Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

The irony here is that this also characterizes the OP. They have a team and finding, but need a task. My own thought would be "get a job" but it seems unhelpful.

What problem are you trying to solve is the only question you should be asking. Given your background and given that you are useless in terms of building products, you need to excel at connecting with users and if you want a SaaS company then you need to work within industries you know well.

Second question is, how big is your market. That is the only question that really matters to serious VCs.

I'll be honest though the fact that there are two "business guys" and only one developer is a big red flag and I would not get involved with this company. "Business guys" tend to not care for or understand technology and the reality is that in the tech space you win with technological advantage. Period. All best tech cos were started by developers (Google Facebook, Microsoft, all SaaS companies I know of even if the founders were not coding at the end they were developers by training - marc benioff, Larry Ellison) or had genius developers coupled with brilliant sales people (Apple).

The best technologists are driven and are not usually fond of "ideas" from business people. Also, remember that ML is an area that will be conquered by large companies, FANGs. It's not worth wasting your time on, if you are not a technology person.

Given what you mention about your background, I would focus on creating a company that is based on a problem the industry at least one of you knows really well, and have light technology because you are not going to win in the tech space if you have two business founders (my true honest opinion) not nowadays. Something like consulting, something where sales matters more than tech. Business people HAVE to be good at 1. strategy and 2. market so if you're not that's a red flag. Maybe you guys like hanging out, a business partnership is not a great idea.

So .. a bizdev guy who has never found any business problems and a PE guy who has never discovered any PE problems? Either you're overthinking it or just doomed: you don't have a team.

If you're interested in doing more ML work, here's an interesting thought experiment to guide your research towards an idea: ML is currently widely used for things like speech processing and synthesis, music, as well as vision. All of this is sensing and reacting to stimuli at various frequencies. But there is much more... So from the lowest to highest practical frequencies, what do we use each band for, and what would it mean to see in it?

Some examples:

- Single digit Hertz: seismic observations. Could you build a better earthquake predictor? How about an active control system for shifting building loads during an earthquake?

- kilohertz: Lightning detection systems.

- kilohertz to low megahertz: traditional FM/AM radio. Is there a better way?

- gigahertz: think your good old-fashioned microwave oven. What if it could automatically learn what it's cooking and how to best heat it evenly?

- gigahertz: could you build a smarter Wi-Fi network (or cell network) if devices reported their location when they didn't have coverage and the network could automatically adjust?

- tens of gigahertz: we now have object sensing systems in cars. what other parts of life might that kind of technology be useful for?

- infrared: what happens when a ML-based vision system wants to see in the dark?

- above the visual spectrum: ML + medical imaging (x-rays, other scans? what could be learned?)

There are lots of fun research questions to be answered and new technology yet developed. The wonderful part about doing some really structured research along these lines is that you might have to ask about "who knows about this" and run into the PhD student who's working in this area -today- but isn't yet developing a product. There is a ton of university research that could lead you towards an interesting new product: the idea doesn't have to be your own, or even come from the typical "ideas" person.

What was the PhD working on before joining your team?