NH Business: Information Technology

Welcome to Enterprise New Hampshire. I’m Fred Coger. Here are the words of my guest. The greatest conflict of this century has been in the economic sphere. Network attacks. Chip shortages and misinformation are the new global weapons. Fuze, government and commercial applications are of even higher urgency. The man I am quoting is JEREMY HEDGECOCK, co-founder of two successful New Hampshire tech companies, DYING and MIM. By the way, in the Internet area, Oracle acquired a diner who is now a co-founder of NEW NORTH VENTURES, a New Hampshire venture capital fund. Welcome, Jeremy. Nice to have you here. But I’m going to look at the next picture, which describes what you’re doing. NEW NORTH VENTURES Early-stage investment fund into the national security community. They have the ability to drive AI innovation, that is, artificial intelligence, cyber critical infrastructure, to solve problems in the national interest. It’s interesting and looking for companies working in these fields. welcome. Nice to have you. Thank you for your hospitality. DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK Before I ask you specifically, what got you personally involved, not just as a fund investing in innovation and some of the risks facing this country, but in the national interest? I think it’s very interesting. Yes, it’s very unique. As someone who grew up on the internet, the internet came out of a collaboration between the business sector and the federal government. How do you build a very resilient network and we’re still reaping the benefits of that network 75 years later trying to push more information technology. The space program, in a similar fashion. And, you know, my dad happens to work at SANDERS. So I remember a lot of the things he was doing, and, you know, obviously, the way those things were sort of obscured for safety reasons. But it’s this idea of ​​giving back that seems like the next thing I want to spend my life with. What is the size of the fund, or how much do you want it to invest in? Or a $50 million fund? We invest in early stage companies. Such a small team, they have some initial traction, they’re working on some really cool problems, have you made some investments? We’ve made seven investments in some of the biggest companies in New England, basically some in New England, some based in DC, some in other areas of our country. You’ve made it clear that collaboration is more important than ever. Collaboration between the commercial sector and the public sector, I assume? Yes, I think there’s a lot of distrust between the commercial sector and the federal sector, and you could see that in May with Google and Project MAVEN. You have engineers who aren’t really comfortable with the type of things they’re working on. But when we look at the issues surrounding artificial intelligence or chips at the edge of the web today, collaboration is no more important than it is today. We have to work together, we have to rebuild trust and bring people together to address these shortages and cyberattacks. So it’s not just 18-year-olds who carry out cyberattacks. It is the funded countries that are solving the chip shortage. I mean, it had a devastating effect last year, especially on businesses in this country. And a lot of things we might take for granted. Yes, this is awesome. We probably import more chips than we import oil. Energy is still a very important, important and relevant component in terms of what we’re talking about. Chips power nearly everything we do. And much of the supply chain takes place outside the United States. We have advantages in making chips and designing chips. We still have an advantage in designing chips. We have to figure out how to make manufacturing resilient. Shift from just-in-time manufacturing to just-in-case manufacturing. New England and New Hampshire have done an excellent job of this. And some of the things that we hope to continue to advance in artificial intelligence. SO NEXT FRONTIER, just talking about it. People are trying to take a lot of data and turn it into something actionable, and one of the things we like to do is some folks in the federal government already have expert systems that they use from a human perspective, and they apply them to machine learning-based angle to solve interesting problems. How do you understand the spear capability pioneered by the federal government? Transforming into business applications that only have a 510 advantage over what’s happening in the commercial space? You put together an impressive team, including a guy with some nationalist background. Yes, my partner, BRETT DAVIS, is a former CIA officer, a Navy EOD diver, but he has to work in a lot of these business partnerships. We pass someone from the Navy SEAL Foundation. We are considering commercializing products from defense contractors. It hit it off and decided to go, go, go and do something for myself. After we realize, you know, maybe we should do something about it ourselves. Well, I wish you and your colleagues all the best. JEREMY HEDGECOCK, Co-Founder of NEW NORTH VENTURES, the country’s innovative new investment vehicle. Thank you. Thanks, Fred. If you’re on this part of JEREMY’s newsletter, you can go to my W NEWS.COM

NH Business: The Future of Information Technology

Host Fred Kocher joins Jeremy Hitchcock to discuss the need for collaboration in the information technology age

Updated: Dec. 4, 2022 7:52AM ET

Fred Kocher, New Hampshire Business Host

On the latest issue of NH Business, host Fred Kocher joins New North Ventures co-founder Jeremy Hitchcock to discuss the future of information technology and the need for collaboration to address issues such as chip shortages and misinformation.

Manchester, New Hampshire —

On the latest issue of NH Business, host Fred Kocher joins New North Ventures co-founder Jeremy Hitchcock to discuss the future of information technology and the need for collaboration to address issues such as chip shortages and misinformation.