New startup ideas · AI and software · Horizontal AI assistants

startup idea

Procura

API that gives any AI agent legally binding authority to act for a small business.

Procura is the mandate layer agent builders call before their agent signs, pays or files anything: the small business owner verifies identity once, grants a scoped, revocable power of attorney, and Procura issues a cryptographic credential that binds each agent action to that mandate with a qualified electronic seal and an immutable audit trail.

Infrastructure and APIs
Small business
$10-100B market
Platform others build on
Global from day one

4/5

venture judge

similar startups, last 2 years (1 all-time)

78%

of 3 nearest real companies still alive

yes

3 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$1,500 · 4 weeks · 20 prospects

Prove for $1,500 in 4 weeks that founders of SMB agent startups are losing named deals over missing binding authority and will prepay $2,000 for the mandate layer.

Riskiest assumption · Founders of agent startups selling to small businesses are losing specific, nameable deals today because counterparties refuse agent actions without a binding authority record, and they will prepay a third party to fix it rather than wait for banks to set their own standard.

1Focus group: who and where

Founder or head of product at a 2-20 person AI agent startup selling committing actions to US small businesses - agents that pay invoices, sign engagement letters, or file forms - whose rollout to a bank-adjacent or enterprise-grade customer stalled this quarter over password sharing or an unverifiable agent action.

where to find 20 · The public YC Startup Directory filtered to AI agent companies selling into SMB workflows (finance, bookkeeping, procurement, filings); AI Tinkerers meetups in San Francisco, New York and Seattle, where these founders demo monthly; Product Hunt launches of agent products from the past six months, whose maker profiles link straight to the founder; r/AI_Agents threads where builders complain about banks and counterparties rejecting agent actions.

2Sell first, build later

A 90-day design partnership: Procura hand-builds the owner consent flow, the scoped power of attorney template, and the sealed audit log for one committing workflow in the partner's agent (signing, filing, or payment approval), live with one named customer within 6 weeks of signing.

the ask · $2,000 per design partnership, prepaid; per-verification and per-sealed-action pricing set jointly at pilot end and locked for 12 months.

a real yes · A paid $2,000 invoice plus a named customer scheduled for the integration is a yes; 'we would integrate this', requests for a free pilot, and intros without money are not.

3Small experiments

The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.

1. Twenty stalled-deal interviews
$250 · 10 days
Build a list of 40 agent startups from the YC directory and Product Hunt, DM or email the founder, and run 20-minute calls asking for the last deal or rollout that stalled at the moment of commitment: who refused, what the customer was asked to hand over, what would have unblocked it. No pitch until the story is on the table. One founder runs all calls in two weeks.
keep going if · 8 of 20 founders name a specific deal or rollout stalled in the last two quarters on agent authority, with the refusing counterparty named
2. Counterparty acceptance probe
$550 · 8 days
Take the counterparties named in experiment 1 - the banks, registries and suppliers that refused - and get introduced to 8 of their compliance or operations contacts through the founders who lost the deals. Show a one-page description of a scoped, revocable power of attorney plus a verifiable audit log and ask whether they would accept an agent action carrying it as the owner's act.
keep going if · 3 of 8 counterparties confirm in writing they would accept a scoped power of attorney plus a verifiable audit trail in place of the owner acting directly
3. Prepaid design-partner offer
$700 · 10 days
Build a clickable consent-flow mock in Figma and a stub API doc on a one-page site, walk the 10 most-burned founders through it, and put a one-page order form in front of each: $2,000 prepaid for a 90-day design partnership covering one committing workflow, live with one of their customers in 6 weeks. Invoice the same day anyone says yes.
keep going if · 3 of 10 founders pay the $2,000 invoice within 14 days of receiving the offer

4Collect a deposit up front

Tesla took $1,000 refundable reservations for the Model 3 and $100 for the Cybertruck before building either: the deposit is the measurement, not the revenue.

