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Tim Crouch of Choose New Jersey and Amanda Hecker of Mithril join host Jim Barrood to discuss New Jersey’s bold AI vision. They highlight initiatives from Princeton’s AI Hub to new incentive programs, and how Mithril’s cloud infrastructure partnership ensures startups, researchers, and corporates have affordable, guaranteed access to AI computing power.
Tim Crouch: I wear two hats. One of them is leading Choose New Jersey's West Coast Center. So split my time between Northern California and Southern California, representing the state in California, and the other hat is as the Chief Strategy Officer for Choose New Jersey. So thinking about all those things that kind of help, help the organization stay relevant, stay current, stay ahead of trends, making sure that our operations are set up to, to take advantage of that.
Jim Barrood: And what is the mission of Choose New Jersey?
Tim Crouch: So choose New Jersey's role is to stimulate economic development in the state of New Jersey. The bulk of that is bringing new investment into the state in the form of companies setting up, trying to make the state as competitive and attractive as possible, I suppose telling our story in key markets, both domestically and internationally.
Jim Barrood: Great. Amanda, what do you do?
Amanda Hecker: Sure. I am on the go-to-market team at Mithril, that's M-I-T-H-R-I l.ai, and I was one of the early employees building the team right now, largely focused on partnerships, sales, international expansion and just ecosystem building.
Jim Barrood: Great. So tell us Amanda, how did you get from, let's say college to where you are now?
Amanda Hecker: Sure. So I'll get into Mithril in a bit about what exactly we do. But I was born in the state of New Jersey, Manal, New Jersey. And both my parents are mathematicians, now I'm married to one. And we had a strong sense in my family of giving back, teaching public service. And so I, that led to a deep career over a decade in the US government focused on national security.
And I lived all over the world. And so it was very much like tip of the spear, what mattered. And so I lived in Ghana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and I landed in New York. And so it was collecting information to really drive decision making for policy. And making sure that they had the best information and so that they can make the best decision.
And so in New York, I was working with a lot of C-suite executives at Fortune 500 companies on public private partnerships. And most of the time we were focused on technology disruptive tech. This was before chat GBT, November, 2022. And so at that point, we were focused largely on blockchain. And I remember sitting at the table in New York City not being able to keep up with the conversation on blockchain.
I'm so used to be being at that point behind Embassy Walls, and I realized I wanted to do something that really mattered in the tech world because that was what was, in my opinion, progressing humanity. And so I made the jump. I was like, let's do this. And I first jumped to a company, a cybersecurity company called NSOs, and it's focus on MIS and disinformation, providing background information for Fortune 10, fortune 500 companies.
We were one of the first teams to uncover North Korean IT workers, for instance, hired at US companies. And it, but it wasn't focused on AI at that time. And so I really wanted something to that focused on ai because I think this is the Industrial Revolution 2.0. I'm sure that's been said again and again, but you're either on the bandwagon.
Or it's going to be hard to stay relevant. And so I met Jared Quincy Davis, who's the founder and CEO of Mithril, and I was really motivated by his, I found him very inspiring. I find him very inspiring, and I was very motivated by his vision, which is to provide the infrastructure to AI companies or companies building an ai.
And this is fundamentally changing the world. These companies are focused on biotech, drug discovery, image generation, coding. And so it's touching something that I believe really matters to our generation.
Jim Barrood: Great. Alright. That's really fascinating. Tim, go ahead. Tell us how you got to we sense a British accent, so I have a feeling you're not from New Jersey.
Tim Crouch: No. Closer to Old Jersey for me. So actually in some ways similar to Amanda. So started off my career in in government service. So a af after college joined the British Civil Service. The British Civil Service has a large kind of public policy core, a non-political, permanent, non-partisan public policy core.
And my background was a, as a. There's a labor market specialist. I was a policy analyst for the UK's effectively Department of Labor a, an amazing foundation in the, the discipline of data-driven policy making the need to be really sound in the reasoning and the the rationale for why you do what you do.
And also a kind of great introduction in the kind of. The impact you can make when you have, like levers you can pull in government or pseudo government organizations. Move to the United States in 2013. My partners from the United States, I'm actually now a naturalized citizen. Despite the accent, that's probably not going to go now.
