New startup ideas · AI and software · Developer tools

startup idea

Portway

A machine-readable catalogue of every internal enterprise app, so agents can use them.

Portway is a subscription platform where a large company describes its internal applications once, in a no-code editor, as capability manifests: what each app does, which actions it exposes, who may call them, and what the fields mean.

Software subscription
Enterprise
$100B+ market
Platform others build on
US first

3/5

venture judge

similar startups, last 2 years (8 all-time)

95%

of 4 nearest real companies still alive

yes

3 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$1,000 · 6 weeks · 15 prospects

For $1,000 and 6 weeks, prove that two enterprise platform engineering teams will sign and fund a $4,000 design-partner pilot for an agent-readable catalogue of their internal apps, instead of waiting for their model vendor to bundle it.

Riskiest assumption · Platform engineering leaders at large US enterprises will pay this year for a vendor-neutral, agent-readable catalogue of their internal applications, rather than wait for their model vendor or developer portal vendor to bundle system description into the platform they already run.

1Focus group: who and where

The platform engineering lead or internal developer portal owner at a US company of 1,000+ employees (insurers, retailers, banks) that runs Backstage or a similar service catalogue and has had at least one internal agent pilot stall because agents could not use internal systems

where to find 15 · Backstage's public ADOPTERS.md file on GitHub (a directory naming the companies that run it), the CNCF Slack #backstage channel and the Platform Engineering Community Slack from platformengineering.org (the communities), the monthly Backstage Community Sessions calls (the event), plus warm introductions through investors and former colleagues at those companies

2Sell first, build later

A 6-week design-partner pilot: 10 internal systems from the team's existing Backstage catalogue converted into capability manifests, validated by a live agent completing 3 real tasks against them, with a written scope, named users and a dated kickoff.

the ask · $4,000 per pilot, invoiced at signing.

a real yes · A real yes is a countersigned pilot agreement with the invoice paid or a purchase order issued, plus a kickoff date on the calendar. Architect enthusiasm, unpaid proofs of concept, and 'come back after our agent strategy review' are not.

3Small experiments

The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.

1. Fifteen platform lead interviews
$200 · 14 days
Build a list of 30 named platform leads from ADOPTERS.md and the two Slack communities, get 15 onto 30-minute calls through direct messages and warm intros. Ask what their last agent pilot did about internal system access, who owns that problem, and whether it has budget this quarter; do not pitch until the last five minutes.
keep going if · 8 of 15 name agent access to internal apps as a funded, this-quarter problem with a named budget owner
2. Manifest demo on real systems
$400 · 10 days
With one volunteer team from the interviews, hand-write capability manifests for 5 of their catalogued systems in a spreadsheet and a JSON file, then show a stock agent (Claude with tool definitions generated from the manifests) completing 3 real read-only tasks against a sandbox. One founder-engineer builds it in a week; the artifact is a 15-minute recorded demo replayed to every interviewed team.
keep going if · 3 of the 15 interviewed teams ask for the same pilot on their own systems after seeing the demo
3. Close two paid pilots
$400 · 28 days
Send the 2-page design-partner agreement to every team that asked: $4,000, 6 weeks, 10 systems from their existing catalogue, a live agent completing 3 tasks as the acceptance test, named users and a dated kickoff. Walk each one through their procurement path on a call and take an LOI with a dated start only where prepayment is genuinely blocked.
keep going if · 2 countersigned pilots with money moved or a purchase order issued

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.

$4,000

per prospect, refundable

how · A paid design-partner pilot: a 2-page agreement signed by the platform lead and their director, with the $4,000 invoiced at signing - the amount sits under most managers' discretionary signing limit, which is why it can move without a full procurement cycle; where prepayment is still blocked, a signed LOI with a dated kickoff plus a PO under review substitutes, and counts as secondary evidence only. set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗

what it reserves · One of two design-partner slots this quarter, a named 6-week delivery window, and the 10 systems chosen by their team.

refund · Refundable in full until the kickoff date on the agreement; after kickoff, refunds are pro-rated by systems delivered.

target · 2 paid pilots from 15 conversations within 6 weeks.

Go: build it if

2 countersigned $4,000 pilots with money moved or a PO issued and dated kickoffs, out of 15 conversations, within 6 weeks.

Kill: stop if

0 paid pilots and fewer than 3 signed LOIs with dated starts from 15 conversations - if teams that already feel the pain will not fund a $4,000 pilot, they are waiting for their model vendor to bundle this, which is the card's stated risk confirmed.

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

outreach message

You maintain a Backstage catalogue that agents still cannot use - so every agent pilot at your company starts by re-describing systems your team already documented once. I am testing a way to turn that catalogue into machine-readable capability manifests any agent vendor can call, starting with 10 of your systems, and I am taking two design partners this quarter. Could I get 20 minutes to hear how your last agent pilot handled internal system access?

landing page

Make your internal apps readable by any agent $4,000 design-partner pilot: 10 systems from your Backstage catalogue as capability manifests, proven by a live agent, in 6 weeks Book a scoping call to claim one of two pilot slots this quarter

deposit terms

The $4,000 pilot fee is invoiced at signing and reserves one of two design-partner slots: 10 internal systems converted to capability manifests and validated by a live agent completing 3 real tasks, delivered in 6 weeks from your kickoff date. Refundable in full until kickoff; after kickoff, refunds are pro-rated by systems delivered.

