New startup ideas · B2B, security and compliance · B2B SaaS
startup idea
Cohorta
The exchange where enterprises buy synthetic audiences graded against real outcomes.
A marketplace where enterprise insight and marketing teams buy access to synthetic audiences - digital-twin panels built by third-party vendors - with every listing graded against held-out real-world outcomes contributed by panel companies and data owners.
- Marketplace
- Enterprise
- $10-100B market
- Creates a new category
- Global from day one
3/5
venture judge
2
similar startups, last 2 years (16 all-time)
79%
of 3 nearest real companies still alive
sector
16 public grants in this sector, none matching the idea's terms
Test it before you build it
$1,000 · 5 weeks · 25 prospects
For $1,000 and 5 weeks, prove that CPG insight leaders will pay $5,000 for accuracy-graded synthetic testing and that panel companies will sign over the ground truth that makes grading possible.
Riskiest assumption · Insight leaders at CPG companies will pay thousands per study for accuracy-graded synthetic testing now, before the leaderboard exists, rather than treating twin accuracy as a problem someone else should solve first.
1Focus group: who and where
The VP or Director of Consumer Insights at a $100M-2B CPG company who runs 10-40 concept tests a year on BASES or Zappi, is being told to cut the research budget this quarter, and is fielding synthetic panel pitches with no way to tell which vendor to believe.
where to find 25 · Insights Association local chapter events, where corporate insight leads show up in person; the TMRE 2026 conference community this fall, the one event this buyer already attends; warm introductions from the account reps of the panel providers these buyers already use, who want an accuracy leaderboard to exist because it prices their calibration data.
2Sell first, build later
A design-partner benchmark pilot: Cohorta reruns 5 of the buyer's archived concept tests through 3 synthetic audience vendors and delivers a graded accuracy report with a buy recommendation, within 45 days of data handoff.
the ask · $5,000 per pilot, with $2,500 invoiced on signing
a real yes · A real yes is a signed pilot agreement plus the $2,500 deposit paid by ACH; interest in the leaderboard, requests for the methodology, and offers to share data without paying are not.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Sell the benchmark pilot
$400 · 25 days
Book 15 scoping calls with VP or Director-level insight leaders: 5 through panel provider account reps, 5 at Insights Association chapter events, 5 through TMRE attendee outreach. Pitch a $5,000 design-partner pilot in which Cohorta reruns 5 of their archived concept tests, where the real in-market outcome is known, through 3 synthetic audience vendors and delivers a graded accuracy report. Close every call with the $2,500 deposit invoice.
keep going if · 3 of 15 pitched leaders sign the pilot agreement and pay the $2,500 deposit within 14 days of the call
2. Panel provider data LOIs
$0 · 14 days
Email and call the business development leads at 10 panel and data companies with a one-page contribution agreement: consented, de-identified historical test-versus-launch outcomes in exchange for a 20% revenue share on every study graded with their data. Founder-run, no spend.
keep going if · 2 of 10 providers sign an LOI naming a specific dataset of 30+ matched test-versus-launch pairs
3. Public demo leaderboard
$600 · 10 days
Run 10 historical CPG launches with publicly reported outcomes (2023-2024 line extensions with known first-year results) through 3 self-serve twin tools at their listed per-study prices, and publish a 2-page sample leaderboard. Send it to 20 additional insight leaders as the cold-outreach artifact.
keep going if · 8 of 20 recipients reply asking for the methodology or book a call within 7 days
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.
$2,500
per prospect, refundable
how · A paid design-partner pilot: the VP of Insights signs a one-page pilot agreement and the company pays a $2,500 deposit invoice by ACH - half the pilot price, small enough for a mid-market research budget to approve without a procurement cycle. set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗
what it reserves · One of 5 slots in the founding benchmark cohort, the buyer's product categories included in leaderboard v1, and founding pricing on all future studies.
refund · Fully refunded if the graded report is not delivered within 45 days of the buyer's data handoff.
target · 3 paid $2,500 deposits from 15 pitches within 35 days
before taking money · Every data contribution agreement must warrant consumer consent and de-identification under CCPA-style state privacy laws before any panel outcome data changes hands.
Go: build it if
3 of 15 buyers pay the $2,500 deposit and 2 of 10 panel providers sign dataset LOIs within 5 weeks - both sides of the exchange proven with signatures and money.
Kill: stop if
0 paid deposits after 15 completed pitches, or 0 data LOIs after 10 provider asks; either side at zero means Cohorta is a vendor directory, which is exactly how the Chai generation died.