If it was going to go, it would've gone by now. So actually more than a decade into life in the us most of which was actually spent as a diplomat for the British government. Initially leading their creative media and digital teams based out of the British Consulate in Los Angeles.
And then later running all of their foreign direct investment teams across North America, based out of New York. That move to New York was what got me to the East coast. Getting closer to New Jersey now. And in all honesty, it kind of 20 21, 20 22. UK was probably going through a pretty tough patch if we're being honest, it lacked vision for what it was going to be post Brexit.
You sometimes get this in the UK where you get long periods of single party government and towards the end they ran out of ideas. And that was true of the late stage of the conservative party rule in the uk. That just made it quite a frustrating place to be.
So you then start thinking, okay, she loved the work, working on kind of international trade and investment. Thinking about how you tell a place, tell the story of a place. To, to an audience, how you make sure that an economy is as competitive as it can be that it's as strong and attractive, a place to do business as possible.
So I actually started looking at, I actually hit one of, one of those exploratory conversations was with Wes Matthews the Chief Executive Chiefs New Jersey. And actually there was just a kind of a light switch moment, I think. I think when he described not just the work of Jews, New Jersey.
It's great that it's a C3 nonprofit, so it has that kind of agility. You don't quite get in government entity. So you can move fast, move faster, you can iterate you can do things you just wouldn't otherwise be able to do in a state agency. And also then working under the leadership of Governor Murphy.
So again you want to work where there's someone with a clear vision who's actually putting the money where the mouth is, or the state's money where the mouth is actually doing big things just immediately just clearly is true about New Jersey. So it's just okay. This is too good an opportunity to miss.
So I joined initially just with one of those two hats, the chief strategy officer role, and about a year ago we had the governor in in California on a kind of a visit to meet the key movers and shakers in the state, actually that. Where we first met Foundry as they were then known and Jared actually, I think met the governor over breakfast on that visit.
Within sort of 48 hours of getting back from that visit, we say, okay, the opportunity in California is too big to miss. We need someone on the ground. Is there anyone who can do it? For me? It kind of good ties to the state anyway. I lived here for six years. Went to school here too.
USC grad. Right on. And so yeah, I just jumped to the opportunity. It's been great. About a year in now to that kind of mostly California based role.
Jim Barrood: And talk to us more about. Choose New Jersey's initiatives in ai. And so people can understand how robust the vision is.
Tim Crouch: Yeah so I think the key for us is to match what the state is doing, particularly through the economic development Authority with their like really robust programs. Whether it's the kind of AI hub at Princeton as one of the strategic innovation centers, whether it's the incentive program that they've just launched worth up to 500 million for those developing AI or data center infrastructure in the state.
It's just, it's taking that kind of. Almost like the kind of underlying programming and then making sure we're telling the story to the right audience. So we as choose New Jersey. Then have the ability to at short notice, go to the right events at short notice, meet the right people do the kind of quick like marketing campaigns that you sometimes have to turn around with.
When you've got a new program to launch or a sort of targeted thing you want to hit, like LA last year we ran a quick sort of three week billboard program run in Union Square in San Francisco. There was a sort of key message. We had to land artwork ad by.
Billboards up within about two weeks. And again, back to that, kind of state agency to do that. Probably not, but someone like, choose New Jersey can. So for us it's about taking the, kind of the fundamentals of what the state is doing, whether it's the AI hub or others. And then getting that message out to market really quickly, meeting the right people, being at the right events, using the right communication channels to, to tell the story.
Jim Barrood: Got it. And Amanda, tell us before we get into myth roll a bit more, tell us how you viewed as a Jersey girl, how you viewed the initiatives of the state. Particularly choose New Jersey and the EDA before, approaching this collaboration.
Amanda Hecker: Yeah. To tie a full circle, my mom actually read about it in the Asbury Park Press, and she called me up and she said, take a look.
And this is just, the origin of the relationship. And so I was like, okay. Found Foundry at that time. Now Mithril, we got to get involved. We want to bring, and we'll talk about the joint vision later, but we really want to be the, there's a lot of tech talent here. We want to be the chosen AI cloud for New Jersey because we want to cater to the needs of the amazing talent here.
