You need initial capital or connections. Right now in Canada the well connected are flushed with free money from the government. Just say you are doing AI or add AI to the company name (nope, elasticsearch document scoring recommendation is not AI!) and you get millions from the government to push your way into the market.
I’d love to see some of that money. I’m Canadian and you’re right, the stuff that gets put out as AI is quite sad. They tried to pitch me as well to get my feedback on their platform.
