How to Kickstart an AI Venture Without Proprietary Data

A few years ago, I learned about the billions of dollars banks lose to credit card fraud on an annual basis. Better detection or prediction of fraud would be incredibly valuable. And so I considered the possibility of convincing a bank to share their transactional data in the hope of building a better fraud detection algorithm. The catch, unsurprisingly, was that no major bank is willing to share such data. They feel they’re better off hiring a team of data scientists to work on the problem internally. My startup idea died a quick death.

Despite the tremendous innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities around AI, breaking into AI can be a daunting task for entrepreneurs as they face a chicken-and-egg problem before they even begin, something existing companies are less likely to contend with. I believe specific strategies can help entrepreneurs overcome this challenge and create successful AI-driven ventures.