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You seem to have a capable CEO that is able to bring in the funding. Unless he is blatantly lying I'd say what you are experiencing is pretty standard. Throwing

You seem to have a capable CEO that is able to bring in the funding. Unless he is blatantly lying I'd say what you are experiencing is pretty standard. Throwing in some buzzwords is not selling snake oil. It used to be "big data", now it's "AI", next it'll be "blockchain".

ljw1001 8y ago
> 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. > there is no 'engine'; we're a consulting company. This is pretty close to fraud. There's a huge difference in return to investors between skilled data scientists doing one-offs, and an engine that does the work on its own. If they're not even trying to build a generic AI engine, it's over the line. > Unless he is blatantly lying I'd say what you are experiencing is pretty standard. I would say that he is lying, if the description of the situation is accurate, and that "what you are experiencing is pretty standard" isn't _really_ true. But it's not far wrong either. And that's unfortunate.
- bartozone 8y ago
  > There's a huge difference in return to investors between skilled data scientists doing one-offs, and an engine that does the work on its own This is kind of the crux, right? If the investors believe that there is a future roadmap to essentially automate what the team is doing ... That's one thing. If they are investing today because the CEO is saying "Look! It's automated!", then that's pretty much on them. That said, these investors have literally millions of dollars to complete due diligence, and if they miss on something like that, it's on them. Investors are putting so much money into these companies on "demos" and without really looking under the hood. So if they complete their due dilligence, their essentially saying "we are investing in your current product and our current understanding of it". I don't think there's going to be a fraud lawsuit here. Theranos was changing the output data that the investors saw, not just saying "we do blood tests better!". That was straight up fraud because the data reviewed in due diligence was false.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  More importantly, an AI engine is IP that could make the company an attractive acquisition target at a higher price. Talented consultants not so much, because they may not stick around after the acquisition.

ljw1001 8y ago

> 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. > there is no 'engine'; we're a consulting company. This is pretty close to fraud. There's a huge difference in return to investors between skilled data scientists doing one-offs, and an engine that does the work on its own. If they're not even trying to build a generic AI engine, it's over the line. > Unless he is blatantly lying I'd say what you are experiencing is pretty standard. I would say that he is lying, if the description of the situation is accurate, and that "what you are experiencing is pretty standard" isn't _really_ true. But it's not far wrong either. And that's unfortunate.

bartozone 8y ago
> There's a huge difference in return to investors between skilled data scientists doing one-offs, and an engine that does the work on its own This is kind of the crux, right? If the investors believe that there is a future roadmap to essentially automate what the team is doing ... That's one thing. If they are investing today because the CEO is saying "Look! It's automated!", then that's pretty much on them. That said, these investors have literally millions of dollars to complete due diligence, and if they miss on something like that, it's on them. Investors are putting so much money into these companies on "demos" and without really looking under the hood. So if they complete their due dilligence, their essentially saying "we are investing in your current product and our current understanding of it". I don't think there's going to be a fraud lawsuit here. Theranos was changing the output data that the investors saw, not just saying "we do blood tests better!". That was straight up fraud because the data reviewed in due diligence was false.
jonhendry18 8y ago
More importantly, an AI engine is IP that could make the company an attractive acquisition target at a higher price. Talented consultants not so much, because they may not stick around after the acquisition.