CrossCompute: Making Data Accessible

Interviewee: Roy Hyunjin Han | Founder & Computational Engineer

January 2025

Q: Can you give a brief overview of CrossCompute?

A: CrossCompute is an online platform for sharing and running engineering and utility project planning tools. 

Q: What problem are you solving, and how is your solution unique?

A: There is an accessibility gap between data analysts and non-technical users who are tasked with doing feasibility studies, scoping energy resilience projects, and writing grants to fund utility and public works. CrossCompute’s software development kit and platform simplify the process of developing and distributing tools that are essential to these tasks. Our solution is specialized for deploying decision support tools in scenario planning, electricity infrastructure, and hazard mitigation. 

Q: Who is your ideal user or customer?

A: Our ideal customer is an organization that supplies data products to stakeholders in local government, utility providers, and grant writers. Our ideal users are analysts who are responsible for creating a specific data product such as a daily table, chart, or map. CrossCompute maintains the infrastructure that delivers access to the data products as user-friendly runnable tools. Analysts who can code will find value in our software development kit and JupyterLab extension. Analysts who cannot code can run tools made by other analysts. 

Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced in developing or launching your product/service?

A: Building awareness and trust with new customers is challenging. Not all municipalities can afford expensive third party consultants who research requirements and analyze data to test blue sky versus gray sky scenarios. Those same entities do not realize that tools exist to perform these analyses and assist in applying for hazard mitigation grants. CrossCompute is on a mission to help make this happen. 

Q: Tell us about the growth of your product or business.

A: Our first platform began in 2011 as a prototype for hosting user-contributed decision support tools. Our first user-contributed tool helped policymakers compare strategies for increasing electricity access by estimating how much money to authorize for capital projects (loan amounts) and how much to charge per kilowatt-hour (levelized cost) for each electrification technology. The tool could also be used to plan tax incentives and interest rates. We tested an early version of our platform in 2012 for analysts working on optimizing building inspections for fire risk and assisting in the response to Hurricane Sandy. The analysts ran tools for generating interactive heat maps and geolocating addresses. Later versions of our platform were used for energy scenario planning at the World Bank (2018-2019), analytical training at CUNY Queens College for the NYC Open Data Week Student Showcase (2018-2019), and report automation on utility reliability benchmarks for the American Public Power Association (2020-2025). 

Q: What inspired you to start this company?

A: I was building geospatial models for energy scenario planning and realized that converting a collection of scripts into a secure and scalable web application was a painful process that took months and sometimes years.  My vision is to provide a streamlined process for turning scripts into broadly accessible web-based tools and to provide a mechanism by which tools can generate revenue for their creators. 

Q: How does CrossCompute fit into the larger tech landscape?

A: Most products in our target industries are general purpose software, owned by large companies. We believe that our innovation will enable smaller teams and independent researchers to produce analytical tools and data streams that provide specialized information for state and local planners. 

Q: Who are your biggest competitors, and how do you differentiate yourselves?

A: Our biggest competitors dominate their respective industries and include ESRI, Palantir, SAS, Microsoft, and Tetra Tech. We differentiate ourselves by focusing on a niche market that is too small to be of interest to the giants. 

Q: What is your funding strategy? Have you secured any funding yet?

A: We believe in earning money the hard way, by serving customers and building products. 

Q: What are some exciting trends you see in your industry, and how are you capitalizing on them?

A: There has recently been renewed interest in edge computing and other decentralized technologies such as blockchain. We are developing a hybrid peer to peer architecture for hosting runnable tools, which would enable owners of individual devices such as phones and tablets to participate in edge computing and the global data economy. 

Q: What is a surprising fact about your company or product?

A: Many of the same spatial optimization and obstacle avoidance algorithms we developed for microgrid site selection and site design can be used to plan small modular microgrids on the moon. 

Q: What has been the biggest accomplishment for your team so far?

A: Since 2020, our system is generating reports that are sent to 700+ electric utilities. 

Q: What advice would you give to first-time startup founders?

A: Opportunities come in many shapes and sizes. Keep talking with people and you will eventually find the right one. Take care of your health and family and don't lose sleep because it is going to be a long journey. 

Q: Do you have any upcoming milestones or announcements?

A: We will be launching a series of collaborative workshops this year, for analysts who are interested in making runnable tools and improving their technical skills. The workshops will take the format of an introductory talk followed by a mob programming session, during which volunteers take turns controlling the keyboard while others provide suggestions and direction. 

Q: Anything else you’d like to share?

A: Our mission is to inspire people to make tools that improve health, safety and quality of life. We are grateful to all the people who helped us along the way