Chloe Smith, Founder & CEO of Mercator

Chloe Smith, CEO and Founder of Mercator, swung by House 831 for a quick interview on the back patio! We got into balancing work and self, breaking down big goals into small steps, and approaching new markets. 

Mercator detects all private and public projects in commercial and industrial construction to help you quickly qualify the opportunities that make sense for your company.

Who is Chloe?

I think I’m still discovering that. Starting a company at a young age, it can take up so much of your identity. You’re constantly on a journey of finding and re-finding yourself. Every stage of the company, you get a new insight into what matters to you at that moment. Almost four years ago, I defined myself by the things I do. Now, I  think of it more being about adventures, with this being one of the adventures I’m on.

Do you feel a push and pull with how much of the business you identify with yourself?

You want to take the wins as your own, but you also have to take the losses as yours. In the early days it was more push and pull, but now it’s finding out how to separate myself more. I started my company at 28; now, getting into my early 30’s, it’s about finding out who I am as an adult, after having gone through the trials and tribulations of your 20’s. I feel the push and pull less now, it’s more disconnected, it’s healthy. You don’t ride the rollercoaster as hard.

You can easily tie yourself to this thing that isn’t you, it needs to not be you – you can’t be the heartbeat of the business. I still see it in my peer network where that shift hasn’t happened, and they suffer because of it. 

Do you think the outcome is different when you separate yourself from the business?

I was thinking about this the other day. Are you the sum of your wins and losses? I think it’s a challenging place to start looking. If you’re an exited founder, that becomes a label you have when you walk in a room. It’s a part of how people present and think of you, which can be a challenge on its own.

How do you describe Mercator now?

Lead generation for construction companies. We use AI to detect early signals that a project is about to begin. We can get early companies involved in projects that they otherwise would’ve never known about.

How has your experience with scaling and moving in Austin, San Fran, etc, gone?

For us the question was ‘how can you build a brand that spans across different cities if you’re not physically there to fuel it?’ I look at our customer base, and they’re primarily in Alberta, because I’m here. I started trucking down to Austin more to be more apart of the community, to build that customer base more. There’s something to be said about being able to jump in on a Happy Hour on a Thursday night, especially in this industry. Things happen serendipitously, you can’t plan on making a trip and hitting all the opportunities, you just have to genuinely be a part of the community. Building partnerships, sponsoring events, attending things, being friends with folks, that has to happen naturally. And it’s not scalable, but it’s how we had to relate to expansion.

In this industry, there’s nothing to say that a firm does great work until the work shows for itself; relationships and trust have to be built over time, organically. This was the whole reason we built Mercator in the first place – elevating and building construction excellence for all. One of the challenges is, this industry has typically revolved around opacity. In the future, as more people get onboard with us, it’ll show who you should or shouldn’t work with. That can ultimately elevate the whole industry, because now we’re all working with companies who have proven they do great work.

With that drive for improvement, what sort of pushback have you felt?

The construction industry is unique because you don’t typically see people coming from outside backgrounds enter at the top. Most of the time, senior leaders have been working in the industry for a long time, working their way up. So with that, you end up seeing companies where old practices hold true; being that you don’t even think about data. The pushback then is ‘We’ve always done it this way, why optimize?’. But that’s also maybe why the industry hasn’t grown more than 1% per year over the last 20 years.

Is that why you focus on cities like Austin? Cities that are typically open to change through tech?

Looking at Texas in particular with Dallas, Houston and Austin, you have international real estate investors coming in and bringing more competition in those two markets. You’ll see companies that would otherwise scoff at a city of less than a million people coming to work.

Not only is Austin a young city, but you’re getting a lot of young leaders with arms-reach access to major centers to grow into. You get a world where you have young leaders looking for tech, heading up major companies that have a national reach.

What do you think Calgary could use to shape itself that way too?

I think it’s really connectivity. If we were able to bring Calgary and Edmonton closer together, the amount of commerce that would happen, the ideas that would come forth… We’d be operating as a city of effectively 3 million, the sum of all it’s parts. I believe that could really unlock Alberta.

