MarkosWebWeb intelligence for the agentic economy

New startup ideas · Gifted kids, funded by proof · Proof of achievement a kid owns

startup concept

Meritgraph

One API that turns chess ratings and olympiad placements into SGO-checkable credentials

Meritgraph is an eligibility API for Scholarship Granting Organizations.

0

similar startups, last 2 years (0 all-time)

yes

2 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$700 · 4 weeks · 20 prospects

For $700 and 4 weeks, prove SGOs building 2027 selection pipelines will pay $1,000 up front to verify merit criteria, before any API exists.

Riskiest assumption · SGO directors preparing 2027 federal-credit pipelines will define objective merit criteria beyond financial need and pay a third party to verify them, rather than selecting on need alone and skipping verification entirely.

1Focus group: who and where

Executive director or program director of a Scholarship Granting Organization or School Tuition Organization awarding 200-20,000 scholarships a year, currently designing its selection pipeline for the federal credit that becomes claimable January 1, 2027, with no staff process for checking a chess rating or an olympiad placement

where to find 20 · State directories of approved scholarship organizations: the Arizona Department of Revenue's certified School Tuition Organization list and the Pennsylvania DCED's EITC scholarship organization list, plus Step Up For Students and AAA Scholarship Foundation in Florida directly; warm introductions through EdChoice and American Federation for Children staff who know every SGO director in the opted-in states; the ExcelinEd National Summit on Education, where school choice organizations gather each fall

2Sell first, build later

A design-partner pilot for the 2026-27 selection cycle: Meritgraph verifies every applicant in the SGO's pool against its objective merit criteria, chess ratings first, returns yes or no per applicant with an auditable trail, delivered at least 30 days before the SGO's award decisions, done by hand behind the scenes

the ask · $2,500 per pilot, then $1 per verified eligibility check at the founding price through 2027

a real yes · A real yes is a signed pilot agreement with a dated start and the $1,000 invoice paid; compliments, interest in seeing it later, and unpaid trial requests are not

3Small experiments

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

  1. 1. Criteria discovery calls

    $250 · 10 days

    Book 15 calls with SGO directors pulled from the state lists and warm intros. Ask three questions: what objective criteria will you use for the 2027 federal credit, how will you verify anything beyond financial need, and who does that work today. One founder runs all calls in two weeks and logs answers in a shared sheet.

    keep going if · 8 of 15 directors say their 2027 criteria include merit measures beyond need and name verification as unsolved

  2. 2. Concierge chess verification demo

    $50 · 4 days

    Hand-verify 25 sample applicant claims against US Chess's public rating lookup and produce a signed two-page report: verified yes or no per applicant, turnaround 48 hours, no full records shared. Email it to every director who took a call as proof the service works today. Use synthetic or parent-consented sample data only.

    keep going if · 5 of 8 report recipients book a pilot scoping call

  3. 3. Paid design-partner pilot close

    $400 · 14 days

    Pitch a $2,500 pilot: Meritgraph verifies the SGO's full 2026-27 applicant pool against its written criteria, delivered before their award decisions, with $1,000 invoiced at signing. Send a one-page agreement with a named start date via e-signature after each scoping call.

    keep going if · 2 SGOs sign the agreement and pay the $1,000 invoice

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.

$1,000

per prospect, refundable

how · A paid design-partner pilot invoiced up front, the right instrument for a nonprofit enterprise buyer that cannot use a consumer checkout: the executive director signs a one-page pilot agreement with a start date, and $1,000 of the $2,500 fee is invoiced and paid at signing set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗

what it reserves · One of two design-partner slots for the 2026-27 selection cycle, the $1-per-check founding price locked through 2027, and delivery of the verified pool at least 30 days before award decisions

refund · Refunded in full any time before the pilot start date, and automatically refunded if Meritgraph has not begun verification against the SGO's written criteria by December 15, 2026.

target · 2 paid $1,000 deposits from 20 SGO conversations within 30 days

before taking money · The records belong to minors, so run every demo and pilot on synthetic or parent-consented data and get COPPA counsel before holding any real child's record.

