Artificial Intelligence

How Startups Can Compete in AI and ML

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Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook acquired 13 AI-based startups in 2020. Even if your goal is to run the business yourself, there are opportunities for startups and early founders to create differentiators in the field of AI and ML.

Global players are acquiring startups not just for the product or services they offer but also to lay their hands on the top talent. 

Businesses compete not just in technology but in all industries to onboard specialists- the select few who know how to create real-world solutions from artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Whether you look at acquisition as an exit strategy or wish to build a competing product for the market, there is plenty of room for you to experiment and build using AI and ML.

Let’s dive into use cases of AI that help startups compete and grow.

How AI helps startups grow and scale to compete for

1. Improve the Customer Experience

With the availability of infrastructure on the cloud, there’s a lot more flexibility for startups to build intelligent contact centers in a shrunk timespan. Remote work and the pandemic have forced companies to look at the cloud as a possible solution to everything they do.

AI and ML can help improve the customer experience with intelligent voice recognition systems and hyper-personalization of CX with data housed and processed on the cloud.

With such automation, startups can free up resources and talent to work on pressing challenges and address complicated customer issues. AI and ML can be super advantageous in serving customers better or creating tailored products and services.

For example:

Spotify, a digital music service, uses Facebook chatbots to help customers quickly search, listen and share music. The bot suggests music based on your mood, what you’re doing, and what specific genre you want.

Another great example is Pizza Hut. The company uses Facebook Messenger and Twitter to allow customers to order pizza online. You can reorder your favorite pizza, ask for current deals and discounts, or even ask questions to the chatbot.

2. Enable Data-driven Decision-making

Decision-making involves handling enormous amounts of data, fishing it for patterns, and basing decisions on the resulting insights. Honestly, we can’t think of a single company or industry that may not benefit from improving the quality and speed of their decision-making.

Faster and more data-driven decisions can put companies ahead of the competition, help launch new products faster, boost business intelligence, improve the bottom line and stay relevant continuously.

“For many people, artificial intelligence, or AI, is a mere concept, something that will happen in the future. But, in reality, AI has already become a part of mainstream businesses”

-Michael Georgio, CMO of Imaginovation, a Raleigh, 

N.C.-based AI development company.

AI and ML seem the obvious choices when it comes to making decision-making more efficient and accelerated. 

Related reading: What Does AIOps Mean for Startups?

3. Business Forecasting

Business forecasting has numerous use cases in all industries and organizations. Data is the new oil, and organizations are always looking to leverage it to forecast incidents and financial projections.

For a manufacturing organization, this might take the form of predictive maintenance and supply chain cost optimization. For another organization, it could shape sales and marketing forecasting, revenue objectives, and strategies to reach there.

As companies generate more data daily, they need to leverage it to move forward, plan innovative products and services and transform how they do business.

AI and ML can prove essential tools in the arsenal of these organizations.

4. Mitigate Fraud with AI and ML

Whether it’s high-stakes industries such as fintech, banking, and insurance or any organization guarding against cyber attackers, artificial intelligence and machine learning can help strengthen the security posture.

With remote workforces, companies have become easier targets for bad actors, and AI and ML-based cybersecurity aims to change that.

By learning from past data and patterns, these advanced systems can detect fraud quickly. Not only that, AI can automate fraud detection and prevention so that there’s less reliance on humans and more on data, eliminating guesswork and introducing more robustness.

Related reading: What is Hybrid Intelligence and Why is it the Future of AI

5. Automate your marketing efforts with AI tools

AI can transform marketing from its roots. You can use AI-powered tools to improve different aspects of marketing (including content generation), manage digital campaigns, and automate email marketing.

For example:

There are numerous AI tools available that can help you discover content ideas plus write and optimize your content for different audiences. Tools like Curata and MarketMuse use AI to help marketers save time on these tasks.

Startups can use programmatic advertising to reach a broader audience base and improve overall marketing efforts.

How to tackle challenges in AI/ML for your startup

MarketsandMarkets predicted that the machine learning market will amount to $8.81 billion by 2022 and reshape the global economy. However, more startups talk about an AI game than play it.

There are reasons. In most cases, startups don’t have access to an expansive team of data scientists and AI and ML specialists like the big guys do. But more importantly, most founders are not habitual of looking at everyday problems from an AI lens.

When used correctly, these systems can empower you to achieve a competitive edge over small businesses and large corporations.

When you leverage AI-based systems, you can derive valuable business insights from large amounts of gathered data with higher accuracy, lower overheads, and greater efficiency. Even your customer service department can greatly benefit from AI software, strengthening your brand image and customer satisfaction rates.

“To utilize the power of AI in the best way, it is vital that you understand the costs and nuances associated with the use of AI systems. If you’ve been successfully convinced to give AI a try, make sure that you conduct a proper impact analysis before making any major changes in the workplace.”

Start slow and small, measuring costs against benefits to make the best use of your initial investment.

With the right digital partner, product strategy, and unified customer experience, your startup will accelerate toward growth and success.

By monetizing strengths and working around weaknesses, startups are poised to benefit from AI/ML. Contact us today if you’re looking for AI & ML services to make the journey a bit more smooth.


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