So I reached out to the EDA. Cold outreach. Cold outbound. Though I read his biography and I thought he might know my uncle, who is a politician in Brooklyn when he was working for mayor Bloomberg at the time. And so he did. And so he took him the EDA took a meeting with us, and that led to a few meetings that led to the governor's visit.
And then the EDA introduced us to Tim and Wes Mathews, who Tim works with is a former US diplomat and so we have a lot of mutual connections from overseas which is really cool. And that led to figuring out, the nexus of how we can work together. I thought it was very awesome that New Jersey was taking a leadership role in AI and pushing this forward.
I went to the launch of the ai hub at Princeton University, for instance. And it not only says it wants to be a leader in AI in the United States, but it's actually putting in the legwork and action plan to become a leader.
Jim Barrood: That's awesome. So Tim, talk to us just a bit more about the AI initiative.
So what does that mean coming from Choose New Jersey, what's, how do you work with the EDA and the Hub to promote and engage others outside of Jersey?
Tim Crouch: Yeah, so I think our success metrics really for this is, they're probably twofold. They're traditionally we're all about, how many companies can you get to set up in the state and how many people to do they employ, and that, that's certainly still true with our AI initiatives.
I think the other component though is then thinking about what else is needed for the state to build out its ecosystem. So there's, I think there's a few things that go into that. One, one example is like w working with some of the companies that I speak to on the west coast about, what their view is on where the kind of AI industry in so far as it exists as a thing.
Is that what the latest thinking is on the kind of different components that makes AI work now and where that's going. Then matching help, helping those in the state to match that to, okay, what have we got and what are we missing? So that's probably slightly outside of what you might think of as choose New Jersey's kind of bread and butter.
It's not just about companies coming to the state, it's actually thinking through Okay. If one, one example, so you're thinking about the kind of building blocks for AI being clearly. The models clearly the power to. Power the servers that then do the processing, but also then thinking about the data and like what, one of the things that then we've been trying to think through is, okay how do you build out the the data ecosystem in the state such that you can help generate or help create a more robust ecosystem where you have more of the building blocks?
To propel AI growth. So again, thinking that through in a New Jersey context, we've got a number of really key critical assets already in that space. We're already so strong in. Like Biopharmaceuticals, life Sciences, those companies that are such a core part of New Jersey's, like past, present, and future, sit on massive amounts of data that will be invaluable to drug discovery through ai.
It's already happening. How can we help with some of the expertise that exist outside of the state? Connect to that. And then propel it. So I think for us, yes, there's the kind of, there's the programs that the EDA do. Is the thought leadership that the state does. Certainly, Beth Novak has been critical in that the work the state does on training its employees in the ethical use of ai, which is another really good example of what the state is doing, and then matching that, okay, what's the value I choose?
Clearly, it's couple more companies coming to the state. More jobs for residents of New Jersey, but also thinking, okay, from the networks and connections that we're able to build, how can you then help develop the ecosystem in the state?
Jim Barrood: Got it. And so now let's talk about how Mithril role, factors into that, Amanda?
Amanda Hecker: Sure. Let me talk about the key problem that ER is trying to solve. I'm going to go big to small if that works. And so the problem is developers, researchers, founders who are driving the progress in ai, whether through research papers. Startups they need access to computing resources to train and build an ai.
And so these are also called graphics processing units, GPUs, that's another term. And so they're super expensive. Think like $400,000 for a popular skew called H one hundreds if a company were to buy the actual server itself. And that's not. Including this cost of setting it up at the data center co-location facility, the energy costs, the maintenance.
And so for the most part, AI companies and researchers rent or lease these GPUs from large. Cloud companies that are also have an AI cloud component to them, but that's also really expensive because those cloud companies are purchasing the GPUs and therefore the cost to lease it tend to be high because they need to make profits somehow from that.
And so there's not actually a scarcity of chips. It's just inefficiently allocated or distributed because the, a small number of these clouds have the vast majority of the trip chips. And so this is like actually MITHRIL's. Special sauce, like this is where we come in and the problem we're trying to solve which is how to drive down the cost to make it as easy as possible for founders to build their inspirational company.