Go: build it if

8 or more of 15 directors confirm merit criteria in their 2027 pipeline and 2 SGOs pay $1,000 deposits within 30 days: build the API.

Kill: stop if

Fewer than 3 of 15 directors plan any criteria beyond financial need, or 0 paid pilots after 20 conversations: the stated risk is real and need-only selection wins, stop.

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

outreach message

You're building your selection pipeline for the federal scholarship credit before the January 2027 filing season, and if your criteria include anything beyond need, a chess rating or an olympiad placement, someone on your staff has to verify it by hand. I verify those achievements against the source feeds and return a yes or no your auditors can trace, without your team ever holding the kid's full record. Can I walk you through a 25-applicant sample report on a 20-minute call this week?

landing page

Verify a scholarship applicant's chess rating in seconds, not weeks $2,500 design-partner pilot: your full 2026-27 applicant pool verified, then $1 per check Reserve one of two pilot slots with a $1,000 deposit

deposit terms

Your $1,000 deposit reserves one of two design-partner slots for the 2026-27 selection cycle and locks the $1-per-check founding price through 2027; it is applied to the $2,500 pilot fee at kickoff. It is fully refundable any time before your pilot start date. If we have not begun verifying against your written criteria by December 15, 2026, it is refunded automatically.

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

Ranked against every idea in the catalog: trend, demand and 100x potential from the corpus, competition relative to the other ideas. A generated concept has no judges or swipes yet, so its pillars use the data signals only.

51

Idea Score, 0-100 (partial) · raw 31.6 x 1.61

Open

competition: more crowded than 12% of ideas · headwind x0.94

+1.8

government priorities, secondary (2 matching grants)

Trend

21

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)21
  • Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector44
  • Sector direction (live batch)0

Demand

30

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)0

100x potential

50

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

  • no signal yet, taken as 50

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 382 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were chess, ratings, olympiad, placements, sgo-checkable, eligibility, scholarship, granting.

The concept in full

What
Meritgraph is an eligibility API for Scholarship Granting Organizations. It converts existing rating and results feeds, chess ratings, math and science olympiad placements, science fair awards, into consented verifiable credentials held in the kid's wallet, then answers an SGO's query, does this applicant meet the objective criteria, with a yes or no and a cryptographic proof, never the full record. Kids get a rating timeline only they and their family can see.
Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (July 4, 2025) created the up-to-$1,700 federal credit for gifts to SGOs; on June 8, 2026 the IRS reported 27 states had elected to participate (IR-2026-76); 1EdTech's 2025 guidance expects mass Open Badges 3.0 adoption in 2025-26. Keyword coverage shows 'olympiad' at 4 companies in the last two years, none doing credential rails.
What it rides
Rides 'Federal scholarship tax credit from 2027, 27 states in': SGOs must run objective, nondiscriminatory selection for low- and middle-income K-12 students, and Meritgraph gives them merit criteria they can verify without collecting children's data themselves.
Why now
The credit becomes claimable January 1, 2027, so SGOs in the 27 opted-in states are building selection pipelines during 2026 and have no standard way to verify a chess rating or olympiad placement that satisfies both the objective-criteria rule and COPPA.
Wedge: first customer and entry point
Sign two SGOs in Texas or Florida before the 2027 filing season, starting with chess because US Chess ratings are already structured data, and charge per verified eligibility check.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
Andamio builds an open protocol for interoperable credentials but is not US K-12 or SGO-specific; Sertifier issues badges but does not answer eligibility queries. First Gen X does scholarship discovery for students, the opposite side of the transaction.
Main risk
If big SGOs decide need alone is sufficient selection criteria, merit verification becomes a nice-to-have they skip.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the concept's terms (chess, ratings, olympiad, placements, sgo-checkable, eligibility, scholarship, granting).

Nothing in the directory matches this concept's terms.

Public money in this direction

US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.

Other concepts in this collection

Fictional concept generated 2026-08-27 by claude-fable-5 from the collection's brief and MarkosWeb data. Treat it as a research prompt, not a plan.