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.

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 26.5 x 1.61

Warm

competition: more crowded than 32% of ideas · headwind x0.84

+1.5

government priorities, secondary (3 matching grants)

Trend

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)3
Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector16
Sector direction (live batch)0
2026 trend analyst50

Demand

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)67
Operator judge: real pain0

100x potential

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 axis100
Moat axis20
Neighbours still alive42
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 machine-readable, catalogue, internal, enterprise, subscription, describes, applications.

The idea in full

What: Portway is a subscription platform where a large company describes its internal applications once, in a no-code editor, as capability manifests: what each app does, which actions it exposes, who may call them, and what the fields mean. Agents from any vendor read the catalogue instead of guessing at screens and undocumented endpoints, and software vendors publish manifests for their own products so enterprises inherit coverage rather than authoring it. Anyone can start free by connecting a single system; the catalogue only becomes load-bearing after several years of coverage, which is why revenue arrives late.
Why now: Scope (yc X26) is already selling discovery of software by AI agents, and 87 new dev tools companies appeared in 2024 and 62 in 2025, most of them agent harnesses that all need the same missing thing: a description of what the enterprise's own systems can do. Vendo (yc S26) and 21st (yc W26) point at the same gap from the product and UI side.
Wedge: first customer and entry point: One platform engineering team at a US insurer or retailer that already keeps a half-broken service catalogue: import it, make it agent-readable, free for the first ten systems.
Path to 100x: Enterprise application integration and middleware is a $100B+ market, and the platform wins if manifests become the format vendors ship by default, making every enterprise deployment cheaper for the next agent vendor. It is a platform, not a tool: the value is in what others build on the catalogue, and coverage compounds with each vendor-published manifest.
Ceiling: Standards without an owner get ignored, so the plausible cap is a consulting-flavoured catalogue product at $30-60M ARR built one field team at a time.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them: Scope makes public software discoverable to agents; Portway does the inside-the-firewall equivalent and sells to the enterprise rather than the vendor. 21st supplies UI building blocks for agents, not a description of the enterprise's own systems.
Main risk: Model vendors bundle system description into their own agent platforms and the neutral catalogue has no reason to be separate.

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
$100B+ integration market and vendor-published manifests are real power-law fuel, but an ownerless standard with revenue after year three is a long fuse.
Bootstrapper
1/5
Card admits revenue only after three years of catalogue coverage, with free onboarding for the first ten systems and no moat.
Operator
1/5
Value only arrives after vendors industry-wide ship manifests and coverage compounds for years, which is the whole-industry-moves-first pattern this lens refuses.
Technologist
2/5
Capability manifests are a no-code metadata format with no technical depth, and model vendors bundling system description would erase it in one release.
Risk
2/5
An unowned standard whose value depends on model vendors choosing to read it, with revenue only after three years and no moat stated.
trends
3/5
Agent-readable manifests mirror what UCP just did for commerce, but revenue-after-3-years timing collides with model vendors bundling this, the card's own stated risk.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (machine-readable, catalogue, internal, enterprise, subscription, describes, applications): 8 all-time, 1 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.

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株式会社エクサウィザーズplugandplay · Vertical AI agentsacquired
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Boardwalktechplugandplay · Otheracquired
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Run this as an Idea Check →

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.

grants and programs matching the idea

122

startup-relevant grants in Developer tools

$70M

awarded in the sector, tracked

opportunities open now in the sector

Mechanobiology of Innate Immune Cell Responses to Engineered Nanoparticlesawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · BMMB-Biomech & Mechanobiology, Special Initiatives · $600K · posted 2026-08-20
Actively Regulated Electrochemical Interfaces for Robust All-Solid-State Batteries Using Physics-Informed Learningawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · EchemS-Electrochemical Systems · $540K · posted 2026-07-28
Mechanisms and consequences of resource allocation in non-growing bacteriaawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · Cell, Dev, & Physio · $1M · posted 2026-07-08

All public money by sector →

Market signal

What the radar sees in Developer tools: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.

Developer tools · 64 → 105 → 115 → 77 → 43 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 87% aliveYC F26: 8 in this cluster, 6% of the batch (was 3% in S26) (W27 is still forming: 5 listed)Since February, of 454 YC companies here: 7 acquired, 9 shut down, 48 rewrote their pitch

Developer tools: companies, trend and grants →

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: Platform others build on
Market size: $100B+ market
Capital intensity: Capital-medium (ops, field teams)
Speed to revenue: R&D first, revenue after 3 years
Technical depth: Integrations, no-code
Go-to-market: Self-serve
Moat: No moat yet
Geography: US first
Regulation: Unregulated
Vibe: Boring business