And so we orchestrate the unutilized underutilized capacity. So if a large cloud, for instance, is able to drive utilization for 12 hours, but then 12 hours. No one is using those, that particular GPU or maybe they're able, they have 36 hours where it's underutilized. Foundry can take this GPU and provide it to our end users for a fraction of the cost.
And so that's compared to them leasing it out, long-term contracts, they might not need it for. Like, why take out a three month contract if you only need it for three hours? And or if you have a non-time sensitive training run, for instance. And so we have a number of companies because of our aggressive pricing, because of our accessibility to entrepreneurs.
And we don't have to, we don't have the, the large expenditures ourselves, like some of these large companies. And so our customers are as, like as Tim had mentioned doing everything from drug discovery. So C chi discovery for instance, is focused on optimizing drug discovery for bio and pharmaceutical use cases.
That's one of our clients, broad Institute, which is based out of Massachusetts, but they're researching the root causes of diseases. And Cursor, which I believe many people have heard of, which is an AI powered code editor. They built it their early product cursor tab on Foundry or Mithril now. And we have conglomerates like LG Research, who are building their computer vision model on Foundry, on Mithril.
Jim Barrood: Awesome. And so you're going to bring that to. All the companies, including the startups, growth companies, and larger corporates who all need access but at a fraction of the cost. Is that correct?
Amanda Hecker: Exactly. And that's our core product. And on top of that, we are now focused on building on top of this core product, like a batch inference product, for instance.
And in order to capture. A broader audience. There's not only AI developers who have studied it, gotten their PhDs in it, but there's developers who want to enter the AI arena. And so it's go we want to make it even more accessible for startups to, or entrepreneurs to found their AI company.
And so this is where also the collaboration with Choose New Jersey and Tim come in.
Jim Barrood: Oh, that's great. So Tim, talk to us about how you see myth roll helping do, is there. Discounted pricing or are there really flexible programs that we can even make more palatable or attractive to all the businesses and ventures and entrepreneurs?
Tim Crouch: Yes. To, to the above. So that, I think that's why we were so excited to set up the partner partnership with Mithril. So essentially what we saw in those early conversations with Amanda and the team was that there's an opportunity to take a point of friction out of the process of setting up and scaling in the state of New Jersey.
Now it's a point of friction that's not specific to New Jersey, but there's an opportunity for us to make it a competitive advantage. So e, effectively what the partnership does is it unlocks for companies that we are working with, we make the introduction to myth roll. It unlocks both reserved server space and ad a advantageous pricing to allow them to get the server capacity that they need.
So e essentially for a startup or a scale up that, that is needing capacity, like they now have preferential access, preferential pricing, and a direct introduction specific for New Jersey, which for us is great. It's a genuine competitive advantage.
Amanda Hecker: It's guaranteed access to reserve.
One of the largest pain points I hear from AI companies is having to book something way in advance in order to be, to get access if they need, just say GPUs for two weeks or six months. And it's very hard to get access to those servers. And so we're guaranteeing access through our Choose New Jersey partnership.
Jim Barrood: That's fantastic. It's, and also, what about for academia?
Amanda Hecker: Yes. So we partner a lot with academia. Okay. We have a specific program for academics, and so we have a number of PIs and labs at Princeton, for instance. We're talking to Rutgers. And we also, outside of the state work with Broad Institute, as I mentioned MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley.
Jim Barrood: That's fantastic. What about the vision Tim, as his collaboration goes forward? What do what's the sort of a goalpost some numbers or some results that you really can point to, I don't know, 1, 2, 3, 5 years down the line or, that says this is going to be a fantastic success.
Tim Crouch: Yeah, so I think we, we haven't set like specific KPIs on it deliberately, because I think. Like it needs to evolve as the market evolves. So what, there's a scenario where we could find that actually we see a high volume of like relatively early stage companies that are entering entering the state or growing in the state that this fulfills a need.
We might conversely find that it's actually a relatively small number of fair, fairly well funded, but like nonetheless have a specific need, like both of those. We are fine with. I think the common theme there though is that it's an enabler of growth, an enabler of new companies or like more rapid scaling of companies in the state.
