Our Story
We are a simple company that makes complex technology. Here’s a bit about our identity, our goals, and our “collaboration passion”.
Our Founder
Andrew Mitchell, Founder & CEO
Andrew got a foundation in the two main branches of artificial intelligence by studying physics and philosophy at Harvard University. While earning his degree in physics, Andrew reviewed multivariable calculus and learned linear algebra, the foundational mathematics behind the “machine learning” technique known as gradient descent. During this period he also developed technical experience. He was a teaching assistant for Harvard and MIT students in laboratory electronics. On a year of leave, he wrote computer programs as a research assistant at Harvard’s High-Energy Physics Laboratory on the ATLAS / Large Hadron Collider project.
Meanwhile, he studied the philosophy of logic, that of thinkers such as Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Kurt Gödel, thus getting a grounding in the methods of the “rule-based” school of artificial intelligence generally associated with the 1980s.
Prior to founding Performance Technology in 2016, he received his MBA from the University of Chicago (Booth) in 2007. This company is Andrew’s fourth startup. His penultimate startup, an educational website, has over 100,000 annual users. His other experience includes serving as head of product and marketing for nationally known brands (Kaplan GMAT and GRE) and also working in computer network defense for a U.S. government contractor.
An avid fan of sci-fi, Andrew is the author of Supervirus (2010), which was a top 20 title in science fiction on the Kindle store for four months. After growing up in Exton, PA and moving around the globe, he lives in Center City Philadelphia and is happy to be back in the city of brotherly love.
Our Goals
Our goal for 2021 is to bring our first product, the Artificial Law Clerk, to the law market. This groundbreaking technology will reduce delivery time, improve clients’ outcomes, and provide competitive advantage for those who provide legal services.
To achieve our launch, we will seek a key partner or two. The idea is to license our technology to be integrated into a partner’s client service, perhaps exclusively. To date, we have received unanimous feedback from the legal field that our artificial intelligence will be a game-changer. We elaborate on our view of the partnership below.
Finally, we will maintain a laser focus on product excellence and ongoing R&D. A partnership model helps us do this by keeping marketing activities minimal. We intend to keep pace for even bigger things with the Artificial Law Clerk. While we roll out the ability to review search results automatically, we will develop the ability to construct legal outlines using artificial intelligence.
Our "Collaboration Passion"
We want to grow as the experts of helping legal experts. To this end, in 2021, we are seeking what I call “alpha partners”. This term is a play on words with a double meaning. First, our ideal partners are “alpha” in the sense that they are aggressive in seeking a winning advantage. Second, our product is still “alpha” in the sense that this will be our first client implementation.
If your legal services organization has the vision to try something new, you stand to reap a substantial reward, both in finances and in competitive advantage.
So, how do we get started? The implementation steps are pretty simple:
- Discovery: Together, we go through the new product features and compare them with your organization’s / client’s needs;
- Implementation: Our company does whatever technical work is required to integrate with your systems, with occasional feedback from your organization;
- Soft launch: We launch and test on a smaller scale, to make sure the full launch will go well;
- Full operation: We launch the service, and continue to develop and maintain it.
If you are interested, drop us a line. Artificial intelligence is coming to the industry, whether we like it or not. You can be on the advantageous side of the coming change. Let’s do it together.