L128 : Journey of developing Mercator AI with Chloe Smith

Interview with Chloe Smith, co-founder and CEO of Mercator, a construction intelligence platform. Chloe provides background on her marketing and advertising career and how she came to start Mercator with her co-founder to bring data analytics to the construction industry. She outlines conducting customer interviews and POCs to validate the problem they were solving. Chloe explains how Mercator tracks construction projects through their full lifecycle and delivers insights on upcoming opportunities to general contractors, enabling them to get in front of projects earlier. She discusses focusing on specific customer profiles, building relationships with advisors, and taking an authentic approach to branding. On product features, Chloe describes the Mercator workflow of monitoring projects, companies and contacts with AI-driven alerts. Users can explore project details and connect with stakeholders. She positions Mercator as a unique, category-defining product bringing new strategic intelligence to construction firms. Looking ahead, Chloe is excited to grow their team, enrich data tracking, expand to new markets and build their product suite into a knowledge hub. She advises startups in construction to build what the industry needs based on customer conversations. Here are chapter timestamps and summaries for the YouTube video transcript: 00:00 - Introducing Chloe and Mercator AI 00:22 - Chloe's background and journey into construction tech 01:19 - Meeting co-founder and starting marketer AI 02:21 - Validating ideas through customer interviews 03:40 - Strategies for talking to construction customers as an outsider 05:04 - Applying a data perspective from marketing to construction 06:21 - Meeting co-founder and initial hypotheses 08:01 - Pivoting ideas and focusing on construction opportunities 09:13 - Early mistakes and learning to validate ideas 10:10 - Importance of customer interviews and narrowing focus 11:02 - Challenges reaching construction customers initially 12:33 - Iterating on customer conversations 14:14 - Prioritizing feature requests from customers 15:04 - Using quick POCs focused on specific users 17:00 - Advice on aligning vision and customer feedback 18:24 - Building a focused product for target customers 18:48 - Strategies for assembling a strong advisor team 21:07 - Finding advisors willing to help without equity 22:11 - Proving credibility as industry outsiders 23:51 - Tips for building a brand (focus on authenticity) 24:29 - Overview of Mercator AI platform and user journey 28:09 - Category defining product and points of differentiation 29:51 - Roadmap and future opportunities 31:31 - Advice for construction tech startups (talk to customers)