The Fedtrade® podcast recently interviewed Bill Noonan, Chief Business Development Officer of Choose New Jersey, as part of our SelectUSA Investment Summit Spotlight series. Choose New Jersey is the state’s leading non-profit business attraction organization, inspiring businesses, entrepreneurs, and innovators to make New Jersey their home. They provide a range of free, confidential resources and tools to assist in location decision, and the team offers personalized guidance at every stage of establishing or expanding operations in New Jersey. Members of Choose New Jersey will be attending the 2025 SelectUSA Investment Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, from May 11-14, 2025.
Learn more about Choose New Jersey on their website or follow them on LinkedIn. Connect with Bill on LinkedIn.
Key Takeaways
- The industries largely served in New Jersey are life sciences, technology, food and beverage, manufacturing, logistics, and film and entertainment.
- New Jersey has more PhDs and engineers per capita than any state in the United States, offering one of the most educated workforces in the country.
- With offices around the world, Choose New Jersey is a nonprofit organization focused on economic attraction.
- Startups often underestimate the cost and time required to enter the U.S. market.
[a copy of the written transcript is here]:
Hello, welcome to Fedtrade®. I’m James Hastings of Rothwell Figg. Joining us on the podcast today is Bill Noonan, Chief Business Development Officer of Choose New Jersey, which is New Jersey’s leading nonprofit business attraction organization. Bill will share how Choose New Jersey works with the state government, and private and academic sector partners to help promote New Jersey as a preferred destination of international companies seeking to do business in the United States. Bill, welcome to Fedtrade®.
Thank you so much for having me. Look forward to the discussion.
Bill, what is Choose New Jersey?
Choose New Jersey is an economic attraction organization. We’re a nonprofit 501(c)(3). We work very closely with our partners at the state, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, and the governor’s team in his front office on identifying and reaching out to folks around the world who may be interested in coming to New Jersey. And we do this in a number of ways, but we can get into that a little bit more later.
What types of companies or entities does Choose New Jersey serve?
So we have, as I mentioned, we have offices around the world and we do outreach into a variety of sectors. The ones that are mostly handled here in New Jersey are:
- Life sciences, which can be pharmaceutical, med tech, biologics, anything that kind of falls under that umbrella of life sciences;
- Technology, which includes FinTech, AI, any number of things;
- Food and beverage, whether it’s in manufacturing or innovation;
- Manufacturing or advanced manufacturing. We have over close to 10,000 manufacturers in the state;
- Logistics. Being on the East Coast, logistics play a major portion of what we do. At any time, 20% of the U.S. GDP is either created or travels through the state of New Jersey;
- And then film and entertainment. We have a lot of great assets when it comes to film, actually film started here. The first Hollywood was in Fort Lee, New Jersey until they found out about better weather on the West Coast.
Interesting. What are some common characteristics of startups or established companies who seek out your U.S. market entry services?
So when we’re talking to companies, one of the major things that we do is we help them with site selection. So we’ll help introduce them to the market to understand what they’re looking to do. They give us specifics about whether they’re looking for a manufacturing site or they’re looking for office space. And we will put them in touch with leading real estate brokers to help with that. We help them understand what it take to start a business. So a lot of the how you come to New Jersey, how do you start a business, who should they be talking to, whether it’s from legal support, accounting support. We introduce them to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority if there’s any kind of incentive packages that would be available to them. Another thing that we have on our board of directors – being a nonprofit – are a number of universities and colleges throughout the state. So if there’s anything that they need to do around research or if they’re looking to do internships, we introduce them to universities. Everything from Princeton University, which is the number one university in the U.S., some people say the world, to Rutgers, Rowan, NJIT, Stevens Institute of Technology, Stockton, Ramopo, Montclair State, just to name a few that we work with. And we also help them with research. So if a company is looking to decide between New Jersey and some other state, what kind of research do they need? Do they need to know about what the taxes are relative one to another? What does our workforce look like compared to others? We are blessed by having one of the most educated workforces in the United States. We have more PhDs and engineers per capita than any state in the United States. So it’s that, it’s the location. And then finally when somebody does come here, we support them with some marketing efforts, whether it’s ribbon cuttings or getting the story out of why they chose New Jersey.
What do you believe are some common challenges that startups or established companies have in seeking to go to market in the United States?
