AI And The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Perfect Together

More machines, but more creativity Is artificial intelligence reviving the entrepreneurial spirit? It would seem that mental-labor-saving intelligent automation would lead to greater mechanization than creativity. However, today’s venture capitalists and business leaders are finding AI is opening up opportunities for innovation beyond what anyone could imagine. For starters, there’s the financial aspect.

AI makes it cheaper than ever to launch a venture. “AI enables founders to launch businesses with fewer hires and resources,” says , lecturer at Stanford University and CEO and founder of Workera. “AI can help accomplish things that you previously would need employees to do,” says , CEO of David Moore & Partners, a mergers and acquisitions firm.

“For example, incoming sales inquiries can be handled almost entirely with AI until the actual need for a personal connection. Using AI can help reduce costs and full-time employee head count. ” Then there’s the skills aspect AI can help address.

Consider how AI can mitigate the need for technical skills, Katanforoosh says. “Previously, non-technical founders “often faced the challenge of finding a technical co-founder to even begin prototyping, creating a high barrier to entry and delaying the product testing phase,” he says. “Now, with AI, a non-technical individual can articulate their vision in natural language — rather than code — and use AI tools to develop an initial version of their product.

” Such capabilities “can lead to early market traction, attracting customers and . investors, well before a technical expert is needed,” Katanforoosh adds. The result is “an even playing field from a technological standpoint,” says , managing director with Alvarez & Marsal and co-leader of the Media & Entertainment Industry Group.

“In the past, launching a streaming video service was a complex undertaking. With the advancements in modern computing platforms, there are now public cloud providers who offer much of the required infrastructure and applications that can be rented nearly out of the box. ” The same is starting to evolve with the use of AI, Shamsai illustrates.

“Considerable examples exist in advertising and content creation for film and television. Focusing on advertising and marketing communications videos, creating these has been, historically, extremely labor intensive. Gathering content, creating images, editing and creating audio voice overs are time consuming and expensive.

AI is radically changing the creation of internal and external forms of video communications—not only for advertising agency pitch meetings but for actual, released content to the public. ” This streamlined approach “enhances overall efficiency, allowing startups to operate with more compact teams,” says Katanforoosh, “As a result, it reduces upfront costs and hastens the scaling process of the business. Through AI, it’s become even easier for aspiring entrepreneurs and founders to bring their dream to life, and makes new business formation more accessible than ever.

” The creative process itself can be boosted by AI. Every startup founder and product manager understands there’s a certain amount of serendipity to the innovation process. Does it make sense to employ AI to help “systemize” the process? Moore agrees that AI can play a role in stirring the innovation pot.

“AI is based on smart questions or queries,” he says. “I use AI to help with business valuation and identify financial trends that would take hours or days to identify. You can literally use a photo of tax returns and AI can produce a trend analysis in a matter of seconds, all from a photo.

It saves me a tremendous amount of time. ” AI also shows significant promise “as a means of understanding the demographics, personas, and psychographics of audiences and consumers,” Shamsai says. “Business leaders can utilize AI to better cater to the needs, attitudes and desires of their clients.

AI can be extremely helpful in the piloting of new ideas and new business concepts that leverage and extend their established business platform. ” Still, “technology is not a replacement to human creativity or relationships,” says Katanforoosh. “That said, AI’s ability to systemize the mundane, busy work of many jobs will free up employees’ time for more impactful and meaningful work, such as creativity and innovation.

When employees have the right learning tools to master this technology, and leverage AI to automate their monotonous tasks, organizations will see a workforce that has much more time and energy to spend on driving innovation. ” AI “is great for ideation, but you need to be careful not to lose perspective,” Moore says. “AI does not have emotional intelligence.

It can’t read the room. Context is important in many business tasks. ” Katanforoosh offers words of advice for entrepreneurs, innovators, and executives looking to jump into AI.

‘With the current pace of technological advancements, founders and entrepreneurs are consistently faced with the risk of building a product that will be disrupted within a few months or years,” says Katanforoosh. “Given this period of rapid acceleration, it’s important for founders to deeply understand where more mature AI companies – like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google – are heading, and incorporate that into their own product vision and strategy. Predicting the future is an incredible skill, and one that founders and entrepreneurs cannot ignore!”.