New startup ideas · B2B, security and compliance · B2B SaaS
startup idea
Syndic
Machine-readable catalog, pricing, and entitlement endpoints for enterprises, hosted as an API.
Syndic is product data syndication infrastructure: it takes an enterprise's existing catalog, price books, availability, and policy documents out of its ERP and PIM and serves them as versioned, authenticated endpoints that any external system can query and transact against.
- Infrastructure and APIs
- Enterprise
- $100B+ market
- Platform others build on
- US first
3/5
venture judge
0
similar startups, last 2 years (5 all-time)
97%
of 4 nearest real companies still alive
sector
16 public grants in this sector, none matching the idea's terms
Test it before you build it
$800 · 5 weeks · 15 prospects
For $800 and five weeks, prove that a mid-market distributor will sign and prepay a $7,500 endpoint pilot now instead of waiting for their ERP vendor to ship it as a feature.
Riskiest assumption · A distributor's ecommerce or IT lead whose partners are demanding feeds will pay an outside vendor to host endpoints now, rather than wait for their ERP vendor to ship the same thing as a checkbox feature.
1Focus group: who and where
VP of ecommerce, IT director or digital lead at a US industrial or electrical distributor with 100-1,000 employees and 50k-500k SKUs in Epicor Prophet 21, Infor SX.e or SAP behind an aging PIM, whose largest partners requested API or feed access this quarter and whose team hand-exports price spreadsheets every week.
where to find 15 · The Prophet 21 World Wide User Group (P21WWUG) forums and member companies (user community); the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors member roster and Modern Distribution Management's distributor lists (directory); Distribution Strategy Group webinars and their attendee Q&A (channel); plus warm intros from anyone who has sold ERP add-ons into distribution.
2Sell first, build later
A six-week design-partner pilot: Syndic maps the catalog and price book out of the distributor's ERP and PIM and serves them as versioned, authenticated read-only endpoints that their named top partner queries live, delivered six weeks from kickoff.
the ask · $7,500 per pilot ($2,500 at signature, $5,000 at go-live), then $1,000 per month per endpoint plus metered calls after the pilot.
a real yes · A signed SOW with a dated start and the $2,500 invoice paid is a yes. Verbal interest, a request for an unpaid proof of concept, or 'send it to our ERP vendor first' without a signed scope is not.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Feed-pain discovery calls
$250 · 12 days
Book 15 calls with ecommerce and IT leads reached through P21WWUG, the NAW roster and Distribution Strategy Group webinars. Ask which partners requested API or feed access in the last quarter, how price updates reach partners today, and hours per week spent on exports; end by describing the six-week $7,500 pilot.
keep going if · 8 of 15 have 2 or more partners actively requesting feeds and agree to a scoping call
2. ERP checkbox probe
$0 · 5 days
For each prospect's ERP, read current release notes and ask their account manager and the P21WWUG forum whether partner-facing versioned catalog and price endpoints exist or sit on the published 12-month roadmap. This tests the card's stated risk directly, for free.
keep going if · For at least 10 of 15 prospects, no equivalent shipped ERP feature exists today
3. Sandbox pull and SOW close
$550 · 21 days
Build a read-only sandbox of 500 sample SKUs served as versioned, authenticated catalog and price endpoints with an OpenAPI spec. Send keys to each interested prospect's named partner developer contact and count who actually requests access, then present the SOW with the $2,500 mobilization invoice.
keep going if · 3 or more partner dev teams request sandbox keys and 2 distributors sign the SOW and pay $2,500
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.
$2,500
per prospect, refundable
how · A signed design-partner SOW with a dated six-week delivery scope and a $2,500 mobilization invoice due at signature, net-15 by ACH - a paid pilot rather than a card checkout, because mid-market distributors pay invoices through AP, not payment links; the ecommerce or IT lead signs with their controller copied. set up: Stripe Payment Links ↗
what it reserves · One of three design-partner slots, the six-week go-live date, their top partner as the first endpoint consumer, and per-call pricing locked for year one.
refund · Refunded in full if the catalog and price endpoints are not live for their named partner within six weeks of kickoff.
target · 2 signed SOWs with the $2,500 invoice paid, from 15 conversations, within 5 weeks
Go: build it if
2 signed pilots with $2,500 each collected and start dates inside 30 days, at least 3 partner dev teams pulling sandbox keys, and no equivalent shipped ERP feature for most prospects.
Kill: stop if
0 signed SOWs after 15 qualified conversations in 5 weeks, or the ERP probe shows the majority of prospects' ERPs already ship equivalent partner endpoints in the current release.
