New startup ideas · Consumer and commerce · Consumer
startup idea
Perpetua
A marketplace for persistent AI worlds that remember every player who visits.
Perpetua trains a real-time interactive world model with durable state, so a generated world keeps its geography, characters and consequences between sessions and across different visitors.
- Marketplace
- Consumer
- $100B+ market
- Creates a new category
- Global from day one
4/5
venture judge
5
similar startups, last 2 years (25 all-time)
94%
of 4 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
$500 · 4 weeks · 40 prospects
Prove that players return to the same generated world in week two and pay $25 to keep it alive, for $500 in 4 weeks, before any training run.
Riskiest assumption · A player who spends one session in a generated world will come back to that same world within a week and pay to keep it alive - it is persistence they value, not the one-time novelty that killed Wuri and empties every session-based AI game.
1Focus group: who and where
Players aged 18-30 who already pay for AI or text-driven worlds - AI Dungeon subscribers, Character.AI power users, and play-by-post RPG players who keep multi-week campaigns running on Discord - and who complain in public that every AI session forgets them when the tab closes.
where to find 40 · r/AIDungeon and r/CharacterAI, where paying users of session-based AI worlds post about memory loss; Disboard and top.gg listings for play-by-post and RPG Discord servers, which reach exactly the players who commit to multi-week worlds; itch.io's interactive fiction community and jam boards, for recruiting both players and the first creators.
2Sell first, build later
Season one of a persistent world: eight more weeks of the same map, characters and consequences the player has already shaped, live on Discord, starting within 14 days of the playtest ending, with the founding roster capped at 40.
the ask · $25 per player for the eight-week season, founding price locked for all future seasons
a real yes · A real yes is $25 moved through the itch.io pre-order. Not a yes: playtest signups, Discord activity during the free weeks, 'I'd pay for this' comments, or creators praising the idea without submitting a world.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Two-week persistent world run
$350 · 18 days
Stand up one top-down social world on a fresh Discord server using an off-the-shelf model with a hand-built database as the state layer - no training, exactly the card's wedge. Recruit 40 players from r/AIDungeon and Disboard, run it 14 days, and measure who comes back in the second week with no reminder ping.
keep going if · 12 of 40 players return unprompted between day 8 and day 14
2. Memory-loss demand probe
$0 · 7 days
Post in r/AIDungeon, r/CharacterAI and three Disboard-listed RPG servers asking players to describe the moment an AI world forgot them, with a signup link for the persistent-world playtest. Count signups, not upvotes.
keep going if · 60 playtest signups within 7 days
3. Founding pass sale
$150 · 10 days
On day 10 of the world run, offer every playtester a $25 founding pass: season one continues eight more weeks and their character, holdings and consequences persist. Sell it through an itch.io pre-order page, because these players already buy unfinished indie games there and itch handles the money without any storefront build.
keep going if · 8 of 40 playtesters buy the $25 pass
4. Creator supply check
$0 · 10 days
Message 20 interactive fiction creators on itch.io offering a 70/30 revenue share on founding passes for worlds they publish into the same persistence layer. Ask for a one-page world outline with a start date, not an opinion.
keep going if · 5 of 20 creators submit a world outline with a start date
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 founding pass sold as an itch.io pre-order with a posted season start date - chosen because these players already pay for pre-release indie worlds on itch, it takes cards without any checkout build, and refunds are one click for the buyer. set up: Stripe Checkout ↗
what it reserves · A founding slot in season one with the player's character, holdings and consequences carried forward, plus the $25 price locked for every future season
refund · Refundable in full with one click until season one starts on the posted date.
target · 8 passes from 40 playtesters within 14 days of the offer going live
before taking money · Run the playtest 18+ only - an open AI-generated world on Discord will draw minors, and serving them generated content triggers COPPA and platform policy exposure a three-person team must not take on yet.
Go: build it if
12 of 40 players return unprompted in week two and 8 buy the $25 pass; persistence holds people and takes money, so scale to 500 players and 10 creator worlds before touching a training run.
Kill: stop if
Fewer than 6 of 40 return in week two or fewer than 3 buy the pass; the week-one retention collapse the judges predicted is real, and no multi-year GPU commitment fixes a world nobody revisits.
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
You know the feeling when an AI world forgets everything the moment the tab closes - the town you built, the NPC who owed you a favor, gone. I'm running a two-week playtest of a world that doesn't forget: same map, same characters, consequences that persist between everyone's sessions, live on Discord. It's free, there are 40 player slots, and it starts Monday. Twenty minutes a day is plenty. Want in? Reply and I'll send you the invite before the doors close.
landing page
A world that remembers you between every session $25 founding pass: eight more weeks of season one, your character and consequences carried forward, price locked forever Buy a founding pass - 40 slots, season starts on the posted date
deposit terms
$25 buys a founding pass to season one: your character, holdings and consequences persist for the full eight-week season, and your founding price is locked for every future season. Refundable in full with one click until season one starts on the posted date. Season one begins within 14 days of the playtest ending.
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.