$2,000

per prospect, refundable

how · Prepaid design-partner invoice: the founder signs a one-page order form and pays $2,000 by ACH or card the same week, chosen because startup founders can pay without procurement and a payment is the only honest signal from a buyer fluent in polite interest. set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗

what it reserves · One of five design-partner slots in the first cohort, engineering time on their workflow first, and per-mandate pricing locked for 12 months.

refund · Refundable in full any time before the first sealed mandate ships to their customer; non-refundable after.

target · 3 prepaid design partnerships from 20 founder conversations within 30 days

before taking money · Do not hold customer funds or issue payment authorizations before counsel completes a money-transmitter analysis; keep pilots to signatures and filings under ESIGN and UETA.

Go: build it if

3 of 10 priced offers convert to paid $2,000 invoices, 8 of 20 founders name a stalled deal, and at least 3 counterparties accept the mandate construct in writing.

Kill: stop if

Fewer than 5 of 20 founders can name a stalled deal, or 0 payments after 10 priced offers, or 0 of 8 counterparties will accept a third-party credential.

5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open

outreach message

You are selling an agent that commits a small business to things - payments, signatures, filings - which usually means a bank or counterparty has refused an agent action, or a customer balked at handing over passwords. I am building the mandate layer: the owner grants a scoped, revocable power of attorney once, and every agent action carries a verifiable credential and audit log the counterparty can accept. I am signing five design partners at $2,000 prepaid. Do you have 20 minutes this week?

landing page

Give your agent signing authority counterparties actually accept. $2,000 prepaid reserves a 90-day design partnership: one committing workflow, sealed and auditable, live in 6 weeks. Book a scoping call - five partner slots in the first cohort.

deposit terms

Your $2,000 payment reserves one of five design-partner slots in Procura's first cohort and locks your per-mandate pricing for 12 months. It is refundable in full any time before the first sealed mandate ships to your customer, and non-refundable after. Your integration goes live with one named customer within 6 weeks of payment.

Would you run this test?

One tap. The yes-share feeds the Demand pillar of this idea's score; nobody sees who answered.

Budgets are out-of-pocket estimates for a team of one to three, US market. Size the deposit to the deal, and check the terms before taking money in a regulated line.

Scorecard

One score that balances how trendy the idea is, the demand for it and its potential for 100x, with competition measured relative to every other idea in the catalog. Recent startup trends first, government priorities second.

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 32.4 x 1.61

Open

competition: more crowded than 6% of ideas · headwind x0.97

+1.2

government priorities, secondary (2 matching grants)

Trend

Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.

Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)23
Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector0
Sector direction (live batch)0
2026 trend analyst75

Demand

Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.

YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)30
Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)8
Operator judge: real pain25

100x potential

Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.

Venture judge75
Market size axis67
Moat axis80
Technologist judge25

Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 272 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were legally, binding, authority, act, mandate, builders, call.

The idea in full

What: Procura is the mandate layer agent builders call before their agent signs, pays or files anything: the small business owner verifies identity once, grants a scoped, revocable power of attorney, and Procura issues a cryptographic credential that binds each agent action to that mandate with a qualified electronic seal and an immutable audit trail. Developers pay per verification and per sealed action; the small business sees one consent screen instead of handing over passwords. Procura holds the trust service and payment authorisations itself, so the counterparty bank, registry or supplier can accept the agent's act as the owner's act.
Why now: The radar shows 54 new companies in this cluster in the last two years, with Tasklet pitching agents that own the work, Dock a multiplayer agent workspace to run your company and Gini an AI coworker in Slack and Teams, yet Solari AI, whose pitch was agents that work out of the box for non-technical people, died in 2024 because agents that cannot be held to an authority record stall at the moment of commitment.
Wedge: first customer and entry point: The five to ten agent startups already selling to small businesses: give them a drop-in consent flow and sealed audit log so their enterprise-grade customers stop blocking rollout, charging per verified mandate.
Path to 100x: Business identity verification, e-signature and payment authorisation together form a $10-100B infrastructure market, and every agent developer who builds on Procura adds a counterparty that accepts Procura mandates, which makes the next developer's integration more valuable. Trust service and payment licences in multiple jurisdictions are slow to obtain and are what stops a well-funded agent company from replicating the layer as a weekend feature.
Ceiling: If agent adoption in small business stays inside low-stakes tasks like drafting and scheduling, nobody needs binding authority and the market stays a fraction of the size.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them: Tasklet, Dock and Gini all build agents that need this layer and none sell it to others; Solari AI attempted out-of-the-box agents for non-technical teams and is in the graveyard. Procura deliberately sells no end-user agent, which is why competing agent vendors can adopt it.
Main risk: Banks, registries and marketplaces build their own agent authorisation standard and refuse credentials issued by a third party.

