New startup ideas · AI and software · Data for AI
startup idea
Groundfeed
A marketplace where ordinary people sell everyday real-world recordings to AI labs.
A consumer app plus an embeddable SDK that lets anyone record mundane real-world data - chores on camera, receipts, handwriting, phone screen sessions - and sell it into standing dataset orders from model builders.
- Marketplace
- Consumer
- $1-10B market
- Platform others build on
- Global from day one
3/5
venture judge
2
similar startups, last 2 years (16 all-time)
96%
of 4 nearest real companies still alive
yes
7 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
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.
60
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 36.6 x 1.64
Warm
competition: more crowded than 32% of ideas · headwind x0.84
+2.2
government priorities, secondary (7 matching grants)
Trend
44
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)17
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector8
- Sector direction (live batch)100
- 2026 trend analyst50
Demand
52
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
- Operator judge: real pain25
100x potential
31
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Venture judge50
- Market size axis33
- Moat axis20
- Neighbours still alive6
- Technologist judge25
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 marketplace, ordinary, sell, everyday, real-world, recordings, consumer, plus.
The idea in full
- What
- A consumer app plus an embeddable SDK that lets anyone record mundane real-world data - chores on camera, receipts, handwriting, phone screen sessions - and sell it into standing dataset orders from model builders. Consumers join self-serve anywhere in the world, an automated QC and PII-scrubbing pipeline grades every clip, and third-party app developers embed the collection SDK to monetize their own users, taking a revenue share like an ad network for data. Field teams run collection campaigns in regions where a lab's coverage gaps demand density.
- Why now
- YC's Fall 2026 RFS names Data for the Real World, and the cluster added 61 new companies in 2025 and 40 already in 2026 - but nearly all of them (DeepReach, Hub, Human Archive) sell to labs B2B with contracted collectors, leaving the consumer supply side unbuilt; the only crowded phrase is 'training data' at 7 companies, all lab-facing.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- Start with one dataset labs already pay for but cannot buy at scale - first-person video of household tasks - recruit 5,000 contributors in three countries through the app, and sell the first standardized corpus to a single robotics lab.
- Path to 100x
- Real-world data collection is a $1-10B market growing with every new robotics and world-model lab, and the winner is whoever aggregates the largest verified consumer supply base - liquidity begets liquidity, since labs post orders where contributors already are. The SDK turns thousands of third-party apps into collection endpoints the company does not have to build, which is the platform leverage that takes one team to global scale.
- Ceiling
- If frontier labs consolidate to a handful of buyers who each build in-house collection, demand concentration caps the take rate and the outcome below $1B.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- DeepReach Inc. builds a real-world data network for robots but sources through B2B partnerships; Luel turns everyday words and actions into training data as a lab-facing product; Human Archive runs a physical AI data lab with its own collectors. Groundfeed differs by making the consumer the seller and by letting any third-party app become a collection surface through the SDK.
- Main risk
- Labs may keep preferring contracted, controlled collection over open consumer supply, leaving the marketplace with sellers but no repeat buyers.
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
3/5
Consumer supply could aggregate fast, but the card admits no moat and a handful of labs as buyers, which caps the take rate.
Bootstrapper
1/5
Revenue only after three years of R&D plus field teams in three countries, and the buyer pool is a handful of labs.
Operator
2/5
Labs already prefer contracted collectors, so the paying buyer must abandon controlled collection for consumer clips it did not ask for.
Technologist
2/5
QC and PII scrubbing is standard pipeline work, and the card admits no moat yet while DeepReach and Human Archive already hold the lab relationships.
Risk
2/5
Demand sits with a handful of frontier labs that prefer contracted collection, and 101 cluster entrants since 2025 means no defensible position on either side.
trends
3/5
Same 'Data for the Real World' tailwind as peers, but three R&D-first years and labs preferring contracted collection push revenue past the open window.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (marketplace, ordinary, sell, everyday, real-world, recordings, consumer, plus): 16 all-time, 2 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
Personal AI healthcare agent, powered by clinical and wearable data.
Atorie: Luxury Without the Price Tag
AI Native Consumer Loan Servicer
OS for global e-commerce expansion of brands & manufacturers
Transform Images And Videos Into Immersive 3D With AI
A direct to consumer marketplace and influencer network for brands
The platform for buying, selling and managing residential construction
Operator of a customer engagement platform designed to help businesses leverage their data and improve the quality of their engagement with their customers. The company's platform uses open-source technologies with machine learning to bring new data models to market in record time and foster collaboration among business managers to build a broad range of enterprise applications, enabling businesses to create effective run-time consumer models and scores for fraud detection, churn-management, caller-agent mapping, recommendations and cross-sell applications.
Provider of an online marketplace designed to sell fashion apparel and accessories for women. The company's online marketplace stitches garments at scale with full integration into mobile distribution and supply, enabling consumers to get products of their choice at a low cost.
Operator of an e-commerce platform intended to sell handcrafted fine jewelry for everyday use. The company's direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform features products such as rings, pendants, earrings, bracelets, and other luxury jewelry made up of precious and semi-precious stones, enabling women to buy handcrafted accessories online.
Operator of an online retail marketplace intended to sell music band merchandise. The company's marketplace allows fans to discover and buy merchandise such as clothes, accessories, bags, digital video discs, and vinyl from their favorite music artists, enabling fans to buy their desired accessories and merchandise at a reasonable price range.
Sell to people nearby.
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.
7
grants and programs matching the idea
179
startup-relevant grants in Data for AI
$147M
awarded in the sector, tracked
8
opportunities open now in the sector
- Developing a Learning Platform to Support Minimally Verbal Individuals with Autismawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIDCD · STTR phase I · $313K · posted 2026-07-01
- Collaborative Research: CSR: VERITAS: Secure Vehicular Systems through Intelligent Information Flow Verificationawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · CSR-Computer Systems Research · $300K · posted 2026-07-29
- Collaborative Research: CSR: VERITAS: Secure Vehicular Systems through Intelligent Information Flow Verificationawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · CSR-Computer Systems Research · $300K · posted 2026-07-29
- Collaborative Research: CSR: VERITAS: Secure Vehicular Systems through Intelligent Information Flow Verificationawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · CSR-Computer Systems Research · $400K · posted 2026-07-29
- HCC: Technology-mediated positive emotions for well-being and consumer product sustainabilityawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · HCC-Human-Centered Computing · $657K · posted 2026-07-28
- CAREER: Bolt-On Scalable Systems for AI-Powered Query Processing over Structured and Unstructured Dataawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · CSR-Computer Systems Research · $667K · posted 2026-07-20
- III: Web-Scale Hand-Object-Centric Video Dataset Sourcing and Aggregation with Video-Based Data Retrieval for Robot Learningawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · Info Integration & Informatics · $894K · posted 2026-07-20
Market signal
What the radar sees in Data for AI: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
Data for AI · 49 → 35 → 66 → 61 → 40 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 91% aliveYC S26: 10 in this cluster, 4% of the batch (was 3% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 167 YC companies here: 1 acquired, 2 shut down, 25 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
- Consumer
- Business model
- Marketplace
- Path to 100x
- Platform others build on
- Market size
- $1-10B market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-medium (ops, field teams)
- Speed to revenue
- R&D first, revenue after 3 years
- Technical depth
- Real engineering
- Go-to-market
- Self-serve
- Moat
- No moat yet
- Geography
- Global from day one
- Regulation
- Unregulated
- Vibe
- Boring business
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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