catalog

New startup ideas

272 ideas, each written as a concrete fictional company a small team could start today, designed on twelve axes so no two are alike, scored by five AI judges with named rubrics, and matched against the real startups in the directory and what happened to them. Every idea has its own page with a plan to test it on real prospects before building anything (small experiments, sell first, a refundable deposit), the full brief, the judges' reasons, similar companies and whether public money flows in that direction - and an Idea Score that balances how trendy the idea is, the demand for it and its 100x potential, with competition measured relative to the other ideas. Lists are sorted by that score.

272

ideas in the catalog

131

rated venture-grade (VC 4-5)

6

major categories

2

curated collections

Collections

Curated cuts around one field of expertise, with what changed in the last twelve months and fresh concepts written from it.

By major category

An idea is listed under its own sector and under any other sector it clearly touches, so a payments agent appears in both Fintech and AI and software.

AI and software

all 170

Agents, copilots, agent infrastructure, developer tools, AI infra and data for AI.

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Bylaw Health

The licensed medical group behind your API call, in fifty states.

Bylaw Health holds the professional corporations, state clinician licenses, supervision agreements and payer enrollments in every US state, and exposes them as endpoints: create a clinician, attach a supervising physician, enroll a location with a payer, submit an encounter under a compliant entity.

Score 100Open competitionVC 5/5Infrastructure and APIsSmall businesstest: $1.5k · 5w97% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Residua

Secondary market where enterprises resell unused committed cloud and GPU spend.

Residua is a self-serve exchange where enterprises list the unused portion of multi-year committed spend contracts with clouds and GPU neoclouds, and other enterprises buy that entitlement at a discount.

Score 98Warm competitionVC 4/5MarketplaceEnterprise99% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Kinware

The AI agent that runs the paperwork and logistics of caring for an aging parent.

Kinware is a subscription agent for adult children managing a parent's life: it books appointments, chases refills, requests records, files insurance paperwork, and schedules home services, reporting to the whole family in one thread.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumer97% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Swingbus

An agent that clears utility interconnection queues for new data center load.

Swingbus sells public power utilities and system operators an agent service that runs grid interconnection and load studies: it ingests the network model, runs power flow, stability and protection studies with learned surrogates instead of overnight solver batches, and produces the signed study package a regulator will accept.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceGovernment and public sectortest: $3.2k · 6w99% of 3 neighbours alive

B2B, security and compliance · Security and compliance

Claimyard

Marketplace turning scam, fraud and privacy losses into funded, aggregated consumer claims.

A consumer uploads what happened, screenshots of a romance scam, an unauthorized P2P transfer, a data misuse notice, and a no-code intake agent classifies the claim, pulls the paper trail from the bank or platform, and posts it to a marketplace of licensed attorneys, arbitration filers and litigation funders who bid to take it on contingency.

Score 93Open competitionVC 5/5MarketplaceConsumer83% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Substrate Exchange

The exchange where pharma buys the experimental data that trains biology models.

Substrate Exchange is a marketplace where biotechs, CROs and academic labs list assay results, screening runs and failed-experiment data in standardized, model-ready form, and pharma AI teams license it by the dataset or by subscription.

Score 92Warm competitionVC 4/5MarketplaceEnterprise97% of 4 neighbours alive

Payments, banking, lending, insurance, accounting for money, stablecoins and crypto rails.

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Residua

Secondary market where enterprises resell unused committed cloud and GPU spend.

Residua is a self-serve exchange where enterprises list the unused portion of multi-year committed spend contracts with clouds and GPU neoclouds, and other enterprises buy that entitlement at a discount.

Score 98Warm competitionVC 4/5MarketplaceEnterprise99% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Allelium

The shared evidence network that makes every genetic test report smarter.

A subscription workbench for hospital and reference sequencing labs that drafts variant interpretations for cancer and rare disease reports.

Score 98Warm competitionVC 3/5Software subscriptionEnterprise96% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Bayworks

Licensed GMP manufacturing bays for personalized therapies, sold as bookable capacity.

Bayworks builds standardized, FDA-registered cleanroom modules inside hospital systems and partner CDMO sites, then runs a marketplace where drug sponsors book manufacturing slots by the batch instead of signing multi-year suite reservations.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 5/5MarketplaceEnterprise96% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Kinware

The AI agent that runs the paperwork and logistics of caring for an aging parent.

Kinware is a subscription agent for adult children managing a parent's life: it books appointments, chases refills, requests records, files insurance paperwork, and schedules home services, reporting to the whole family in one thread.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumer97% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Swingbus

An agent that clears utility interconnection queues for new data center load.

Swingbus sells public power utilities and system operators an agent service that runs grid interconnection and load studies: it ingests the network model, runs power flow, stability and protection studies with learned surrogates instead of overnight solver batches, and produces the signed study package a regulator will accept.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceGovernment and public sectortest: $3.2k · 6w99% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Wardlink

A plug-in gateway that puts every hospital device on one shared network.

Wardlink sells a retrofit gateway box that a hospital biomedical engineering team orders online and clips onto legacy equipment - infusion pumps, ventilators, imaging carts - to get live location, utilization and fault data with no IT project.

