【Tips for Building an AI Startup】
From corporates to startups, public interest in AI has grown exponentially over the past decade--and rightly so. The parallel explosion of computational power and big data, coupled with advancements in deep learning have enabled a level of automation like never before seen.
For prospective founders looking to capitalize on AI's rising prominence, however, there several key considerations to keep in mind before venturing into this field.
Regardless of how cutting edge AI is and can be, the challenges of early-stage founders remain fundamentally the same: customer/market validation, hiring, defensibility, and scalability. That means the construct of your founding team is still going to in large part determine your company's ability to navigate these challenges.
Another key question to answer from the get-go is whether or not AI is essential to your core value-proposition. This will help determine of the level technical expertise you need to develop in-house versus outsourcing.
For AI-enabled startups or those startups utilizing AI as a broader product or tech stack, there are many plug-and-play solutions developed by the likes of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft that will likely accomplish the same objective, without the heavy investment burden (in terms of both time and money).
The power of AI is real. But effectively tapping into that power eludes many early-stage founders. That is why last year we decided to narrow the focus of our accelerator to AI/blockchain only. Creating a community of like-minded peers, undergoing the same challenges forces an exchange of best practices that would otherwise never exist.
Applications for AppWorks Accelerator's next AI/blockchain only batch (AW#19) are live. Early mover deadline is 5/20, be sure to apply today >>> http://bit.ly/2LSB0My
