New startup ideas · Physical world · Climate and energy
startup idea
Kilowise
Spend management for electricity - FinOps for every meter an enterprise owns.
Kilowise is self-serve SaaS that ingests utility bills, interval meter data, and tariff structures for every site a global enterprise operates, then finds billing errors, picks better tariffs, and forecasts power spend and carbon per facility.
- Software subscription
- Enterprise
- $100B+ market
- Creates a new category
- Global from day one
4/5
venture judge
5
similar startups, last 2 years (32 all-time)
95%
of 3 nearest real companies still alive
yes
2 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$900 · 5 weeks · 30 prospects
For $900 and five weeks, prove that multi-site chains will pay $4,000 up front for bill-error recovery before any software exists.
Riskiest assumption · An energy or facilities lead at a 50-500 site chain will pay $2,000 up front for bill-error recovery from two founders, even though the bills arrive as unstructured PDFs and contingency-fee audit consultants already offer to do it for free money down.
1Focus group: who and where
The energy manager or director of facilities at a US retail, restaurant, or logistics chain with 50-500 locations, who gets hundreds of utility bills a month as PDFs, has no one reconciling them against tariff schedules, and just closed a summer quarter where demand charges spiked.
where to find 30 · AEE (Association of Energy Engineers) local chapter meetings in two metro areas; the participant list of RILA's Retail Energy Management Program; the speaker and attendee network of the EnergyCAP Catalyst user conference, where multi-site energy teams that already track utility data gather.
2Sell first, build later
A 30-day audit of 12 months of utility bills across 20 of your sites: we find wrong rate classes, phantom meters, missed credits, and demand charges on closed locations, and hand you a findings report your utility reps must answer, with the fee credited toward the first year of the software.
the ask · $4,000 per 20-site audit, $2,000 invoiced up front, credited toward a first-year subscription at $10 per meter per month
a real yes · A real yes is a signed order form and $2,000 received before any bills are shared; 'send us a proposal for procurement', compliments about the idea, and offers of a free trial audit are not yes.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Book 15 energy-lead calls
$250 · 10 days
Build a list of 30 energy and facilities leads at 50-500 site chains from AEE chapter rosters, RILA REM participants, and EnergyCAP Catalyst speakers. One founder sends the outreach script and works chapter meetings in person. Ask each call: who audits your bills today, and what did the last error you caught cost?
keep going if · 10 of 30 book a 20-minute call, and 8 of 10 confirm nobody systematically reconciles bills against tariffs
2. Sell the paid audit
$150 · 10 days
On each call, pitch a $4,000 audit of 12 months of bills across 20 sites, delivered as a findings report in 30 days, with $2,000 invoiced up front and the fee credited toward the future subscription. Send the one-page landing copy and a one-page order form the same day.
keep going if · 3 of 10 pitched calls end with a signed order and $2,000 collected
3. Deliver two audits by hand
$500 · 14 days
Founders run the first two audits with spreadsheets, published tariff sheets from the utilities' own sites, and a $500 data-entry freelancer keying bill PDFs. This tests the card's stated risk directly: how many hours of manual plumbing one 20-site audit really takes, and whether the error rate covers the fee.
keep going if · At least 1 of 2 audits finds $4,000 or more per year in recoverable errors, in under 40 founder-hours per audit
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 · A paid pilot audit invoiced 50% up front: the energy lead signs a one-page order form and the $2,000 invoice is paid by ACH or card before the first bill file is transferred, because this buyer can approve a sub-$5,000 services invoice without a procurement cycle. set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗
what it reserves · One of five September audit slots and a locked $10 per meter per month price for the first year of the software
refund · Fully refundable until the first bill file is received; after delivery, if recoverable errors found are under $4,000 a year, the closing $2,000 invoice is waived.
target · 3 paid orders of $2,000 each from 30 prospects within 25 days
Go: build it if
3 signed orders with $6,000 collected from 30 prospects, and at least one delivered audit finds $4,000 or more per year in recoverable errors in under 40 founder-hours.
Kill: stop if
Fewer than 1 paid order after 10 pitch calls, or both delivered audits find under $1,500 per year in errors, or one audit takes more than 80 founder-hours of bill wrangling.
