Another startup founder and CTO here. Can confirm this. Once you get to know the framework, it's really hard to describe how productive you can become. Static type checking, fast compile times, LINQ!, ... It's a 10x ecosystem in the hands of competent developers.
So, our back-end and business logic is in .netcore/C#. Our front-end is a desktop app written in Java 11/JavaFX. The two communicate with a thin IPC layer (stdio pipes). With "new" java (11 and onwards) I'm almost as productive as with C#. If C#/.net is 10x, I'd rate Java as 8x.
And yes, using a statically typed language with strict typechecking (i.e., no implicit integral conversions like in C and C++) leads to programs that feel "engineered" (I wouldn't say overengineered) but which are easy to confidently refactor and build upon.
IOW, flexible/productinve language + static typing + good IDE (VS) = easy to develop "obviously correct" code that works when it compiles and which obviates the need for a huge battery of tests. IME.
But nothing I say will be as useful as just working with it. Try spending a few hours working with some of the bigger frameworks and I'm sure you'll get it pretty quick. If you need help then there are plenty of people to ask as well, from HN to twitter to the .net repos.
Now the question becomes whether it is worth spending time and effort learning more in terms of design patterns, DDD (maybe even CQRS and Event Sourcing) and specifics of these large third-party frameworks as well as practicing working with all that with a benefit of developing really solid enterprise-ready SaaS platform from the start VERSUS moving much faster by developing a more lightweight MVP in Python/FastAPI stack (with PostgreSQL / GraphQL / Vue in both cases) - still with basic/core enterprise features like cloud-native scalability (using Docker swarm mode) and multi-tenancy (using PostgreSQL row-level security) - with a disadvantage of having somewhat less solid architecture and/or some technical debt initially.
There's a lot to enterprise stuff that also has nothing to do with the tech [1] so I would recommend starting with the default asp.net templates and build from there. Move fast and then add in the enterprise specific patterns when you need it.
It's incredibly fast and productive and has allowed me to create more as a single-person than entire teams using other languages. That still remains true today, even more so as it removes many of the limitations of the Windows-only desktop framework.
Even if you can't use C#/.NET for all the functionality you need, there are many ways to interface with other stacks from function calls, inter-process communication, RPC frameworks, etc. It's well-supported and very common now with the rise of microservices anyway. For AI/ML specifically, I suggest looking at the Machine Learning docs which list plenty of projects like ML.NET and integrations for Tensorflow and Spark.
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/machinelearning-ai/