Yearmark

Certified on-device age assurance and minor-safety controls, shipped as one SDK for consumer apps.

Yearmark is a subscription SDK that consumer app companies drop into signup and payment flows to estimate a user's age band on-device from face, voice and interaction signals, then enforce the right minor-safety rules per jurisdiction without sending biometrics to a server.

Software subscription
Enterprise
$10-100B market
Creates a new category
Global from day one

5/5

venture judge

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

94%

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.

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 50.0 x 1.64

Warm

competition: more crowded than 20% of ideas · headwind x0.90

+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)70
Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector25
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)60
Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)17
Operator judge: real pain75

100x potential

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

Venture judge100
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 certified, on-device, age, assurance, minor-safety, controls, shipped, subscription.

The idea in full

What: Yearmark is a subscription SDK that consumer app companies drop into signup and payment flows to estimate a user's age band on-device from face, voice and interaction signals, then enforce the right minor-safety rules per jurisdiction without sending biometrics to a server. It carries the accreditation and conformity audits itself, so a games or social app gets one integration instead of a separate vendor per country, plus an evidence log a regulator can read. Pricing is per monthly verified user, self-serve from a dashboard, with the enterprise tier for apps above ten million users.
Why now: Eight of the most recent consumer companies on the radar are AI-native social, game and creation products aimed at young users, including Instaplay (yc S26), Playabl.ai (yc X26), Pops (yc X26), Fifth Door (yc F25) and Doomersion (yc W26), and the same federal window shows the state paying for minor-safety programs directly, with the Title V Competitive Sexual Risk Avoidance Education opportunity closing 2026-08-17. NSF is also funding the sensing side, with a $50k I-Corps award on electroacoustic sensing using speakers as sensors, which is exactly the kind of passive on-device signal age estimation needs.
Wedge: first customer and entry point: Start with AI game and social startups shipping to app stores, where a single rejected build blocks launch: one SDK, one week of integration, one certificate they can show the store reviewer.
Path to 100x: Trust, safety and identity assurance spend across consumer software is a $10-100B market, and the winner is the one whose accreditation is recognised in the most jurisdictions, because every new market it certifies in makes it cheaper for the next app than any rival with a narrower certificate. A new category is born when age assurance stops being a country-by-country vendor purchase and becomes a single line in the consumer app stack, priced per user across billions of accounts.
Ceiling: If regulators converge on one government-issued credential per country, Yearmark becomes a low-margin pass-through and caps near $150M in revenue.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them: No tracked company sells this yet: the radar tracks the consumer apps that carry the obligation, such as Instaplay, Playabl.ai and Pops, not the vendors that discharge it.
Main risk: Apple and Google ship platform-level age signals for free and the addressable layer collapses to a thin compliance report.

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
5/5
Multi-jurisdiction accreditation priced per monthly verified user across billions of accounts is capital-light, global from day one, and compounds with each certificate.
Bootstrapper
4/5
Capital-light SDK sold per verified user to app teams whose build is blocked today, though multi-jurisdiction accreditation audits cost time upfront.
Operator
4/5
A rejected app store build blocks launch, which makes the compliance owner pay this week; the risk is Apple and Google shipping the signal free.
Technologist
2/5
On-device age banding is credible ML, but Apple and Google shipping platform age signals absorbs the layer in one OS release.
Risk
3/5
Self-held accreditation across jurisdictions is real footing, but Apple and Google shipping free age signals removes the layer entirely.
trends
4/5
Proving You're Human is a current RFS and the wave of youth-facing AI apps like Instaplay creates buyers that did not exist in 2023.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (certified, on-device, age, assurance, minor-safety, controls, shipped, subscription): 1 all-time, 1 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.

RunAnywhereyc W26 · 2026 · Agent infrastructurealive
The default way of running on-device AI at Scale

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 Consumer

$8M

awarded in the sector, tracked

A Test for Heavy Alcohol Consumption in First Episode Coronary Heart Diseaseawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIAAA · SBIR phase I · $406K · posted 2025-08-15
POSE: Phase I: Scoping OpenDQM – an Open-Source Ecosystem for Distributed Quality Managementawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · POSE · $292K · posted 2026-07-28

All public money by sector →

Market signal

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

Consumer · 170 → 218 → 206 → 153 → 49 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 87% aliveYC S26: 8 in this cluster, 3% of the batch (was 5% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 787 YC companies here: 2 acquired, 4 shut down, 37 rewrote their pitch

Consumer: 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: 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: Deep tech: ML, hardware, bio
Go-to-market: Self-serve
Moat: License or regulatory moat
Geography: Global from day one
Regulation: Some regulation
Vibe: Hot space