One of the major things that startups have to understand when entering the U.S. is the cost and time to market. This is less of a problem for the established companies because they’re the ones that are going to have more of a financial background or understanding of expanding into another country, whether they’ve already done it in Europe or in Asia or in Africa. You have to understand that you’re not going to land on the ground and have 100 people banging on your door. That takes marketing. You have to do a lot of work prior to coming to the States. I think a lot of folks think that business development is easy. It can be a challenge and understanding that there will be a process and a timeline for that is very important.
Do you also work with trade associations in the state of New Jersey to help international entities identify the particular sectors they’ll be working in and the partners that would be a good fit?
Absolutely. So again, on our board of directors, it’s the folks from BioNJ, which helps the life sciences companies, TechUnited, which handles the technology companies, and also on our board are members of our labor unions. So if you’re looking for support from labor as well, because it’s not only just having the qualified people that you will hire, but it’s having the support of labor where they can help you in innumerable ways. And we’re happy to discuss that with folks as they’re looking to come to the state.
I understand that Choose New Jersey also works with a network of professional service providers.
Yes, so like I said, one of the first things people come to us say, I need a location. Well, that’s great. We get the details and we can send them some information about locations. But we highly recommend that they use a real estate broker. Real estate brokers do not cost anything for the client. So it’s great to have their expertise in helping you find a location. We also suggest highly that you get a local attorney. You may have an attorney back in your country, but unless they have a footprint here and understand what it’s like to do business in the U.S., and specifically in New Jersey, we think that’s very important. Same with accounting, understanding tax laws, all of the other things that you need to start your business. And it could also be for support and recruiting. How do you recruit people? What is it like to do business here? All of those things are important.
You had mentioned a profile of a company seeking to do business in the United States who may be looking for real estate or a location to locate their business. Are there other companies that you work with who perhaps are not establishing their own business in the United States, but would rather seek out manufacturer and distributor partners?
There are times that folks come to us and say, hey, I need like a 3PL, , somebody who’s going to help them while they’re transitioning to coming to the state. If they’re looking for joint ventures or things along those lines, there’s times that we can help with that. But most of the times we’re talking to people who are actually looking to move to the state. If they’re looking to hire business development folks in the state, that’s really what we do more than anything else.
You had mentioned that Choose New Jersey focuses primarily on high tech sector fields. How important in your experience is regulatory compliance?
As anybody wants to come to the United States, as I had said earlier, you really should be engaged with an attorney. Whether it’s to be your general business attorney, or if you specifically have intellectual property that you want to protect, it’s important that they understand what you’re bringing to the state or to the United States and how that needs to be protected. Again, I cannot emphasize enough the need for the correct representation.
What you’re describing sounds like a soft-landing checklist.
Yes, and we do that. We go through with a company, have you done this? Have you thought about this? They’re soft landing spaces that we have. So whether they’re looking to just kind of dip their toe in the water, or if there’s someone or some company that it’s a little bit more established and looking to jump in with both feet, we can handle anything from a startup that’s looking to hire one or two people or a founders looking to come over, to major multinationals who we support as well.
Does Choose New Jersey have any incentives or grants that are available to international companies?
So Choose New Jersey is not the organization that has these incentives or packages, but we work very closely with our partners at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. And on a daily basis, my team is reaching out to them and talking about companies and seeing what they have. I want to say it’s over 75 different programs that are available and it ranges from grants to tax incentives to bonding capabilities. There’s a wide variety of options that they have and we put the companies in touch with the right person at the EDA to support them.
You had mentioned working with the EDA. What are some of the other companies or organizations that you work with that perhaps we have not mentioned?
I think we’ve gone through the associations that we work with, but we also work on the county level and with other economic development groups within the state. So also chambers of commerce and local folks. If it’s a very simple startup and they just need to figure out how to get an LLC here in the States, we introduce them to the Business Action Center. So depending on the organization and what they’re looking to do, we really are that concierge service for them where we’re really that point of the spear to help them meet the people that they need to meet in the state to become successful. One of the keys is we don’t charge for what we do.
In reviewing your website, we see many success stories of Choose New Jersey. Are there any that you would like to share with us?
