New startup ideas · AI for people who run the AI themselves · Shadow AI made sanctioned
startup concept
Scrubline
Local redaction proxy that makes your personal AI accounts safe for work data
A browser extension and local proxy that masks customer names, financials and code identifiers before a prompt leaves for the user's personal ChatGPT or Claude account, then reverses the mapping in the response so the answer reads naturally.
- Software subscription
- Consumer
- 'The GenAI Divide
2
similar startups, last 2 years (10 all-time)
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$900 · 3 weeks · 25 prospects
Prove that self-paying AI power users at regulated employers will prepay $39 for a redaction layer, in 3 weeks for $900.
Riskiest assumption · A knowledge worker who already pays for ChatGPT Plus out of their own pocket will pay an additional $10-20 a month for redaction without any employer mandate, instead of pasting carefully by hand or waiting for OpenAI or Anthropic to ship a built-in work-safe mode.
1Focus group: who and where
A consultant, analyst or associate at a bank, insurer, health system, Big 4 firm or law firm who already pays $20-200 a month out of pocket for ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro, pastes client names and numbers into it weekly, and knows a single leaked identifier in an audit would cost them their job.
where to find 25 · The Consulting and Big Law bowls on Fishbowl, where people openly admit using personal ChatGPT on client work; the r/ChatGPTPro and r/consulting subreddits, searching posts about hiding AI use from employers; Blind, filtered to finance and consulting employers; and a Show HN post on Hacker News to reach the self-hosting privacy crowd.
2Sell first, build later
A browser extension that masks client names, financials and code identifiers before any prompt leaves your laptop for your personal ChatGPT or Claude account, and unmasks the reply, with the mapping stored only on your machine; first cohort installs the week of November 9, 2026.
the ask · $20 per month list; founding pre-order of $39 locks $10 per month for the first year
a real yes · A real yes is a completed $39 checkout with a card. Upvotes, 'I'd definitely use this' comments, waitlist emails without a card, and requests to try it free are not yeses.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Pain and payment interviews
$100 · 10 days
DM 40 people who posted in Fishbowl, r/ChatGPTPro or Blind about using personal AI on work data; book 15 twenty-minute calls. Walk each through a 90-second screen recording of masking and unmasking a client memo, then ask for a $39 refundable pre-order on the spot via a checkout link. The founder runs every call and logs who pays, who stalls, and the exact objection.
keep going if · 5 of 15 calls end with a paid $39 pre-order before hanging up
2. Masked-answer readability test
$150 · 5 days
Build a Figma click-through of the full loop: user pastes a client email, sees the masked version, gets the model reply, sees it unmasked. Put 10 of the interviewees through it unprompted and watch where they hesitate or stop trusting the reversal. This tests the second killer: whether a masked answer still reads naturally enough to use.
keep going if · 8 of 10 users complete the task and say they would paste real client work through it
3. Priced pre-order page
$650 · 12 days
One-page site with the demo recording, the $20/month list price, and a $39 refundable pre-order that locks $10/month for the first year. Drive traffic with a Show HN post, two honest posts in r/ChatGPTPro and r/consulting, and $500 of Reddit ads targeted at those subreddits. Count visitors and completed checkouts, not email signups.
keep going if · 10 paid pre-orders from the first 500 visitors (2% checkout rate)
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.
$39
per prospect, refundable
how · A $39 refundable pre-order through a hosted checkout page, chosen because this is a self-serve consumer purchase under $100 where a card payment is the only friction worth measuring; the buyer clicks pay, nobody signs anything. set up: Stripe Checkout ↗
what it reserves · A slot in the first 100-person cohort with a November 2026 install date and a $10/month price locked for the first year against the $20 list price.
refund · Refunded in full by one email any time before install day, and refunded automatically if the extension has not shipped by December 15, 2026.
target · 12 paid pre-orders (5 from calls, 7 from the page) within 21 days
Go: build it if
12 or more paid $39 pre-orders across calls and page, with the page converting at 2% or better of 500 visitors
Kill: stop if
Fewer than 5 pre-orders after 40 DMs, 15 calls and 500 page visitors, or more than half of pre-orders refunded within a week
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
Saw your post about using your own ChatGPT for client work and keeping quiet about it. I'm building Scrubline, a browser extension that masks client names, numbers and code identifiers before a prompt leaves your laptop, then unmasks the answer, and the mapping never leaves your machine. You keep the account you already pay for. I'm talking to 20 people who do this daily before we build anything. Can I get 20 minutes this week? I'll show a working mock and ask what you'd actually pay.
landing page
Use your personal AI at work without leaking a single client name. $39 refundable pre-order locks founding price: $10/month for your first year (list $20). Reserve your spot - first cohort installs the week of November 9, 2026.
deposit terms
Your $39 reserves a place in the first 100-person cohort, installing the week of November 9, 2026, and locks your price at $10/month for the first year against the $20 list price. Refundable in full any time before install day with one email. If we have not shipped by December 15, 2026, everyone 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.
41
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 25.4 x 1.61
Warm
competition: more crowded than 44% of ideas · headwind x0.78
+3.8
government priorities, secondary (30 matching grants)
Trend
24
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 sector0
- Sector direction (live batch)50
Demand
57
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)83
100x potential
16
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Neighbours still alive16
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 local, redaction, proxy, personal, accounts, safe, browser, extension.
The concept in full
- What
- A browser extension and local proxy that masks customer names, financials and code identifiers before a prompt leaves for the user's personal ChatGPT or Claude account, then reverses the mapping in the response so the answer reads naturally. The mapping never leaves the laptop. Built for the knowledge worker whose personal tools outperform the sanctioned stack but who fears leaking company data. In the first hour a user installs the extension, connects their existing accounts and sets masking rules for their employer's data categories.
- Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
- MIT NANDA's State of AI in Business 2025 (research January-June 2025, published August): 'more than 40% of knowledge workers use personal AI tools at work' and users call the same models 'reliable in their own hands and unreliable inside enterprise systems'. Menlo Ventures (June 26, 2025): only 3% of the 61% of Americans who use AI pay for it, and those 3% are exactly the people who bring paid accounts to work.
- What it rides
- 'The GenAI Divide: 95% of pilots return nothing, workers run their own tools' (MIT NANDA, published August 2025): the shadow user keeps their tools, Scrubline removes the one reason to ban them.
- Why now
- MIT's August 2025 finding that over 40% of knowledge workers run personal AI at work while 95% of enterprise pilots return nothing means the personal tools are staying; the exposed data path is the only unsolved part, and no sanctioned alternative has caught up.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- Individual shadow users at regulated employers, starting with the 3% who already pay for ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro out of pocket; a $20-a-month self-serve extension they install without asking anyone.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Tinfoil (yc X25) sells encrypted inference with verifiable privacy, which means switching where the model runs; Scrubline keeps the consumer apps the user already pays for and cleans the data path instead.
- Main risk
- OpenAI or Anthropic ship a first-party work-data mode on consumer plans that redacts client-side, collapsing the standalone proxy.
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Public money in this direction
US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.
NIH / NIA · SBIR phase II · $2M
NIH / NCI · SBIR phase I · $399K
NIH / NHLBI · SBIR phase I · $550K
National Science Foundation · Use-Inspired NextG, GVF - Global Venture Fund · $675K
NIH / NIDDK · SBIR phase II · $905K
NIH / NIAMS · SBIR phase I · $314K
NIH / NCI · SBIR phase I · $303K
- Nanodroplet Infused Analgesic-Wafer for Transmucosal Opioid-free Treatment of Subacute Oral Painaward
NIH / NINDS · STTR phase I · $413K
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