Mercator does is standardize the data that describes construction across different markets. That in itself is a major piece of the work. Henry Harrison Would you talk a little bit about your team and how you built this up? Chloe Smith Absolutely. Today we are primarily a team of developers. We have about 15 people across the company, including: data scientists data engineers engineers frontend developers And now we’re beginning to build out more of the go-to-market side of the business — sales, marketing, customer success, and so on. So we’re still very much in that journey from a seed-stage company focused heavily on development into the next phase of market growth. Henry Harrison And you’re in Austin right now? Chloe Smith Yes, physically I’m in Austin, Texas today. Henry Harrison Well, welcome to Texas. Maybe we could wrap up with two things. One, some obstacles you’ve had to overcome. And two, something you find inspiring or some advice you’d offer to entrepreneurs, because just hearing you describe building a 15-person technical team sounds like an obstacle in itself. Chloe Smith Absolutely. For the entrepreneurs listening, if you’re already in the thick of it, then you know this journey is a complete roller coaster. And the goal is not necessarily to avoid the roller coaster — it’s to learn how not to ride it quite so hard. One of my peers told me recently, and it really resonated with me, that: “It doesn’t get easier. You just get stronger.” That feels very true to me right now. Entrepreneurship is a grueling journey. I think we often glamorize it, but one of the biggest realities is that when you set out to build software or technology, you quickly realize that you’re actually building a people company. More often than not, it becomes a people problem before it becomes a technology problem. And that has probably been the biggest challenge for me — learning how to grow from a team of four or five into a team of 15, and figuring out what kind of culture we want to have. How do we operate as a remote company? How do we bring vulnerability into the organization so people can do hard things together? How do we try to do the implausible together? That has been one of the biggest parts of the learning curve for me: learning how to be a leader in hard times and in great times, and learning from my peers how they’ve done it. I do a lot of peer-to-peer mentorship with other founders, because as a first-time founder, I’ve found it incredibly helpful to talk to people who are six to nine months ahead of me and also help people who are six to nine months behind me. You learn so much from people who are right there in the thick of it. So if anyone listening is in that position, I’m a huge believer in peer-to-peer support. Henry Harrison That’s really interesting. There’s the tech side and there’s the people side, and you have to have both. Well, you’re in a great market. As a fellow Texan — though not originally from Texas myself — I’ll say what people often say here: I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could. Chloe Smith I feel that through and through, honestly. I come from the Texas of the north, and I’m absolutely in love with Texas. Henry Harrison Is there anything you’d like to wrap up on? You’ve covered a lot, and I think you summarized some very complex issues really well. Chloe Smith Sure. I’d just say that if there’s anyone in your audience who is interested in force multiplying their business development with AI, especially in construction, I’d love for them to reach out. As you can see on my shirt, our company is Mercator AI, and our website is mercator.ai. You can check out what we’re doing and request a demo. We are live in the Austin market, and we are pre-selling into Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. We’d love to meet your audience and show them what we’re building. Henry Harrison Thank you very much for coming on. Chloe Smith, Mercator AI — a fantastic business in a growing field that’s going to help many people going forward, right here in Texas and beyond. Have a great rest of your day. Chloe Smith Awesome. Thanks, Henry. Thank you. Goodbye.