Attention all machine learning founders: Why do you need ML for your business?

In all honesty, while some companies are doing real cutting edge work that has only been enabled by recent advancements in compute and deep learning, others feel compelled to use these terms given the hype. In fact, their overuse can make it difficult to get to the heart of what the company is doing, why it is different, and what is defensible about their approach. For these reasons, two questions I often ask founders are (1) why do you need to use AI to solve the problem you're focused on and (2) why specifically did you select the approach you're using?" When founders have clear, compelling answers to these two questions, not only does it provide clarity on the value being created, but also gives me confidence that the founders have assessed their options. They are not over complicating the problem by using fancy techniques, and that they have identified a real opportunity to improve processes or enable new ones.