So I am happy to say that last year, Choose New Jersey had our best year for a number of companies that we helped bring to the States. It was over 60 companies. My team has done a great job. Well, there are two companies out of India that I want to highlight. One is a biologics company and they are just starting their manufacturing process here. We helped them find their location. We helped them find the person who does their payroll and benefits. We introduced them to their attorneys. We introduced them to the folks who built out their space. We introduced them to the Department of Labor. We introduced them to environmental folks. We introduced them to the local mayor. And we’re supporting them as they’re doing their ribbon cutting. So they took all the things that we do. We supported them and they had looked all over the country. They looked up and down the East Coast, they went to the West Coast, they went to Texas, and they landed in New Jersey. They couldn’t be happier. Then there’s this other company from India that joined us two years ago and in the last two years they have hired 54 PhDs. I think that just speaks to the capabilities that the state has.
We also see that you had a Canadian company, RX Source, who located in New Jersey.
So RX Source is a great story. RX Source was based in Secaucus. They needed to expand. And so they hired somebody to go out and look in the United States for a place to expand. And they had a number of locations, but none seemed to work out. And this is something that they told us. There were some states that they couldn’t go to because of the weather. There were some states that they couldn’t go to because of the cost. And then there were some states they couldn’t go to because of the talent. Then they came back and they said, well, maybe we should look in New Jersey. So their first outlook was to move out of New Jersey. Well, I am pleased to say that they found a location in New Jersey where they’re going to expand. And all of those needs that they were looking for, such as reliable infrastructure, great workforce, and at a reasonable cost were found in New Jersey.
Nicely done. I understand that Choose New Jersey will be attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit in National Harbor, Maryland next month. Can you tell us a little about the Summit and what you do there?
Absolutely, we’ve been going to the Summit every year. We have a large booth. We bring a lot of our partners with us. So you’ll see folks from the EDA there. You’ll see folks from different counties that are there. There are different organizations that will be supporting us as we’re there. We’re going to have a large delegation of my team that are there and some of my international team. I realized that I forgot to say that we have offices around the world. So we have three offices in Europe: one in Ireland, one in the UK, and one in Germany, which handles the rest of Europe. We have an office in Israel. We have two offices in India. We have a presence in the Asia Pacific. Our headquarters are in Taipei, but we have an office in Shanghai, an office in Tokyo, and an office in Seoul. And we also have a West coast office in California that supports us when it comes to AI and film and television.
What are some of the benefits of attending SelectUSA?
I think any company that is looking to come to the United States, that’s an opportunity for them to see anyone that they need to meet in one location. So rather than having to come to the states and go to six different states, you come to SelectUSA and you can see all of those states over the couple of days that you’re in Washington.
You had mentioned how you attend SelectUSA. There are also several of the states in the United States and their economic development organizations that attend SelectUSA. 50 states, there are territories, regional economic development organizations, and even city economic development organizations. It can get a little overwhelming for international companies going to the conference. How do you help them differentiate New Jersey from other states that they may be considering.
So it’s very simple. We will talk to them about the reasons of why New Jersey. It’s all about location and talent. So depending on what a company is looking for and what they’re looking to achieve, we can identify what within our state makes us what we call superlative. Like I said, the number one K through 12 education system. It’s a great place to raise a family. If you’re from anywhere in the world, one of the great things about New Jersey is our diversity. We’re really proud of our diversity. So whether you’re coming from India or somewhere in Southeast Asia, somewhere in Europe, you’re gonna find a diaspora who eats the same food that you eat, prays the same way that you pray, has the same values. So we’re a very welcoming states. We really appreciate folks from all over the world. Listen, we are the fourth smallest state in size, but the 10th largest in population. So it’s a very condensed state. And like I said, a lot of logistics. So we move people and products really well and we get along, which is great.
For international businesses who are seeking to find more information on Choose New Jersey, what resources are available?
So the first place I would start is with our website, ChooseNJ.com. People tell us how great our website is, and I love hearing from folks, yes, I found this on your website. Can you tell us a little bit more? And on that website, it tells you about each one of our sectors. It gives you success stories. There are videos from different counties. So there’s a great deal of information that you can find out there. And then there’s a way to contact us as well.
Are there any other features of Choose New Jersey that you would like to share with us that you have not already?
I just want to say that if folks are looking for a point of contact to find out as much information as they want about our state, you couldn’t pick a better place to start than Choose New Jersey. We are tied in with all the other organizations within the state. We are from the top to the bottom of the state. We cover the entire state. We’re not regional. We don’t do just one city or one county. We cover the entire state. So we’re a great starting point.
Bill Noonan, Chief Business Development Officer of Choose New Jersey. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much and I appreciate the time today.