New startup ideas · Consumer and commerce · Commerce and marketplaces
startup idea
Originary
An API that computes duty, origin and eligibility for any product on any lane.
Originary compiles customs tariff schedules, binding rulings, rules-of-origin texts and trade-remedy orders from every major customs regime into one executable rule engine, then exposes it as a self-serve API that returns a landed cost and an origin determination with the citation chain behind it.
- Infrastructure and APIs
- Enterprise
- $100B+ market
- Creates a new category
- Global from day one
4/5
venture judge
4
similar startups, last 2 years (6 all-time)
96%
of 4 nearest real companies still alive
yes
2 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.
56
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 34.0 x 1.64
Active
competition: more crowded than 47% of ideas · headwind x0.76
+1.2
government priorities, secondary (2 matching grants)
Trend
31
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)66
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector8
- Sector direction (live batch)0
- 2026 trend analyst50
Demand
36
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)67
- Operator judge: real pain50
- Founders' yes-rate in decks27
100x potential
71
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 axis100
- Moat axis20
- Neighbours still alive81
- Technologist judge75
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 computes, duty, origin, eligibility, lane, compiles, customs, tariff.
The idea in full
- What
- Originary compiles customs tariff schedules, binding rulings, rules-of-origin texts and trade-remedy orders from every major customs regime into one executable rule engine, then exposes it as a self-serve API that returns a landed cost and an origin determination with the citation chain behind it. Buyers are enterprise commerce, ERP and freight platforms that need to quote a duty figure at checkout or at PO time and stand behind it. The hard part is not the API, it is three years of building and maintaining the rule corpus and the field work of validating outputs against actual customs entries.
- Why now
- Cross-border duty math has become a first-class product problem in this cluster: Tarifflo Inc. (S26) sells supply chain compliance and cost savings, Donkey (S26) is running China factory-direct for US importers, ShipTag handles duties and taxes end-to-end for brands, and the SBA's State Trade Expansion Program 2026 closed on 2026-08-18 pushing more small US firms into exporting.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One lane and one chapter: US imports of consumer electronics from Vietnam and Mexico, where origin rules decide six-figure duty swings, sold as a free classification endpoint to developers at freight and ERP vendors.
- Path to 100x
- Duty, tax and fee determination on cross-border transactions is a $100B+ handling cost pool, and if every quote, checkout and PO calls one engine for the number, a new category forms the way tax determination did for domestic sales. The path requires that accuracy plus the citation trail becomes the audit-defensible default, so platforms embed it once and never re-evaluate.
- Ceiling
- If ERP vendors treat duty logic as a feature and bundle a good-enough version, this stays a low-priced API line item rather than a standalone layer.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Tarifflo Inc. and ShipTag deliver duty outcomes as a managed service to their own customers; Originary sells the determination layer underneath, including to them. Waybill and Reframe procure hardware and would consume the API rather than build the corpus.
- Main risk
- The rule corpus is public information, so a well-funded incumbent or a good model can replicate coverage before any usage lock-in forms.
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
Duty determination is the Avalara shape: one embedded API call per cross-border transaction, priced into a $100B+ handling pool with no headcount coupling.
Bootstrapper
1/5
Three years building the rule corpus before revenue, against ERP vendors who can bundle good-enough duty logic for free.
Operator
3/5
Duty misclassification costs six figures per lane, but three years of corpus building before revenue and ERP bundling gut the willingness to pay a standalone API.
Technologist
4/5
Three years of rule corpus validated against actual customs entries is expertise that compounds, even though the source texts are public.
Risk
3/5
Buyers are many ERP and freight platforms, but the corpus is public information and ERP vendors bundling a good enough version caps pricing.
trends
3/5
Duty-at-checkout becomes agent-sellable as UCP-style checkout spreads, but the cited SBA program and cohort formation are weak substitutes for a dated tariff shift.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (computes, duty, origin, eligibility, lane, compiles, customs, tariff): 6 all-time, 4 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
Supply chain compliance and cost savings
The AI that knows your company
The AI-native trading company: China factory-direct for US importers
Vibecode + deploy HIPAA-compliant internal tools, no eng team needed
AI Broker for Tariff Refunds
Getting companies refunds on tariffs & duties
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.
2
grants and programs matching the idea
19
startup-relevant grants in Commerce and marketplaces
$19M
awarded in the sector, tracked
8
opportunities open now in the sector
NIH / NIGMS · SBIR phase I · $202K · posted 2025-09-01
- EAGER: Preventing Cross-Tenant Leakage from Persistent FPGA Hardware Memory and Enhancing Sub-OS Attack Resilience in Multitenant FPGA Cloudsawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace · $100K · posted 2026-08-03
Market signal
What the radar sees in Commerce and marketplaces: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
Commerce and marketplaces · 135 → 114 → 129 → 66 → 27 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 89% aliveYC S26: 5 in this cluster, 2% of the batch (was 1% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 419 YC companies here: 4 acquired, 6 shut down, 23 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
- Infrastructure and APIs
- Path to 100x
- Creates a new category
- Market size
- $100B+ 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
- Heavily regulated
- Vibe
- Boring business
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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