My husband and I were talking about what Calgary could do to have its own vibe; something missing in the city is a pride in itself. In Austin, people are so proud of their city, to be from there and build there. We have to find that in ourselves here.

A common thread you have with one of my previous interviews (Addy Graves) is the connection to Critical Mass; I’m curious as to what you think they were able to capture that shaped a culture around creating, moving forward. 

I think it’s a ‘fake it till you make it’ attitude, a ‘I see that, I can do that’ but without actually knowing how. That ‘figure it out’ mentality was modeled  through the senior leadership to the teams, cause it had to be. They then found the people who go‘That doesn’t scare me, I can do that’. And when it worked, that fueled the fire in them to do even more, whether still at CM or on their own, founding companies. 

Something I think about frequently is the anxiety or paralysis that can come from facing something you maybe don’t know how to do in the moment.

My team has the same fear. When we start new projects and we’re going zero-to-one, when we have no idea what’s to come, what it’s gonna look like, or if it’s even gonna work. You have to put your scientist hat on and think every result, whether a good or bad, is an answer. And that’s what your after. 

It goes back to this concept of first principles; instead of trying to climb the whole mountain, let’s just tackle this chunk. In startups, one of the worst things we have a habit of doing is forgetting to go back to the basics. We often dream up these big, grand goals and try to do it all at once. We need to remind ourselves we just have to do this one step first, then the next step. One foot in front of the other.  If we can do the basics, we can make the big goals happen.

What are your ‘basics’?

Anytime we start something new, I think ‘What are the gates where we could get blocked?’. How do you get someone to open your email, how do you get them listening, how do you get them to log in. At every stage, something can block you. And at every stage you’re going to find what works. Once you string them all together, you have a working sales engine. What are the fundamentals of the thing I’m about to do, and how can I put everything together. It can be extremely demoralizing being at the first step thinking ‘What do I even do here’.

How do you deal with the demoralization, the loss during the day, and go home and be Chloe still?
I had to learn this; it did not come intuitively. Being your own boss means the clock never stops, you always know what's to come. I have an amazing partner who reminds me that we have to go live our lives outside of this business. My relationship with my husband, that’s my line in the sand, that’s what’s helped me to set boundaries around my work. You have to have the self-discipline to disconnect yourself from the work and spend time learning more about who you are outside of work, cultivating more of who you are and what matters to you. 

What do you do to figure out who you are?

I paint, rock climb, mountain bike, surf; often it’s reconnecting with what I was passionate about before this. My work is very mental, being creative mentally is for work, being creative physically is my outlet outside of work. It’s a good balance between the two. And there’s something important about mental boredom, if I can just let my mind wander while my hands are busy painting or knitting, it’ll go off and solve problems I’ve been stuck on when i’ve tried to sit down and tackle them. 

 Have you been reading lately?

A lot of fiction.  I’ve been really into biographies and epics lately, too. I stopped reading for a time because all I would read is business books, and I felt I had lost something in myself when all I was thinking about was business andd work. I used to be able to talk about the most random topics because I was spending my time just being curious about stuff and exploring random things. Part of my own creativity comes from entertaining my mind with things that just interest me for curiosity's sake. I think interesting thoughts and ideas start to pop up if I allow my mind to trail.

What comes next?

I’ve been seeing solution-market-fit, product market fit and go-to-market fit, as the three trials; once you have those three trials down, with some operational sustainability, you can start scaling. For us, we’re in go-to-market, we have fantastic solution-market-fit and product-market-fit. After we get through this last one, go-to-market fit, then it’s time to start scaling. That’s what’s next for Mercator

For me, I’m still figuring it out. You know, sometimes you’ve been running so fast at a specific objective, you forget to think about dreaming bigger than that. I didn’t realize I would get the opportunity to dream from this vantage point. My pursuit of self-exploration is a real passion of mine.

Thank you Chloe!

Writer | Sam Doty

Images provided by Mercator