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
You're paying $15,000-30,000 per concept test while synthetic panel vendors pitch you a tenth of that price, and none of them can prove their twins predict real launches. I'm building Cohorta, the benchmark that grades twin vendors against held-out test-versus-launch outcomes; the founding pilot reruns 5 of your archived tests through 3 vendors and tells you which one, if any, to trust. Can I get 20 minutes this week to check whether your test archive qualifies?
landing page
Know which synthetic audience vendors actually predict real launches $5,000 benchmark pilot: 5 of your past tests rerun through 3 vendors and graded against actual outcomes Book a 20-minute scoping call - a $2,500 deposit reserves one of 5 founding slots
deposit terms
The $2,500 deposit is 50% of your $5,000 benchmark pilot and reserves one of 5 slots in the founding cohort, with your categories included in leaderboard v1. It is fully refunded if we do not deliver your graded report within 45 days of receiving your historical test data. The balance is invoiced only on delivery.
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.
59
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 36.5 x 1.61
Warm
competition: more crowded than 20% of ideas · headwind x0.90
+0.0
government priorities, secondary (0 matching grants)
Trend
45
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)70
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector61
- Sector direction (live batch)0
- 2026 trend analyst50
Demand
42
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)0
- Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
- Operator judge: real pain25
100x potential
35
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 axis67
- Moat axis20
- Neighbours still alive1
- 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 exchange, enterprises, buy, synthetic, audiences, graded, against, marketplace.
The idea in full
- What
- A marketplace where enterprise insight and marketing teams buy access to synthetic audiences - digital-twin panels built by third-party vendors - with every listing graded against held-out real-world outcomes contributed by panel companies and data owners. Buyers run concept tests and message tests self-serve in hours; sellers of both twin models and calibration data are paid per study. The public accuracy leaderboard is the product: it turns an unverifiable claim into a priced, comparable asset.
- Why now
- 株式会社Chai, which pitched hypothesis testing against 5 million AI personas, went dead in 2026, while YC X26 funded Foresight for consumer simulations and PnP 2026 lists two Rehearsals entries building customer digital twins - the tooling wave is here, but nobody grades twin accuracy or supplies calibration data, which is exactly why the Chai generation died.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- Start with CPG concept testing: sign three panel providers to contribute consented historical test-versus-launch outcomes, publish an accuracy leaderboard of the existing twin vendors, and charge insight teams per study to run against the top-ranked models.
- Path to 100x
- Market research is an $80B+ global industry being rebuilt around simulation, and the venue that owns accuracy grading and calibration data becomes where the whole category is priced - a new category with exchange-style winner-takes-most dynamics. There is no moat on day one, but once buyers trust one leaderboard and sellers list where the buyers are, cross-side liquidity and the accumulated outcomes corpus compound into one.
- Ceiling
- If simulated studies stay occasional purchases rather than a continuous research workload, the take rate on that $80B market caps revenue in the low hundreds of millions.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Foresight (consumer simulations for CPG) and Rehearsals (AI digital twins) sell single-vendor simulation tools; Cohorta is the neutral exchange that grades and prices any vendor's twins, including theirs, against contributed ground truth.
- Main risk
- Twin accuracy may not be cleanly measurable across study types, and without trusted grading the exchange collapses into another vendor directory.
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
Exchange dynamics on an $80B research market are real, but the whole thesis rests on twin accuracy being cleanly gradable.
Bootstrapper
2/5
Signing three panel providers to contribute held out outcomes before any study revenue is a long cold start with no moat and no proven buyer urgency.
Operator
2/5
The exchange only works if panel companies hand over held-out outcome data first, so the whole research industry must move before a buyer benefits.
Technologist
2/5
The whole asset is a grading methodology the card concedes may not be cleanly measurable across study types, and any panel firm can publish a leaderboard.
Risk
2/5
Supply concentrated in three panel providers contributing ground truth, with a dead predecessor, Chai, and no moat on day one.
trends
3/5
The 2026 death of Chai amid a live X26-PnP twin cohort is a real recent gap, though the shift sits outside the brief's core trends.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (exchange, enterprises, buy, synthetic, audiences, graded, against, marketplace): 16 all-time, 2 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
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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.
0
grants and programs matching the idea
16
startup-relevant grants in B2B SaaS
$3M
awarded in the sector, tracked
1
opportunities open now in the sector
Market signal
What the radar sees in B2B SaaS: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
B2B SaaS · 189 → 205 → 205 → 103 → 85 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 90% aliveYC F26: 5 in this cluster, 4% of the batch (was 3% in S26) (W27 is still forming: 5 listed)Since February, of 743 YC companies here: 10 acquired, 17 shut down, 75 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
- Enterprise
- Business model
- Marketplace
- Path to 100x
- Creates a new category
- Market size
- $10-100B market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-light (software margins)
- Speed to revenue
- Revenue in 1-3 years
- Technical depth
- Real engineering
- Go-to-market
- Self-serve
- Moat
- No moat yet
- Geography
- Global from day one
- Regulation
- Some regulation
- Vibe
- Hot space
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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