> how does one draw the most talented researchers to work for a small group of people with minimal pay over working for a large company with a high salary and a

> how does one draw the most talented researchers to work for a small group of people with minimal pay over working for a large company with a high salary and all the computational resources you might need? And what kind of product could theoretical research produce in the short term that would keep a startup afloat long enough to come up with ground breaking ideas? I think the short answer is, you don't. Between Google, OpenAI, Facebook, Baidu, Microsoft, IBM, and every other startup that is putting "deep learning" in their pitch deck to see what happens, there's enough money being pumped into the area. 90% of the results of that money being spent will be made available to everyone in the world for free. IE, if you're investing for competitive advantage, you will lose. If you're not already on one of those teams or studying the subject, I don't see any opportunity for at least a year, maybe 2. To be clear, I'm talking about opportunities around starting a new company. If your business is consulting or you're working as an engineer for an existing company, there are many applications for deep learning, but none that stand on their own. In 2 years, content generation will be a big thing. Like pandora with purely algorithmically generated music, or games with assets that create themselves in a way far superior to what we see in the current generation of "procedural generation". The big cos will have very good versions of Siri, but no startup is going to be able to touch that near term.