New startup ideas · Consumer and commerce · Consumer

startup idea

Foliograph

A global copy-investing network built on ML-verified track records.

Foliograph is a consumer subscription that connects to a user's existing brokerage account, verifies and risk-normalizes their real returns with ML across brokers and asset classes, and lets subscribers automatically replicate top verified portfolios sized to their own risk limits.

Software subscription
Consumer
$10-100B market
Network effects, winner takes most
Global from day one

4/5

venture judge

similar startups, last 2 years (89 all-time)

92%

of 2 nearest real companies still alive

yes

8 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$800 · 4 weeks · 50 prospects

For $800 and 4 weeks, prove that retail investors will pay up front and traders will connect real brokerage accounts before any adviser license is filed.

Riskiest assumption · A self-directed retail investor will pay a monthly fee and connect a real brokerage account to copy a stranger's verified portfolio, when free trade ideas and their broker's own tools cost nothing.

1Focus group: who and where

A self-directed US retail investor, 25-45, with a $10,000-250,000 account at Robinhood, Fidelity or Schwab who actively trades, follows other people's trades online, and knows they trail the market; on the supply side, traders who already post P&L screenshots publicly.

where to find 50 · r/thetagang and r/investing on Reddit for both sides; StockTwits for active traders who post positions; Collective2's public strategy leaderboard as a directory of managers who already sell their track record; warm introductions through investors and former colleagues to product leads at small brokers and advisory platforms for the white-label probe.

2Sell first, build later

Founding membership: your returns verified read-only from your own brokerage, a risk-adjusted public profile, and access to the verified leaderboard, live by December 1, 2026, with first access to copy features once licensing allows them.

the ask · $10 per month, locked for a year, with a $25 reservation paid today.

a real yes · A real yes is a $25 charge plus, on the supply side, a brokerage account actually connected. Not a yes: upvotes, waitlist emails, or traders saying they would link an account without doing it.

3Small experiments

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

1. Founding-member deposit test
$600 · 21 days
Publish a landing page with a demo leaderboard clearly labeled as illustrative data and a working $25 reservation checkout. One founder starts 25 DM conversations from r/thetagang and StockTwits, runs 15 of them as 20-minute calls ending with the reservation ask, and spends $400 on Reddit ads to send about 500 visitors to the page.
keep going if · 8 of 25 conversations pay $25, or 3% or more of landing visitors complete the reservation
2. Manager verification test
$100 · 14 days
Ask 20 traders who post P&L screenshots on r/thetagang and StockTwits, plus leaders from Collective2's public board, to prove their returns through a read-only brokerage connection (SnapTrade sandbox) or a statement upload, in exchange for a free verified profile at launch. The ask is the whole test: talk is free, connecting an account is not.
keep going if · 10 of 20 connect an account or upload statements within a week of being asked
3. White-label broker probe
$100 · 21 days
Write a five-slide concept for a white-label 'proven investors' feature and get 8 conversations with product leads at small brokers, neobanks and advisory platforms through warm introductions. Ask what verified track records would be worth to them and what a paid pilot would require.
keep going if · 2 of 8 take a second, scoped meeting and at least 1 asks for pilot terms in writing

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.

$25

per prospect, refundable

how · A $25 refundable founding-member reservation charged at checkout for the verification subscription only, sold explicitly as a software product and not advice, because a consumer cannot credibly pre-pay for auto-replication before the RIA registration exists. set up: Stripe Checkout ↗

what it reserves · Founding access to the verified leaderboard, priority verification of the member's own track record, a $10 per month price locked for a year, and first access to copy features when they are licensed.

refund · Refunded on request any time before access begins, and automatically if 50 verified profiles are not live by December 1, 2026.

target · 15 paid $25 reservations from 25 conversations plus roughly 500 landing visitors within 30 days

before taking money · Until the RIA registration is in hand, sell only the verification software, with no personalized recommendations, no auto-replication and no performance fees, and have securities counsel review the landing copy before it goes live.

Go: build it if

15 or more paid reservations, 10 of 20 managers connecting real accounts, and at least one broker or platform requesting written pilot terms: file the RIA registration and build verification.

Kill: stop if

Fewer than 5 reservations from 25 conversations and 500 visitors, or fewer than 5 of 20 managers willing to connect an account; either one means the two-sided graph never forms.

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

outreach message

You post real trades with real numbers, which is rare; most performance claims online are unverifiable. I'm building Foliograph: we verify returns straight from your brokerage, read-only, rank them risk-adjusted, and let proven investors be followed and eventually copied. Founding members get a verified profile and the leaderboard for $10 a month. Could I get 20 minutes this week to show you the demo and hear how you decide whose trades to trust?

landing page

Verified track records you can actually copy $25 reserves founding membership at $10 a month, locked for a year. Reserve founding access, live December 1.

deposit terms

Your $25 reserves founding membership: a verified track-record profile, the risk-adjusted leaderboard at $10 a month locked for a year, and first access to copy features when they launch. It is refundable on request until your access begins, and refunded automatically if 50 verified profiles are not live by December 1, 2026. This reserves a software subscription; it is not investment advice and no money is invested.

