New startup ideas · AI and software · Horizontal AI assistants

startup idea

Procura

API that gives any AI agent legally binding authority to act for a small business.

Procura is the mandate layer agent builders call before their agent signs, pays or files anything: the small business owner verifies identity once, grants a scoped, revocable power of attorney, and Procura issues a cryptographic credential that binds each agent action to that mandate with a qualified electronic seal and an immutable audit trail.

Infrastructure and APIs
Small business
$10-100B market
Platform others build on
Global from day one

4/5

venture judge

similar startups, last 2 years (1 all-time)

78%

of 3 nearest real companies still alive

yes

2 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$1,700 · 4 weeks · 20 prospects

For under $1,700 and four weeks, prove that AI agent startups selling to small businesses will prepay for a mandate and audit API before it exists, measured in paid design-partner deposits.

1Focus group: who and where

Founders and CTOs of seed to Series A startups whose agents take actions for small businesses - paying invoices, filing forms, signing vendor agreements - who are currently losing deals or stuck in security review because customers will not hand agents their passwords or banking credentials

where to find 20 · The YC Startup Directory filtered to AI agent companies serving SMBs in the last four batches; the r/AI_Agents subreddit; the Latent Space Discord; LinkedIn Sales Navigator filtered on 'founder' plus 'AI agent' at US companies under 50 employees; speaker and sponsor lists from the AI Engineer World's Fair in San Francisco

2Sell first, build later

A design-partner package sold before the API exists: the consent flow and sealed audit log run manually behind a stub API for the partner's first 25 small-business mandates, integration support from a founder, live within 30 days of payment, with the partner's logo use and pricing locked for 12 months

the ask · $1,000 prepaid credits per design partner, redeemable against $0.50 per verified mandate and $0.05 per sealed action; $3,000 for the pilot tier with a dedicated integration sprint

a real yes · A real yes is a paid Stripe link or a paid invoice. Not a yes: a GitHub star, a Discord 'we would totally use this', an unpaid letter of intent, or a founder offering to intro their customers instead of paying

3Small experiments

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

1. Docs-first landing page
$200 · 10 days
Publish a landing page that reads like real API documentation: the consent flow, a POST /mandates and POST /seals reference, and a pricing table at $0.50 per verified mandate and $0.05 per sealed action, with a 'request API keys' form as the fake door. Drive traffic with 40 direct DMs and posts in r/AI_Agents and the Latent Space Discord.
keep going if · 12 API key requests with a company email, of which 6 describe a concrete blocked action in the form's use-case field
2. Blocked-deal discovery calls
$100 · 14 days
Book 15 calls with agent founders from the key-request list and directory outreach. Script the call around one question: name the last deal or rollout that stalled because your agent could not be trusted to sign, pay or file, and what that stall cost. Walk a clickable prototype of the one-screen consent flow and the sealed audit log.
keep going if · 8 of 15 founders name a specific stalled deal or a customer security review the agent failed
3. Wizard-of-Oz sealed pilot
$600 · 14 days
For 2 design partners, run the mandate layer by hand: a DocuSign power-of-attorney template scoped to named actions, an identity check through a Stripe Identity link, and a hand-maintained audit log delivered as signed PDFs, all behind a thin API stub that a founder answers within an hour. Run one real customer of theirs end to end.
keep going if · 2 pilots complete a real customer's mandate and at least 1 counterparty (a bank, registry or supplier) accepts the sealed act without escalation
4. Prepaid credits pre-sale
$50 · 12 days
At the end of every call that surfaces a blocked deal, send a Stripe Payment Link for $1,000 of prepaid mandate and seal credits redeemable at launch, positioned as one of 5 design-partner slots with integration support included. One founder follows up twice over ten days.
keep going if · 4 of the founders who named a blocked deal pay the $1,000 link

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.

$1,000

per prospect, refundable

how · A Stripe Payment Link for $1,000 of prepaid usage credits, paid by the agent startup, with a one-page design-partner agreement countersigned by their founder; the $3,000 pilot tier is invoiced up front through Stripe Invoicing set up: Stripe Payment Links ↗

what it reserves · One of 5 design-partner slots, first-cohort integration support, 12-month price lock, and their most-requested counterparty (their customers' bank or state registry) prioritized for acceptance testing

refund · Fully refundable on request any time before their first production mandate is sealed, and automatically refunded if the API is not live for them within 60 days

target · 5 paid deposits totaling $5,000 or more from 20 prospects within 30 days

Go: build it if

5 or more paid design partners, at least $5,000 collected, and 1 Wizard-of-Oz mandate accepted by a real counterparty

Kill: stop if

Fewer than 2 paid deposits after 15 calls, or fewer than half of founders can name a deal that actually stalled on authority rather than on product quality

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 32.4 x 1.64

Open

competition: more crowded than 6% of ideas · headwind x0.97

+1.2

government priorities, secondary (2 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)23
Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector0
Sector direction (live batch)0
2026 trend analyst75

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)8
Operator judge: real pain25

100x potential

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

Venture judge75
Market size axis67
Moat axis80
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 legally, binding, authority, act, mandate, builders, call.

