You can learn how to leverage this stuff without a PHD, and if you have a PHD you can be one of the guys doing the bootstraping. Also, NN are also only one kind of AI company.
Squirrel-Tracking Water Cannon guy is one example where someone use basically off the shelf components to hack something together. Finding the right sized niche is hard, but that's always been the core problem. How about showing what a new couch might look like in a room from a cellphone video. There are already several things that do most of the heavy lifting can you glue them together into an MVP? Is there already a product that does this? Can you get referrals from IKEA? etc.
Squirrel-Tracking Water Cannon guy is one example where someone use basically off the shelf components to hack something together. Finding the right sized niche is hard, but that's always been the core problem. How about showing what a new couch might look like in a room from a cellphone video. There are already several things that do most of the heavy lifting can you glue them together into an MVP? Is there already a product that does this? Can you get referrals from IKEA? etc.