If those two things were true, then we've succeeded.
Jim Barrood: That's great. And what about you, Amanda?
Amanda Hecker: Would love to be Mithril, would love to be the AI cloud partner for entrepreneurs in New Jersey. And along with Tim, I think we share the vision that we want to bring the best AI tech companies, not only to the United States if they're overseas, but to New Jersey specifically.
Look, I'm Jersey born and raised and so this is near and dear to my heart. So it's really. Important to be, not only surrounded online, but surrounded in person with people and companies and inspiring ideas.
Jim Barrood: That's great. Wonderful. Usually we ask just one thing just for tips for our audience.
So let me ask, what's just one tip for entrepreneurs looking to scale a tech company in New Jersey?
Tim Crouch: So I think I think it's always critical for companies, places, frankly, everyone, to be really clear on who you are, what your competitive advantage is. I think for a tech company scaling in New Jersey, combine those two, right?
So clear on what you, as your company, what your competitive advantage is. Like what your differentiator is. Put that in the context of New Jersey, where our competitive advantage is human capital, it's talent plus market proximity. There are loads of other great things, but if you just had to name two, it's market proximity, human capital, stroke talent, lean into that.
So if you're a startup that's driven by access to market and access to talent. New Jersey's. Got it.
Amanda Hecker: Great. Amanda. So in terms of, speaking of New Jersey, it's a wonderful state come, but speaking of starting a company, whether AI or a technology company, it's just jump now. Just do it.
Don't wait. There's never a good time. There are always going to be challenges, whether it's to raise VC money or if your idea has product market fit. So what's exciting about right now is that it takes little capital investment with all the new AI tools that const consistently come out to just build a company.
And so people are racing to become the first solo entrepreneur slash employee to have a. Billion dollar company. And so even if you find a multimillion-dollar company that's a lot leading to human progress, that's a success. And if the company doesn't have product market fit, if it doesn't work out, you can always pivot.
And it's just, it's the most exciting time that I can recognize in like the last decade to found a company.
Jim Barrood: And obviously your company has been such a success. Getting that much funding, is incredible. So you must be excited to be the next unicorn, in this industry.
So that's exciting. And hopefully we'll have many more unicorns, emanating from the state. But one more question, what about just entrepreneurs who are looking to start an AI related venture wherever they are? Any broad tips, Amanda?
Amanda Hecker: So my advice before was more that broad tip and it's just so maybe less relevant to the state of New Jersey here, but it's, with vibe coding, you don't even have to be necessarily a technical founder to just get your MVP.
Tim Crouch: Excellent. Tim and I think for me the thing that continually jumps out is in this space, the need for agility the number of wildly successful. AI companies that we've seen that started off as actually something quite different.
Think about the kind of really big success story in the state of New Jersey of CoreWeave, you think about their kind of origin story. It is absolutely not what they're doing now, but it was their agility to spot the market opportunity in the moment that propelled them.
So I think because the space is moving so quickly. The regulatory backdrop is shifting in kind of real time, like agility is the thing that's going to make or break.
Jim Barrood: Yeah, a hundred percent. I agree with that. This has been a great conversation. We usually end with a quote or a saying or a poem. What would you like to share, Amanda?
Amanda Hecker: So I wrote it down. I have the quote. I am never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when alone. And that's from Skipio, Roman General. And just the meaning to me. It can mean many things and interpret in many ways, but the meaning to me is with the AI and the internet, it's making it harder and harder to be alone.
And doing great things really requires that agility, that being balanced, that deep work time and our attention. And so finding that time to, to truly be alone is where amazing things can happen.
Tim Crouch: Excellent. Thank you, Tim? Yes. I think so. For me it's a Mark Twain quote. Pretty, a pretty simple one. So if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. So for me, that's I think in this, in the work that we do in like actually just the way we want to show up. I think being clear about who you are and then being true to it is critical. We try to do that with the state of New Jersey, and we're not trying to claim that we're California.
California's the same thing with its own unique set of like pros and cons, benefits, drawbacks. Just be truthful and then you don't have to make up a story to make it be true.
Jim Barrood: That's great. Thanks again folks for coming together today. Wish you all the best and look forward to being in touch.