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 28.0 x 1.61

Crowded

competition: more crowded than 81% of ideas · headwind x0.59

+3.6

government priorities, secondary (35 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)45
Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector38
Sector direction (live batch)0
2026 trend analyst0

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)60
Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
Operator judge: real pain0

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 axis100
Neighbours still alive30
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 global, copy-investing, network, built, ml-verified, track, records, consumer.

The idea in full

What: Foliograph is a consumer subscription that connects to a user's existing brokerage account, verifies and risk-normalizes their real returns with ML across brokers and asset classes, and lets subscribers automatically replicate top verified portfolios sized to their own risk limits. It reaches consumers as an embedded layer inside partner brokers and neobanks rather than through its own paid acquisition. Licensing as an investment adviser in each region is the product's slow, deliberate first phase.
Why now: Two YC S26 companies - OpenTrade ('the new interface for investing') and tash - show retail investing interfaces being re-founded right now, and Whoop's $575M Series G proves consumers sustain large recurring subscriptions for verified personal performance data; nobody has built the cross-broker verification layer that makes investing performance a social object.
Wedge: first customer and entry point: Verified track-record profiles for one broker's power users in one jurisdiction, launched as that broker's white-label 'proven investors' feature before any replication is switched on.
Path to 100x: Retail investing and wealth management fees are a $10-100B pool, and the scaling mechanism is a two-sided network: verified managers attract subscriber capital, subscriber capital attracts more managers, and the graph of authenticated track records is winner-takes-most because a track record only lives where it was verified. Subscription plus a share of performance fees on replicated flows gives power-law upside on a capital-light base.
Ceiling: Large brokers can build native copy features and shut off account connectivity, stranding Foliograph without its raw data feed.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them: OpenTrade is building a single-player investing interface and tash a platform for sports and trading cards; neither verifies performance across brokers or builds a replication network, which is the entire defensibility here.
Main risk: Regulators in key markets classify auto-replication as discretionary portfolio management and the licensing burden outruns the company's runway.

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
Verified cross-broker track records are a genuine two-sided graph on a $10-100B fee pool, capital-light, though broker connectivity cutoff is the live threat.
Bootstrapper
2/5
Investment adviser licensing in each region is a deliberate slow first phase, and auto-replication risks reclassification as discretionary management.
Operator
1/5
Retail investors have no budget line for copy-trading and brokers can cut off connectivity, so the buyer neither owns spend nor feels acute pain.
Technologist
2/5
Return verification ML sits on broker account connectivity that the brokers themselves can shut off, which the card admits as its ceiling.
Risk
1/5
Brokers supply the data feed, the distribution and the copy feature that replaces it, plus unresolved discretionary-management licensing in every market.
trends
1/5
Copy trading was eToro's pitch in 2010, fintech fell from 8% to 5% of the batch, and multi-region adviser licensing burns the supposed window.

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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.

OpenTrade 2026
tash ✓ 2026

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 Consumer

$10M

awarded in the sector, tracked

opportunities open now in the sector

SBIR Phase II: Dynamic OneSource Geospatial Information Systemawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · SBIR Phase II · $1M · posted 2026-08-27
Collaborative Research: VINES: Track 2: FALCON: Flexible Aerial Links for Control, Observation, and Navigationawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · TIP-CHIPS KTA-6 Communications · $5M · posted 2026-08-24
I-Corps: Translation Potential of a marine-adapted radio frequency identification (RFID) and analytics platform for digital inventory management in shellfish aquacultureawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-19
I-Corps: Translation Potential of Intelligent Aerial Logistics for Time-Critical Organ Transportationawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-17
SBIR Phase I: Synchrony Loop Networks: a groundbreaking neuromorphic approach for live, unsupervised, one-shot source separation and diarization in complex auditory scenesawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · SBIR Phase I · $303K · posted 2026-08-11
DEVELOPMENT & TESTING OF A NOVEL THERAPEUTIC DEVICE FOR IMPROVING MOBILITY IN PATIENTS WITH LOWER-EXTREMITY PERIPHERAL ARTERY DISEASEawardhigh relevance
NIH / NHLBI · SBIR phase II · $1M · posted 2026-08-01
InVitreON: A compact and integrated platform for long-term neuronal culture incubation, recording and closed-loop stimulationawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIMH · SBIR phase I · $457K · posted 2026-08-01
I-Corps: Translation Potential of a Scalable Sensor Fusion for Critical Infrastructure Drone Defenseawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-07-30

All public money by sector →

Market signal

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

Consumer · 182 → 222 → 211 → 156 → 64 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 86% aliveYC F26 live: 4 in this cluster, 3% of the batch (was 3% in S26)Since February, of 782 YC companies here: 6 acquired, 4 shut down, 45 rewrote their pitch

Consumer: 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: Consumer
Business model: Software subscription
Path to 100x: Network effects, winner takes most
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: Partners and channels
Moat: Network effects
Geography: Global from day one
Regulation: Heavily regulated
Vibe: Hot space