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Isn’t this kind of what a startup is? In the early 2000s I worked for a 5 man band company that rode the pre-smartphone mobile wave to a 500 million pound valua

Isn’t this kind of what a startup is? In the early 2000s I worked for a 5 man band company that rode the pre-smartphone mobile wave to a 500 million pound valuation and 400 employees, sounds cute now I know, and our first days were similarly seat of the pants. Our CEO could sell anything, and then we built it. If you’re not defrauding customers but leaving them with a useful solution, where is the snake oil? Sounds like the engine is you guys :)

retsibsi 8y ago
> where is the snake oil Doesn't the original post describe a CEO lying to potential investors about a product that doesn't exist? Maybe that doesn't map perfectly to the 'snake oil' analogy, but it's close enough. Not everyone is comfortable with dishonesty. If it's a necessary part of doing business in this field, fine, maybe the OP needs to hear that. But lies are lies, even if sometimes they work.
- powerapple 8y ago
  isn't deep learning engine a set of scripts to solve some problems anyway? Are they trying to build PyTorch and TensorFlow? If they are proving solutions for customers, it does exist. Sometimes developer don't see the value of things because they are dealing with it everyday. For us it is scripts, for other people, it could be magic.
  - austinjp 8y ago
    No. OP has described a liar. A truthful version would be "we don't have this but my team can build it". This is not what's happening.
    - zerr 8y ago
      I doubt Microsoft has achieved the deal with IBM with the truthful version about "their" OS.
  - shoo 8y ago
    Quoting OP: > the CEO is going to investors pitching the fact that we've built/are building some deep learning engine that can be applied to all problems. > If they are proving solutions for customers, it does exist. From the perspective of a client with a particular project, provided the client's needs are met at a reasonable price, they are happy. It does not matter if their needs are met by application of some state of the art proprietary general purpose AI tech, or by application of standard open source technology and a lot of hours of consulting/professional services work. From the perspective of an investor, there is a huge difference between a company that has state of the art proprietary AI tech, and a company that merely offers professional services using the same tech than any competitor has access too. The former company has a much bigger competitive advantage / "moat" and is likely a far better long term investment. Claiming that you have proprietary tech to potential investors when you don't is fraud. Claiming that you are planning to build such tech is perhaps not fraud if you are indeed planning to build such tech, it'd be up to the investor to evaluate how likely that endeavour is to succeed.
    - indemnity 8y ago
      Actually, I agree. Pitching this to investors is fraud if you don't have it or are not planning to build it. I misread, and was more thinking of it from perspective of a customer buying a solution, and getting an AI solution in the end.

retsibsi 8y ago

> where is the snake oil Doesn't the original post describe a CEO lying to potential investors about a product that doesn't exist? Maybe that doesn't map perfectly to the 'snake oil' analogy, but it's close enough. Not everyone is comfortable with dishonesty. If it's a necessary part of doing business in this field, fine, maybe the OP needs to hear that. But lies are lies, even if sometimes they work.

powerapple 8y ago
isn't deep learning engine a set of scripts to solve some problems anyway? Are they trying to build PyTorch and TensorFlow? If they are proving solutions for customers, it does exist. Sometimes developer don't see the value of things because they are dealing with it everyday. For us it is scripts, for other people, it could be magic.
- austinjp 8y ago
  No. OP has described a liar. A truthful version would be "we don't have this but my team can build it". This is not what's happening.
  - zerr 8y ago
    I doubt Microsoft has achieved the deal with IBM with the truthful version about "their" OS.
- shoo 8y ago
  Quoting OP: > the CEO is going to investors pitching the fact that we've built/are building some deep learning engine that can be applied to all problems. > If they are proving solutions for customers, it does exist. From the perspective of a client with a particular project, provided the client's needs are met at a reasonable price, they are happy. It does not matter if their needs are met by application of some state of the art proprietary general purpose AI tech, or by application of standard open source technology and a lot of hours of consulting/professional services work. From the perspective of an investor, there is a huge difference between a company that has state of the art proprietary AI tech, and a company that merely offers professional services using the same tech than any competitor has access too. The former company has a much bigger competitive advantage / "moat" and is likely a far better long term investment. Claiming that you have proprietary tech to potential investors when you don't is fraud. Claiming that you are planning to build such tech is perhaps not fraud if you are indeed planning to build such tech, it'd be up to the investor to evaluate how likely that endeavour is to succeed.
  - indemnity 8y ago
    Actually, I agree. Pitching this to investors is fraud if you don't have it or are not planning to build it. I misread, and was more thinking of it from perspective of a customer buying a solution, and getting an AI solution in the end.