59
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 36.5 x 1.61
Active
competition: more crowded than 52% of ideas · headwind x0.74
+3.8
government priorities, secondary (40 matching grants)
Trend
31
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)61
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector38
- Sector direction (live batch)0
- 2026 trend analyst25
Demand
53
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
52
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 axis100
- Moat axis20
- Neighbours still alive16
- 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 marketplace, persistent, worlds, remember, player, visits, trains, real-time.
The idea in full
- What
- Perpetua trains a real-time interactive world model with durable state, so a generated world keeps its geography, characters and consequences between sessions and across different visitors. Creators publish worlds self-serve, players subscribe or pay per world, and Perpetua takes a cut while covering inference. It is a model company before it is a marketplace: multi-year training runs, a simulation data pipeline and a large standing GPU commitment come well before meaningful revenue.
- Why now
- Five AI game products launched in the last three batches of this cluster (Instaplay, Pops, Playabl.ai, Fifth Door, Pax Historia) and YC's Fall 2026 request list asks for AI-powered consumer products for a billion people, yet all of these generate throwaway sessions with nothing that survives the tab closing.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One genre, one surface: persistent top-down social worlds published into Discord and mobile web, 50 hand-picked creators, tipping revenue while the state layer is still a database rather than a learned model.
- Path to 100x
- Games and interactive entertainment is a $100B+ market, and persistent playable worlds is a new category rather than a share grab, because the unit sold is a place people come back to instead of a title they finish. There is no moat at the start - unless creators and accumulated world state compound faster than commodity world models improve, this is only a storefront.
- Ceiling
- Generated worlds stay novelties with week-one retention collapse, so ARPU never reaches real game economics.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Playabl.ai, Fifth Door, Pops and Instaplay all generate games on someone else's model and reset between sessions; Perpetua owns the model and sells persistence, which is what makes a world worth returning to. Wuri in the graveyard shows that generated story content without persistence or a creator economy does not hold users.
- Main risk
- A frontier lab ships a world model API and every competitor gets Perpetua's core capability for a monthly bill.
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
$100B+ games market and a durable-state world model is a real power-law bet, discounted because a frontier lab API could commoditize the core.
Bootstrapper
1/5
Multi-year training runs and a standing GPU commitment in the hottest hype space, with a frontier lab able to commoditise it by API.
Operator
1/5
Nobody has a budget for persistent worlds; it is a multi-year training run in front of a consumer entertainment bet.
Technologist
2/5
A durable-state real-time world model is a multi-year frontier bet that one lab's world model API commoditises overnight.
Risk
1/5
Publishes into Discord and mobile web on a self-built world model that a frontier lab API could commoditise, with Wuri already in the graveyard.
trends
2/5
Cites the billion-user consumer RFS, but persistent worlds need no 2025-2026 shift and five cited AI game peers show the trend already crowded.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (marketplace, persistent, worlds, remember, player, visits, trains, real-time): 25 all-time, 5 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
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Misprint is building Robinhood for Pokemon cards
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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.
- Playabl.ai ✓ 2026
- Fifth Door ✓ 2025
- Pops ✓ 2026
- Instaplay 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.
8
grants and programs matching the idea
33
startup-relevant grants in Consumer
$10M
awarded in the sector, tracked
1
opportunities open now in the sector
- Communication Optimization via Artificial Intelligence for Dentistry (CoAID): Validating a Three-Stage Digital Health Platform to Enhance Dental Care Communicationawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIDCR · STTR phase I · $305K · posted 2026-09-10
- Scaling Virtual Dementia Care: A Pragmatic Evaluation of Tele-Nursing & E-Training to Reduce Acute Care Utilization and to Support Family Caregiversawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIA · SBIR phase II · $831K · posted 2026-09-18
- SMART-HRT: Smartwatch-Based Monitoring and Real-Time Tracking for Optimizing Hormone Replacement Therapy Efficacy in Menopause.awardhigh relevance
NIH / NIA · SBIR phase I · $313K · posted 2026-09-17
- Development of a Non-Addictive Intranasal Nerve Block to Provide Rapid Acute Treatment for Headache Disordersawardhigh relevance
NIH / NINDS · SBIR phase II · $1M · posted 2026-09-03
- Auxigen: BIO – An Adaptive, AI-Driven Commercialization Training Platform for Biomedical Researchersawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIGMS · SBIR phase I · $309K · posted 2026-09-01
National Science Foundation · STTR Phase I · $305K · posted 2026-08-21
National Science Foundation · CSCS: Circuits and Systems for · $550K · posted 2026-08-04
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Simulation for Crisis-Ready Behavioral Health Trainingawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-07-29
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
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
- Marketplace
- Path to 100x
- Creates a new category
- Market size
- $100B+ market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-heavy (hardware, bio, infra)
- Speed to revenue
- R&D first, revenue after 3 years
- Technical depth
- Deep tech: ML, hardware, bio
- Go-to-market
- Self-serve
- Moat
- No moat yet
- Geography
- Global from day one
- Regulation
- Unregulated
- Vibe
- Hot space
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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