what people get wrong when building ai ventures - jack owen, talent associate, entrepreneur first
TRANSCRIPT
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What people get wrong when building AI ventures
@jackwowen
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Entrepreneur First has more machine learning investments than anyone else in Europe
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We have built 100 companies worth collectively over £1billion
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EF solves the biggest problem connected with starting a company...
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We fund you to find a cofounder
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We fund you to find a cofounder
(and come up with an idea)
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We fund you to find a cofounder
(and come up with an idea)
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Smart people have terrible ideas
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You probably have a bad idea
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‘Ideas’ become hammers looking for nails
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An idea is about a solution
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People like you love solutions
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“My idea is to use Deep Reinforcement Learning to optimize transportation schedules.”
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Why might this company fail?
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1. Deep reinforcement learning doesn’t work well enough
2. This isn’t a big enough problem for transportation companies
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1. Deep reinforcement learning doesn’t work well enough
2. This isn’t a big enough problem for transportation companies
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Every EF company to date has failed because they couldn’t find a big enough problem to uniquely solve
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Find a real problem, and the solution tends to follow
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In a great market — a market with lots of real potential customers — the market pulls product out of the startup”
“
Marc Andreesen
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A “hair on fire” problem: Something so painful and urgent that the customer will try any solution...
...even the half-baked, imperfect, ‘ideas’ you initially come up with
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Product-market fit
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Market-product fit
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Solutions are myopic
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“My idea is to use Deep Reinforcement Learning to optimize transportation schedules.”
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AI means that you have no excuse not to be ambitious
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What we have learnt about ambition
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1. Lowering ambition doesn’t save you2. You have to bake ambition in from the
start3. Ambitious companies create a
“behaviour explosion”
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Make something easy that’s (a) hard and (b) a bottleneck
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“If ____________ were easier, there’d be way more demand to do it – and we’d be the gatekeeper”
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Common mistake: making something easier that’s not a bottleneck
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Your opportunity cost is too high to do something that’s not huge
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EF funds you to find a cofounder
Cohorts start April & October100 people for 3-5monthsApplication deadline: 31st December
What people get wrong when building AI ventures
joinef.com/apply | @jackwowen