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
Your partners keep asking for catalog and price feeds, and someone on your team is exporting spreadsheets from the ERP every week to answer them. I take the catalog and price book you already maintain and publish them as versioned, authenticated endpoints your top partner queries live - running in six weeks, no ERP change, $7,500 pilot. If two or more partners are asking you for feeds right now, give me 20 minutes to map exactly what they need. Would Wednesday morning work?
landing page
Your catalog and price book, served as live APIs in six weeks $7,500 design-partner pilot puts your top partner on authenticated catalog and price endpoints Book a 20-minute scoping call
deposit terms
The $2,500 mobilization payment is the first third of the $7,500 pilot and reserves one of three design-partner slots with a dated six-week go-live for your named partner. It is refunded in full if your catalog and price endpoints are not live within six weeks of kickoff. The $5,000 balance is invoiced only at go-live.
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.
56
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 34.8 x 1.61
Warm
competition: more crowded than 20% of ideas · headwind x0.90
+0.0
government priorities, secondary (0 matching grants)
Trend
40
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)1
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector61
- Sector direction (live batch)0
- 2026 trend analyst100
Demand
28
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)0
- Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)33
- Operator judge: real pain50
100x potential
52
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Venture judge50
- Market size axis100
- Moat axis80
- Neighbours still alive6
- 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 machine-readable, catalog, pricing, entitlement, endpoints, enterprises, hosted, syndication.
The idea in full
- What
- Syndic is product data syndication infrastructure: it takes an enterprise's existing catalog, price books, availability, and policy documents out of its ERP and PIM and serves them as versioned, authenticated endpoints that any external system can query and transact against. Enterprises pay per endpoint and per call; Syndic's team does the initial ERP mapping, then it runs itself. It is the boring plumbing layer, and tool vendors, retail partners, and internal teams build on top of the same endpoints.
- Why now
- The average AI-visibility score across the 2,347 tracked companies in this cluster is 49/100, meaning most enterprise product data is not machine-readable at all, while 2026 YC companies Sitefire and Manicule are already selling marketing and developer relations for machine consumers and Thrive Holdings raised $2B backed by OpenAI to push AI into the enterprise.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One industrial distributor with 200k SKUs stuck in an old PIM: publish its catalog and price book as endpoints in six weeks and charge per call from its three largest partners.
- Path to 100x
- Enterprise commerce and product data flowing through machine channels is a $100B+ transaction surface, and metered endpoints scale with call volume rather than seats. The moat is distribution: once a large enterprise's partners, resellers, and tool vendors all read the Syndic endpoint, switching means re-pointing every consumer, so the layer accretes rather than churns.
- Ceiling
- Enterprises decide endpoint hosting belongs inside the ERP contract they already pay for, capping Syndic at a $200-400M integration vendor.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Sitefire sells a marketing suite for machine-read websites and Manicule sells developer relations for agents; both work on presentation and adoption. Syndic owns the system-of-record extraction and the call metering underneath them.
- Main risk
- ERP and commerce incumbents ship a good-enough endpoint feature and it becomes a checkbox rather than a layer.
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
3/5
Metered endpoints on a $100B+ surface scale past seats, but ERP incumbents shipping a good-enough feature is the likeliest ending.
Bootstrapper
5/5
Six-week ERP mapping for a distributor with 200k SKUs, billed per call within a year, unregulated and dull enough to renew forever.
Operator
3/5
The 200k-SKU distributor pain is real and revenue starts within a year, but partner-facing endpoints are a nice-to-have the ERP vendor may ship free.
Technologist
2/5
ERP and PIM extraction served as endpoints is integration work the ERP incumbent can ship as a feature, exactly as the card concedes.
Risk
4/5
Unregulated plumbing with per-call revenue from many enterprises and partners, no licence exposure and no single platform whose terms could change.
trends
5/5
UCP's live catalog queries and Shopify's 8x AI traffic since Q1 2026 make machine-readable enterprise endpoints sellable now and only now.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (machine-readable, catalog, pricing, entitlement, endpoints, enterprises, hosted, syndication): 5 all-time, 0 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
The deterministic layer for frontier intelligence
AI for Field Service Enterprises
Customer service AI that resolves requests end-to-end.
Open-Core Pricing and Billing Engine
Data and AI platform for Ecommerce & Cross-Border Logistics
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.
0
grants and programs matching the idea
16
startup-relevant grants in B2B SaaS
$3M
awarded in the sector, tracked
1
opportunities open now in the sector
Market signal
What the radar sees in B2B SaaS: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
B2B SaaS · 189 → 205 → 206 → 116 → 92 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 90% aliveYC F26 live: 5 in this cluster, 4% of the batch (was 4% in S26)Since February, of 756 YC companies here: 10 acquired, 15 shut down, 80 rewrote their pitch
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
- Enterprise
- Business model
- Infrastructure and APIs
- Path to 100x
- Platform others build on
- Market size
- $100B+ market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-medium (ops, field teams)
- Speed to revenue
- Revenue within a year
- Technical depth
- Real engineering
- Go-to-market
- Founder-led sales
- Moat
- Distribution moat
- Geography
- US first
- Regulation
- Unregulated
- Vibe
- Boring business
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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