Score 96Warm competitionVC 4/5HardwareEnterprise95% of 2 neighbours alive

Consumer and commerce

all 133

E-commerce tooling, procurement and supply chain, consumer products and services.

B2B, security and compliance · Security and compliance

Humanrail

A licensed personhood and KYC API any small merchant can turn on in an afternoon.

Humanrail is an API that answers two questions for small online businesses: is this a real, unique human, and does this customer clear the anti-money-laundering checks the merchant is legally on the hook for.

Score 99Warm competitionVC 4/5Infrastructure and APIsSmall business83% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Swingbus

An agent that clears utility interconnection queues for new data center load.

Swingbus sells public power utilities and system operators an agent service that runs grid interconnection and load studies: it ingests the network model, runs power flow, stability and protection studies with learned surrogates instead of overnight solver batches, and produces the signed study package a regulator will accept.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceGovernment and public sectortest: $3.2k · 6w99% of 3 neighbours alive

B2B, security and compliance · Security and compliance

Claimyard

Marketplace turning scam, fraud and privacy losses into funded, aggregated consumer claims.

A consumer uploads what happened, screenshots of a romance scam, an unauthorized P2P transfer, a data misuse notice, and a no-code intake agent classifies the claim, pulls the paper trail from the bank or platform, and posts it to a marketplace of licensed attorneys, arbitration filers and litigation funders who bid to take it on contingency.

Score 93Open competitionVC 5/5MarketplaceConsumer83% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Kinfold

An AI agent that runs the logistics of caring for an aging parent.

Kinfold is a consumer agent that families hire for about $20 a month to handle the non-clinical work around an older relative: booking and rebooking appointments, sitting on hold with insurers and pharmacies, chasing records between providers, ordering refills and equipment, filing benefit paperwork, and keeping siblings on one shared timeline.

Score 89Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumertest: $1.8k · 5w97% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Sovergrid

The procurement marketplace where governments buy sovereign AI compute and models.

Sovergrid is a marketplace where ministries, national labs, and public universities buy accredited AI compute, models, and deployment tooling from vetted domestic and allied providers under pre-negotiated framework contracts.

Score 88Warm competitionVC 3/5MarketplaceGovernment and public sector99% of 2 neighbours alive

Physical world · Climate and energy

Kilobid

Licensed AI agent that bids your home battery, EV and thermostat into wholesale power markets.

Kilobid is a consumer app that links a household's utility account, battery, EV charger and thermostat through existing APIs, then runs an agent that decides hour by hour when to charge, hold or discharge and submits those decisions into wholesale and utility program markets.

Score 88Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumer96% of 4 neighbours alive

B2B, security and compliance

all 138

Business software, cybersecurity, fraud, identity, regulatory compliance and legal tech.

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Bylaw Health

The licensed medical group behind your API call, in fifty states.

Bylaw Health holds the professional corporations, state clinician licenses, supervision agreements and payer enrollments in every US state, and exposes them as endpoints: create a clinician, attach a supervising physician, enroll a location with a payer, submit an encounter under a compliant entity.

Score 100Open competitionVC 5/5Infrastructure and APIsSmall businesstest: $1.5k · 5w97% of 4 neighbours alive

B2B, security and compliance · Security and compliance

Humanrail

A licensed personhood and KYC API any small merchant can turn on in an afternoon.

Humanrail is an API that answers two questions for small online businesses: is this a real, unique human, and does this customer clear the anti-money-laundering checks the merchant is legally on the hook for.

Score 99Warm competitionVC 4/5Infrastructure and APIsSmall business83% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Residua

Secondary market where enterprises resell unused committed cloud and GPU spend.

Residua is a self-serve exchange where enterprises list the unused portion of multi-year committed spend contracts with clouds and GPU neoclouds, and other enterprises buy that entitlement at a discount.

Score 98Warm competitionVC 4/5MarketplaceEnterprise99% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Swingbus

An agent that clears utility interconnection queues for new data center load.

Swingbus sells public power utilities and system operators an agent service that runs grid interconnection and load studies: it ingests the network model, runs power flow, stability and protection studies with learned surrogates instead of overnight solver batches, and produces the signed study package a regulator will accept.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceGovernment and public sectortest: $3.2k · 6w99% of 3 neighbours alive

B2B, security and compliance · Security and compliance

Claimyard

Marketplace turning scam, fraud and privacy losses into funded, aggregated consumer claims.

A consumer uploads what happened, screenshots of a romance scam, an unauthorized P2P transfer, a data misuse notice, and a no-code intake agent classifies the claim, pulls the paper trail from the bank or platform, and posts it to a marketplace of licensed attorneys, arbitration filers and litigation funders who bid to take it on contingency.

Score 93Open competitionVC 5/5MarketplaceConsumer83% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Retrieva

A licensed records network with couriers for the charts no API can reach.

Retrieva is a records retrieval API for health plans, pharma safety teams and large provider groups that need complete patient charts, not the subset that sits in an EHR interface.