Five judges

Each judge scores every idea in the catalog with a named rubric; the venture judge decides whether a card is shown at all (4-5 is venture-grade).

Venture investor
4/5
Trust service and payment licences plus a developer-side network where each integration adds accepting counterparties is compounding defensibility in a $10-100B infrastructure line.
Bootstrapper
2/5
Qualified electronic seals and payment authorisation licences in multiple jurisdictions are exactly the long regulatory path this lens punishes.
Operator
2/5
The buyer is five to ten agent startups, not the small business feeling pain, and binding authority matters only once agents leave low-stakes tasks.
Technologist
2/5
Qualified seals and scoped credentials are solved cryptography; the barrier is trust service licences, and banks and registries may set their own standard.
Risk
2/5
Multi-jurisdiction trust licences are real footing, but the wedge is five to ten agent startups and banks may set their own standard.
trends
4/5
Scoped revocable mandates with held payment authorisations mirror the 2025-2026 consent-token pattern of Agent Pay and AP2, aimed at the SMB layer networks skipped.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (legally, binding, authority, act, mandate, builders, call): 1 all-time, 0 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.

Tilt (f.k.a. Delphia)yc W18 · 2018 · Agent infrastructurealive
GitHub for Investment Methodology

Run this as an Idea Check →

The generator's reference companies

Real companies the model named as closest when it wrote the card, with their fate. A check mark is a company the radar could verify in its directory.

Public money in this direction

US federal grants, SBIR/STTR awards and open opportunities from the radar's public-money feed, matched to the idea's terms; the sector totals give the context.

grants and programs matching the idea

startup-relevant grants in Horizontal AI assistants

$72M

awarded in the sector, tracked

opportunities open now in the sector

Advancing HBV antivirals that suppress viral replication and HBsAg productionawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIAID · SBIR phase I · $314K · posted 2026-07-08
Rapid affordable aptamer-based diagnostic test for Hepatitis C virusawardhigh relevance
NIH / NCHHSTP · SBIR phase I · $501K · posted 2025-09-30
Preclinical toxicology in animals to prove the safety of a novel Alzheimer's Disease treatmentawardmedium relevance
NIH / NIA · SBIR phase II · $1M · posted 2026-09-08

All public money by sector →

Market signal

What the radar sees in Horizontal AI assistants: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.

Horizontal AI assistants · 33 → 78 → 85 → 58 → 41 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 89% aliveYC F26 live: 6 in this cluster, 5% of the batch (was 3% in S26)Since February, of 127 YC companies here: 4 acquired, 3 shut down, 31 rewrote their pitch

Horizontal AI assistants: companies, trend and grants →

Design attributes

The card is one cell of a designed set: every axis below was chosen before the text was written, and the text had to realize it.

Buyer: Small business
Business model: Infrastructure and APIs
Path to 100x: Platform others build on
Market size: $10-100B market
Capital intensity: Capital-light (software margins)
Speed to revenue: Revenue in 1-3 years
Technical depth: Deep tech: ML, hardware, bio
Go-to-market: Founder-led sales
Moat: License or regulatory moat
Geography: Global from day one
Regulation: Some regulation
Vibe: Boring business