My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this.
I indicated that it was actually quite effective without ML, and that it was easier to explain to users this way. They kept prodding around on the ML stuff, and how we might be able to use ML to accomplish roughly the same thing.
A week later they said that they were no longer interested because, although they liked what our tech was able to accomplish, it didn't fit with their investment thesis — which was all about ML.
My wife asked me why I didn't just make some stuff up and say we could do v2 using ML. Perhaps she was right.
1: http://www.beelinereader.com/individual
update: in response to feedback below, I edited the link to point to a page with relevant content instead of our generic landing page. Lesson learned!
I indicated that it was actually quite effective without ML, and that it was easier to explain to users this way. They kept prodding around on the ML stuff, and how we might be able to use ML to accomplish roughly the same thing.
A week later they said that they were no longer interested because, although they liked what our tech was able to accomplish, it didn't fit with their investment thesis — which was all about ML.
My wife asked me why I didn't just make some stuff up and say we could do v2 using ML. Perhaps she was right.
1: http://www.beelinereader.com/individual
update: in response to feedback below, I edited the link to point to a page with relevant content instead of our generic landing page. Lesson learned!