Overview

In this project, you will develop a business plan for a novel AI application.

• Your application can either be a for-profit business idea or a non-profit project as long as it solves a relevant problem.
• The focus of this project is not on the technological aspects, rather on the business side of the application. But try to stay grounded and consider the limitations of current technology.
• By the night before the second session, form into groups of 4-6 people and decide on the general topic of your plan.
• Due date: 2/17 11pm: Submit a document containing
  1. Names of the members of your group (4-6 members per group)
  2. The Title of your project (you can change this later if needed)
  3. A brief, one-paragraph description of the AI application idea that your group wishes to pursue
• Due date: 3/10 11pm: Submit the final report and your video.

Video Pitch

To facilitiate the review of your projects, please create and submit a 2-3-minute video pitching your idea (with an absolute maximum of 3:00 minutes). The video should contain the most important components of your final report. No need to focus on making a fancy video, it is sufficient to just record some team members presenting your key slides in a clear and concise fashion.

Final Report

Your final report should be a business plan much like you would make a pitch as the founders of a company to a venture capital investor. Final report format: Slide deck with 15-20 slides including Appendix (Google Slides preferred). Write out speaker notes as if you were presenting. In particular, your plan should answer the following questions (adapt accordingly for non-profit):

1. Market Opportunity: What problem are you solving? What is the unmet need in the market? Who is your customer? How many are they, and how would you segment them? What is the total size of the addressable market?
2. Product / Service Offering: What is your proposed solution? (i.e., for this project, you should have machine learning or other AI techniques as part of the solution). Why do you think an AI application is especially appropriate as a solution?
3. Technology: How will it work? What is your expected approach to AI are you taking (e.g., neural net) How will you obtain or create training data? How will you evaluate the effectiveness of the AI? What issues do you expect with regard to the data (e.g., privacy)? What is different about your approach/ application of AI? Have there been similar/ analogous attempts? What are the biggest technical challenges, and how do you expect to overcome them?
4. Business Model:How will you make money, if for-profit, otherwise how will the enterprize sustain itself? How much value is your application creating (i.e., cost reduction/ revenue)? How much of this value can you expect to capture with your application? Share examples of similar business models if possible.
5. Market Analysis: What is your competitive advantage (i.e., assuming you are successful, what will keep others from copying what you’re doing). What companies are doing something similar or analogous? How/ were they successful?
6. Distribution / Operations:What is your go-to-market strategy? How will you reach your customers? How will your company work with other companies in the space (e.g., access to data, distribution, B2B relationships)? Are there any governmental/ regulatory dependencies?
7. Financials / Milestones:How much money do you expect to need to launch the business? What key milestone do you want to reach with this funding to prove out the business?

For the business plan, use compelling and relevant visuals. Be as specific as possible, as if you were the CEO of the company making the case to the investors. Put a stake in the ground, and make a logical, fact-based argument for why the AI application makes good business sense. As much as possible, back up assertions with quantitative and qualitative evidence and include sources for your data. In the end, make sure to have a clear ask (i.e., funding).