My last two employers have been startups in the defense and medical industries - both heavily regulated fields. Both have external investors, but neither is a slave to PE. As it pertains to tech (which is the relevant scope here, since we're talking about AI), the American regulatory atmosphere is not an outright deterrent to new businesses. Far from it.
> I don't understand how attempts to defraud covid-related government programs...
It's support for the notion that blowing away most barriers to entry in critical industries (like medical) would cause more harm than good. These testing sites grew on trees, and none of them provided accurate results in a reasonable amount of time. The reason COVID testing fraud was viable was because there was no oversight - force a little bureaucracy into the works, and fraudsters wouldn't see dollar signs. Not an elegant solution, but we live in an inelegant world.
> these "mom-and-pop" AI startups can (and already do) exist.
Maybe my phrasing is little too tongue-in-cheek. My goal here is to draw a line between "small businesses" amd "small tech businesses." These are wildly different things.
When non-tech people refer to "small business" they usually mean firms worth ~$1M or less. The family-owned bodega down the street, for example. I 100% agree that bureaucratic regulation hurts these small businesses much more than it helps society at large.
"Small tech business" has a totally different meaning. A Series A AI startup could easily be worth $30-50M. Regardless of regulation, it has high cost barriers arising from its compute needs, and the personel to wrangle those computers. Basic regulatory oversight constitutes a proportionally smaller cost for such a firm.
> I don't understand how attempts to defraud covid-related government programs...
It's support for the notion that blowing away most barriers to entry in critical industries (like medical) would cause more harm than good. These testing sites grew on trees, and none of them provided accurate results in a reasonable amount of time. The reason COVID testing fraud was viable was because there was no oversight - force a little bureaucracy into the works, and fraudsters wouldn't see dollar signs. Not an elegant solution, but we live in an inelegant world.
> these "mom-and-pop" AI startups can (and already do) exist.
Maybe my phrasing is little too tongue-in-cheek. My goal here is to draw a line between "small businesses" amd "small tech businesses." These are wildly different things.
When non-tech people refer to "small business" they usually mean firms worth ~$1M or less. The family-owned bodega down the street, for example. I 100% agree that bureaucratic regulation hurts these small businesses much more than it helps society at large.
"Small tech business" has a totally different meaning. A Series A AI startup could easily be worth $30-50M. Regardless of regulation, it has high cost barriers arising from its compute needs, and the personel to wrangle those computers. Basic regulatory oversight constitutes a proportionally smaller cost for such a firm.