Score 92Active competitionVC 4/5Infrastructure and APIsEnterprisetest: $2.4k · 6w96% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio

all 55

Clinical software, care delivery, diagnostics, biotech and pharma tooling.

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Bylaw Health

The licensed medical group behind your API call, in fifty states.

Bylaw Health holds the professional corporations, state clinician licenses, supervision agreements and payer enrollments in every US state, and exposes them as endpoints: create a clinician, attach a supervising physician, enroll a location with a payer, submit an encounter under a compliant entity.

Score 100Open competitionVC 5/5Infrastructure and APIsSmall businesstest: $1.5k · 5w97% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Allelium

The shared evidence network that makes every genetic test report smarter.

A subscription workbench for hospital and reference sequencing labs that drafts variant interpretations for cancer and rare disease reports.

Score 98Warm competitionVC 3/5Software subscriptionEnterprise96% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Bayworks

Licensed GMP manufacturing bays for personalized therapies, sold as bookable capacity.

Bayworks builds standardized, FDA-registered cleanroom modules inside hospital systems and partner CDMO sites, then runs a marketplace where drug sponsors book manufacturing slots by the batch instead of signing multi-year suite reservations.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 5/5MarketplaceEnterprise96% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Kinware

The AI agent that runs the paperwork and logistics of caring for an aging parent.

Kinware is a subscription agent for adult children managing a parent's life: it books appointments, chases refills, requests records, files insurance paperwork, and schedules home services, reporting to the whole family in one thread.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumer97% of 4 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Wardlink

A plug-in gateway that puts every hospital device on one shared network.

Wardlink sells a retrofit gateway box that a hospital biomedical engineering team orders online and clips onto legacy equipment - infusion pumps, ventilators, imaging carts - to get live location, utilization and fault data with no IT project.

Score 96Warm competitionVC 4/5HardwareEnterprise95% of 2 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Substrate Exchange

The exchange where pharma buys the experimental data that trains biology models.

Substrate Exchange is a marketplace where biotechs, CROs and academic labs list assay results, screening runs and failed-experiment data in standardized, model-ready form, and pharma AI teams license it by the dataset or by subscription.

Score 92Warm competitionVC 4/5MarketplaceEnterprise97% of 4 neighbours alive

Physical world

all 118

Robotics, hardware, defense and space, climate and energy, manufacturing and logistics.

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Bayworks

Licensed GMP manufacturing bays for personalized therapies, sold as bookable capacity.

Bayworks builds standardized, FDA-registered cleanroom modules inside hospital systems and partner CDMO sites, then runs a marketplace where drug sponsors book manufacturing slots by the batch instead of signing multi-year suite reservations.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 5/5MarketplaceEnterprise96% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Kinware

The AI agent that runs the paperwork and logistics of caring for an aging parent.

Kinware is a subscription agent for adult children managing a parent's life: it books appointments, chases refills, requests records, files insurance paperwork, and schedules home services, reporting to the whole family in one thread.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumer97% of 4 neighbours alive

AI and software · AI infra and compute

Swingbus

An agent that clears utility interconnection queues for new data center load.

Swingbus sells public power utilities and system operators an agent service that runs grid interconnection and load studies: it ingests the network model, runs power flow, stability and protection studies with learned surrogates instead of overnight solver batches, and produces the signed study package a regulator will accept.

Score 97Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceGovernment and public sectortest: $3.2k · 6w99% of 3 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Wardlink

A plug-in gateway that puts every hospital device on one shared network.

Wardlink sells a retrofit gateway box that a hospital biomedical engineering team orders online and clips onto legacy equipment - infusion pumps, ventilators, imaging carts - to get live location, utilization and fault data with no IT project.

Score 96Warm competitionVC 4/5HardwareEnterprise95% of 2 neighbours alive

B2B, security and compliance · Security and compliance

Ironhull

Compliant-by-construction cloud: inherit certification instead of earning it.

Ironhull runs its own hardened infrastructure - dedicated enclaves, HSMs, locked-down images, continuous monitoring - certified once against FedRAMP, SOC 2, and PCI, and sells it as a subscription on which enterprise software vendors deploy and inherit the compliance posture.

Score 91Active competitionVC 4/5Software subscriptionEnterprise96% of 1 neighbours alive

Health and bio · Healthcare and bio

Kinfold

An AI agent that runs the logistics of caring for an aging parent.

Kinfold is a consumer agent that families hire for about $20 a month to handle the non-clinical work around an older relative: booking and rebooking appointments, sitting on hold with insurers and pharmacies, chasing records between providers, ordering refills and equipment, filing benefit paperwork, and keeping siblings on one shared timeline.

Score 89Warm competitionVC 4/5AI agent as a serviceConsumertest: $1.8k · 5w97% of 4 neighbours alive

The ideas are fictional companies written by a model from the radar's data (accelerator portfolios, funding news, US federal grants, YC Requests for Startups) as a designed set: every card is a deliberate combination of attribute levels. Five AI judges score each one; the venture judge gates which cards are shown. The same cards are dealt in the deck, where swiping measures which attributes you value. Treat every idea as a research prompt, not a plan.