Currently searching for businesses that can be AI-enabled

August 26, 2019

by a searcher from Yale University in Bend, OR, USA

Hi. I'm in the midst of evaluating acquisitions that can be AI-enabled. Looking for investors and collaborators. Thanks!

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Reply by a searcher
from Yale University in Bend, OR, USA

It seems to me that the best target for this kind of investment/acquisition is to focus on companies that can use packaged solutions but aren't yet. Creating novel AI is costly and fits a VC model better, in my mind. My current focus is on services in the SMB market where small improvements can make a big difference. I've spent the past few years working with big companies on AI and while that's interesting an interesting market, it will be dominated by big services companies. The SMB market, though, is fragmented and not well served in areas. And a bit of AI could take a good cash flow and make it very good cash flow.

Reply by a searcher
from INSEAD in London, UK

Hi Dave, I find this very interesting since it’s a question I have asked myself too: which traditional small business sector could be AI enabled? I can think of some where NLP (natural language processing) and image recognition could be useful eg customer facing / claim processing or any business requiring to classify or sort eg recycling.

However, it seems like you would still require a large and relevant training dataset for your model, something that an SME is unlikely to have, at least in a ready to use format. I would be curious to hear how you have approached this issue?

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