chronicler

I have a startup idea which is heavily dependent on sophisticated machine learning models. I’ve come across API vendors that offer the ML models I need as a service and perform the function I need perfectly. However, they are incredibly expensive, so expensive that my product is no longer feasible from a cost perspective, a user would never buy it at this price.

This can be circumvented by building out the ML models myself, however, the money required to train the models is huge (multiple millions). What should I be doing in this situation?

Here are my options as I see them, if you feel there’s another route please don’t hesitate to add:

- Leverage the expensive APIs until I raise enough money to train my own models.

- Start with a subpar model that is trained on a limited dataset (this runs the risk of damaging the perception of how good the product can be).

- Create a landing page, gather interest, raise money and then train my own model.

From this experience, I’m starting to think once a competitor has an ML model trained and developed to catch up would be insanely difficult. How do other startups that are dependent on ML get started given the costs are so high to train models to be effective?

I've find that with all of my business ventures I never know where to find the information I need. Ideally I could just pay someone to figure out all the steps I need to take to action a venture. Right now I find obscure bits of information on the internet or get lucky and meet someone who knows about the domain and piece together the information imperfectly.

Right now I'm looking to figure out how I go about creating a neobank in a specific country and there just doesn't seem to be any useful information anywhere. I've found with obscure or difficult tasks, no one has done the research.