The idea in full

What: Procura is the mandate layer agent builders call before their agent signs, pays or files anything: the small business owner verifies identity once, grants a scoped, revocable power of attorney, and Procura issues a cryptographic credential that binds each agent action to that mandate with a qualified electronic seal and an immutable audit trail. Developers pay per verification and per sealed action; the small business sees one consent screen instead of handing over passwords. Procura holds the trust service and payment authorisations itself, so the counterparty bank, registry or supplier can accept the agent's act as the owner's act.
Why now: The radar shows 54 new companies in this cluster in the last two years, with Tasklet pitching agents that own the work, Dock a multiplayer agent workspace to run your company and Gini an AI coworker in Slack and Teams, yet Solari AI, whose pitch was agents that work out of the box for non-technical people, died in 2024 because agents that cannot be held to an authority record stall at the moment of commitment.
Wedge: first customer and entry point: The five to ten agent startups already selling to small businesses: give them a drop-in consent flow and sealed audit log so their enterprise-grade customers stop blocking rollout, charging per verified mandate.
Path to 100x: Business identity verification, e-signature and payment authorisation together form a $10-100B infrastructure market, and every agent developer who builds on Procura adds a counterparty that accepts Procura mandates, which makes the next developer's integration more valuable. Trust service and payment licences in multiple jurisdictions are slow to obtain and are what stops a well-funded agent company from replicating the layer as a weekend feature.
Ceiling: If agent adoption in small business stays inside low-stakes tasks like drafting and scheduling, nobody needs binding authority and the market stays a fraction of the size.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them: Tasklet, Dock and Gini all build agents that need this layer and none sell it to others; Solari AI attempted out-of-the-box agents for non-technical teams and is in the graveyard. Procura deliberately sells no end-user agent, which is why competing agent vendors can adopt it.
Main risk: Banks, registries and marketplaces build their own agent authorisation standard and refuse credentials issued by a third party.

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
4/5
Trust service and payment licences plus a developer-side network where each integration adds accepting counterparties is compounding defensibility in a $10-100B infrastructure line.
Bootstrapper
2/5
Qualified electronic seals and payment authorisation licences in multiple jurisdictions are exactly the long regulatory path this lens punishes.
Operator
2/5
The buyer is five to ten agent startups, not the small business feeling pain, and binding authority matters only once agents leave low-stakes tasks.
Technologist
2/5
Qualified seals and scoped credentials are solved cryptography; the barrier is trust service licences, and banks and registries may set their own standard.
Risk
2/5
Multi-jurisdiction trust licences are real footing, but the wedge is five to ten agent startups and banks may set their own standard.
trends
4/5
Scoped revocable mandates with held payment authorisations mirror the 2025-2026 consent-token pattern of Agent Pay and AP2, aimed at the SMB layer networks skipped.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (legally, binding, authority, act, mandate, builders, call): 1 all-time, 0 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.

Tilt (f.k.a. Delphia)yc W18 · 2018 · Agent infrastructurealive
GitHub for Investment Methodology

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

startup-relevant grants in Horizontal AI assistants

$30M

awarded in the sector, tracked

Advancing HBV antivirals that suppress viral replication and HBsAg productionawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIAID · SBIR phase I · $314K · posted 2026-07-08
Rapid affordable aptamer-based diagnostic test for Hepatitis C virusawardhigh relevance
NIH / NCHHSTP · SBIR phase I · $501K · posted 2025-09-30

All public money by sector →

Market signal

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

Horizontal AI assistants · 30 → 77 → 84 → 57 → 28 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 89% aliveYC S26: 7 in this cluster, 3% of the batch (was 3% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 129 YC companies here: 3 acquired, 3 shut down, 30 rewrote their pitch

Horizontal AI assistants: 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: Small business
Business model: Infrastructure and APIs
Path to 100x: Platform others build on
Market size: $10-100B market
Capital intensity: Capital-light (software margins)
Speed to revenue: Revenue in 1-3 years
Technical depth: Deep tech: ML, hardware, bio
Go-to-market: Founder-led sales
Moat: License or regulatory moat
Geography: Global from day one
Regulation: Some regulation
Vibe: Boring business