Funny story about a misinformed startup founder...

So I do artificial intelligence/ML for clients on a by-project basis. I was contacted by an entrepreneur yesterday, and the pitch was too good not to share:

1. The person was founding a software startup. Neither he nor the other cofounder are "tech people," and so they know nothing about software.
2. He wanted me to come onboard as the "technical" founder, because I can do AI and they want to put AI into their software product.
3. He did not know anything about AI, so he wanted me to tell him what it is and what it could do for their software. I got the vibe that he had just heard about this magical thing called AI on the news, and without any understanding of it, thought "that would be cool to have."
4. They had no funding.
5. I offered a suggestion that could make their product idea successful, and they rejected it because it would be too hard.

I politely declined, and told them to contact me when they would like to hire me to build something for them.