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startup concept

Attestly

Audit trail and approval inbox for the agents you run at work

Attestly routes every action from an employee's personally run agents through a logged proxy, lands outputs in one review queue with checks the user defines, and exports a clean activity log they can hand to IT or compliance.

10

similar startups, last 2 years (17 all-time)

yes

8 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$1,200 · 4 weeks · 30 prospects

For $1,200 and four weeks, prove that shadow AI users at regulated firms will hand a log to IT and prepay $30 for it, and that IT would accept the log.

Riskiest assumption · An analyst at a regulated firm who runs unsanctioned agents believes a self-made activity log will get those tools approved rather than get them punished, and will pay $30 a month out of pocket to create evidence of their own shadow AI use

1Focus group: who and where

An analyst, associate or research staffer at a bank, asset manager or Big 4 firm who runs personal Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor agents that outperform the sanctioned tools, at a company that has started auditing AI use this quarter and pays $20-40 a month out of pocket for AI already

where to find 30 · Fishbowl's finance and consulting bowls, where these employees already discuss unsanctioned AI use anonymously; r/ChatGPTPro and r/ClaudeAI threads about using AI at work without approval; ISACA local chapter meetings in NYC or Chicago for the IT security and compliance managers needed for the acceptance test

2Sell first, build later

Attestly founding access: your two most-used agents routed through a logged proxy with a review queue you configure, plus the one-page IT-ready activity report, live within 30 days of the founding cohort of 50 filling

the ask · $30 per month, charged at signup, founding price locked for a year

a real yes · A real yes is a $30 charge on a card; upvotes, 'I would totally use this', and waitlist emails without a card 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. Shadow-user disclosure interviews

    $450 · 10 days

    Recruit 15 analysts and associates at regulated firms who use personal agents at work, via posts and DMs in Fishbowl bowls and r/ChatGPTPro, offering a $30 gift card for a 20-minute call. Ask three things: has anyone at your firm asked you to justify your AI use, would you voluntarily show IT a log of everything your agents did, and would you pay $30 a month to have that log. The founder runs every call and writes down exact quotes.

    keep going if · 8 of 15 say they would hand a log to IT, and at least 5 ask to see the sample report

  2. 2. IT acceptance of the report

    $250 · 12 days

    Mock up the one-page exportable activity report in Google Docs using a fictional week of agent activity. Show it to 10 IT security or compliance managers recruited through ISACA local chapter meetings and direct outreach, $25 gift card each, and ask one question: could a report like this support an approved-exception request for an employee's personal agents at your firm. If IT rejects logged personal use outright, the stated risk is confirmed and the product has no buyer.

    keep going if · 4 of 10 IT managers say this report could support an approved exception at their firm

  3. 3. Prepaid founding waitlist

    $500 · 14 days

    Put up a one-page site with the sample report, the $30-a-month price and a checkout that charges $30 today as the first month. Send it to all 15 interviewees, post it where the subreddits allow self-promotion, and spend $400 on Reddit ads targeted at r/ChatGPTPro and r/ClaudeAI readers. Count cards charged, not emails collected.

    keep going if · 10 paid $30 sign-ups from roughly 500 visits and 40 direct conversations

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.

$30

per prospect, refundable

how · A founding waitlist that charges the card $30 at signup, a plain checkout on the landing page, because this buyer pays out of pocket like a consumer and expenses it later; the charge is their first month, not a separate fee set up: Stripe Checkout ↗

what it reserves · A slot in the 50-person founding cohort, the $30 monthly price locked for a year, and a personal onboarding call to route their first two agents

refund · Refunded in full any time before the user exports their first activity report, no questions asked

target · 10 prepaid sign-ups within 30 days from 40 direct conversations plus landing traffic

before taking money · Do not market the activity log as satisfying SEC, FINRA or HIPAA recordkeeping rules, and have counsel review how pilot users' employment and confidentiality agreements treat logged work data before you store any of it.

Go: build it if

8 of 15 shadow users would show IT a log, 4 of 10 IT managers say the report could support an exception, and 10 people pay $30 within 30 days: build the extension and proxy

Kill: stop if

Fewer than 5 of 15 would ever show a log, or fewer than 2 of 10 IT managers accept the report, or fewer than 4 payments after 40 conversations: the self-incrimination problem is real and employers ban rather than accommodate, stop

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

outreach message

You're running your own agents at work because the sanctioned tools are worse, and your firm just started auditing AI use. I'm building Attestly: it routes your agents through a logged proxy and exports a one-page activity report formatted for an IT review, so you can keep your tools instead of hiding them, for $30 a month. I'd like 20 minutes this week to hear what your IT team would actually accept, and I'll send a $30 gift card for your time. Can I book you?

landing page

Keep your own AI agents. Hand IT the log. $30 today is your first month: logged proxy, review queue, IT-ready activity report. Reserve your founding slot - fully refunded until your first export.

deposit terms

You pay $30 now, which is your first month at the founding price of $30 a month, locked for a year. It reserves one of 50 founding slots and a personal onboarding call; access goes live within 30 days of the cohort filling. Full refund any time before you export your first activity report.

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.

66

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 41.1 x 1.61

Crowded

competition: more crowded than 78% of ideas · headwind x0.61

+2.9

government priorities, secondary (9 matching grants)

Trend

49

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)96
  • Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector0
  • Sector direction (live batch)50

Demand

65

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)30
  • Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100

100x potential

78

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

  • Neighbours still alive78

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 audit, trail, approval, inbox, routes, action, employee, personally.

The concept in full

What
Attestly routes every action from an employee's personally run agents through a logged proxy, lands outputs in one review queue with checks the user defines, and exports a clean activity log they can hand to IT or compliance. It exists so the enterprise power user can keep the personal tools that outperform the sanctioned ones without hiding them. In the first hour a user installs the browser extension and MCP proxy, routes two agents through it, and approves their first batch of outputs.
Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
MIT NANDA's State of AI in Business 2025 (published August 2025): 95% of organizations see no measurable return while more than 40% of knowledge workers use personal AI tools at work; Anthropic Economic Index (November 2025 data): 52% augmentation on Claude.ai, meaning these users already review what their AI produces.
What it rides
'The GenAI Divide: 95% of pilots return nothing, workers run their own tools': the shadow AI economy of 40%-plus of knowledge workers needs verification and logging the worker controls, which turns quiet policy violation into defensible practice.
Why now
MIT's August 2025 finding put a number on the gap, 40%-plus shadow users against 95% failed sanctioned pilots, and employers are now auditing AI use; the window is the period where workers must either abandon their better tools or show logs, and no self-serve product gives them the logs.
Wedge: first customer and entry point
Analysts and researchers at regulated firms who pay roughly $30 a month out of pocket, expensed later; the narrow entry is a Chrome extension plus a one-page exportable activity report formatted for an IT review.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
Confident AI (yc W25) sells evals to teams shipping LLM products; Attestly serves the worker operating agents, not the developer building them. Dex (yc W25) is an AI coworker in Chrome that does the work; Attestly verifies and logs it. Tinfoil (yc X25) proves privacy of inference, not conduct of agents.
Main risk
Employers respond to shadow AI by banning personal agents outright rather than accommodating logged use.

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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 2026-08-26 by claude-fable-5 from the collection's brief and MarkosWeb data. Treat it as a research prompt, not a plan.