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
You run energy for a chain with dozens of sites, and every month the bills land as PDFs nobody reconciles against the tariff you should actually be on. I audit 12 months of bills across 20 of your sites in 30 days for $4,000 and typically find wrong rate classes, phantom meters, and demand charges from closed locations; the fee credits toward software we're building. If I find less than the fee in annual errors, the closing invoice is waived. Open to a 20-minute call this week?
landing page
Find the billing errors hiding in your utility bills $4,000 audits 20 sites' bills in 30 days, credited toward your first-year Kilowise subscription. Reserve one of five September audit slots with $2,000 down.
deposit terms
$2,000 due today reserves one of five September audit slots; the $2,000 balance is invoiced when your findings report is delivered, within 30 days of receiving your bill files. Your deposit is fully refundable any time before we receive your first bill file. If the audit finds less than $4,000 a year in recoverable errors across your 20 sites, the closing invoice is waived.
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.
64
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 40.0 x 1.61
Active
competition: more crowded than 65% of ideas · headwind x0.67
+1.2
government priorities, secondary (2 matching grants)
Trend
36
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 sector47
- Sector direction (live batch)50
- 2026 trend analyst25
Demand
67
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)100
- Operator judge: real pain100
100x potential
78
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 axis100
- Neighbours still alive71
- Technologist judge50
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 spend, management, electricity, finops, meter, enterprise, owns, self-serve.
The idea in full
- What
- Kilowise is self-serve SaaS that ingests utility bills, interval meter data, and tariff structures for every site a global enterprise operates, then finds billing errors, picks better tariffs, and forecasts power spend and carbon per facility. Teams sign up and connect their first sites in a day and pay per meter; Kilowise field teams handle meter hookups and utility data plumbing in messier markets. Every connected meter enriches a cross-country corpus of tariffs and consumption patterns that makes the next customer's benchmarks sharper.
- Why now
- WattShift (TS 2026) is building a US utility rate database and YC W26 funded Condor Energy for enterprise energy procurement, while this cluster jumped from 91 new companies in 2023 to 170 in 2024 - enterprise power cost is becoming a managed spend category the way cloud cost did.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- Multi-site logistics and retail chains in two countries, starting with automated bill-error recovery, which pays for the subscription in found money within the first quarter.
- Path to 100x
- Enterprise electricity is a $100B-plus annual spend with no system of record, and the first product to hold both global tariff data and customer interval data compounds a moat every rival must rebuild meter by meter. The category winner becomes the default line item on every CFO's stack, then takes a share of procurement and flexibility dollars flowing through it.
- Ceiling
- If it stays an analytics layer that never touches the procurement dollars, it tops out as a reporting tool priced per seat.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Condor Energy handles the procurement transaction; Kilowise runs the continuous spend operation after the contract is signed. WattShift is a US rate database; Kilowise closes the loop globally with the customer's own meter data.
- Main risk
- Fragmented utility data access keeps onboarding manual, so gross margin looks like a services firm instead of software.
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
Revenue within a year, self-serve per-meter pricing on $100B+ of enterprise power spend, with a tariff-plus-interval data corpus that compounds per customer.
Bootstrapper
4/5
Bill-error recovery for multi-site retail chains pays for the subscription in found money in the first quarter, which is revenue within months.
Operator
5/5
Bill-error recovery pays back the subscription in one quarter, and the CFO who owns the $100B power line item signs it.
Technologist
3/5
Bill and interval data ingestion is unglamorous plumbing, though the cross-country tariff corpus does sharpen with every meter connected.
Risk
5/5
Thousands of multi-site enterprise buyers, revenue within a year, and bill-error recovery that needs no license or platform's permission.
trends
2/5
FinOps-for-power leans on a 2024 cohort jump that has since reversed to 32 new companies in 2026; the bill-audit product needed no 2026 shift.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (spend, management, electricity, finops, meter, enterprise, owns, self-serve): 32 all-time, 5 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
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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.
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.
2
grants and programs matching the idea
203
startup-relevant grants in Climate and energy
$167M
awarded in the sector, tracked
13
opportunities open now in the sector
- SBIR Phase I: Wireless Sidestep Network: Harnessing Sub-terahertz to Enable New Degrees of Freedom in AI Data Center Architecturesawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · SBIR Phase I · $305K · posted 2026-08-18
- STTR Phase I: A New Class of Injection Molded Biosymbiotic Devices for Long-Term, Multimodal Physiological Monitoringawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · STTR Phase I · $305K · posted 2026-08-13
Market signal
What the radar sees in Climate and energy: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
Climate and energy · 99 → 115 → 200 → 90 → 45 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 89% aliveYC F26 live: 1 in this cluster, 1% of the batch (was 1% in S26)Since February, of 118 YC companies here: 1 acquired, 2 shut down, 9 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
- Software subscription
- Path to 100x
- Creates a new category
- 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
- Self-serve
- Moat
- Data moat
- Geography
- Global from day one
- Regulation
- Some regulation
- Vibe
- Hot space
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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