MarkosWebWeb intelligence for the agentic economy

New startup ideas · Direct giving, without the middlemen · Mutual aid, congregations and employer hardship funds

startup concept

Foundwatch

Gives state charity regulators radar on pop-up disaster funds

Monitoring software for state charity regulators.

1

similar startups, last 2 years (10 all-time)

yes

8 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$2,000 · 6 weeks · 15 prospects

For $2,000 and 6 weeks, prove that two state charities bureaus will sign dated pilot MOUs after seeing a live scan of scam domains from a real disaster.

Riskiest assumption · A state charities bureau chief will commit to a dated pilot within weeks of seeing the evidence, rather than routing even a no-cost MOU into a procurement cycle that outlasts the team.

1Focus group: who and where

The section chief or lead assistant attorney general of a state AG's charities bureau (or Secretary of State charities division) in a state with a 2025-2026 federally declared disaster, who today learns about fake disaster fundraisers from citizen complaints filed days after the money has moved

where to find 15 · The NASCO (National Association of State Charity Officials) member directory at nasconet.org, which names the charity official in every state; the NASCO Annual Conference in Washington DC this fall, where the drafting states the card mentions gather in one room; Columbia Law School's Charities Regulation and Oversight Project convenings, where the same regulators appear; and each state's eProcurement portal plus SAM.gov to check for standing pilot or RFI vehicles

2Sell first, build later

A 90-day monitoring pilot scoped to the next federally declared disaster in the bureau's state: daily detection of new fundraising domains carrying the disaster's name, cross-checked against the state charity registry, with a cease-and-desist-ready evidence packet delivered within 24 hours of each flag, starting the day of the federal declaration

the ask · $0 for the pilot, with a countersigned pricing letter fixing the subscription at $24,000 per year per state after conversion

a real yes · A real yes is a signed MOU with a dated start, a named point of contact and the countersigned pricing letter; a warm conversation at NASCO, 'send us more information', or an open-ended agreement with no start date is a no

3Small experiments

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

  1. 1. Live disaster scan memo

    $150 · 12 days

    Pick the most recent federally declared disaster from FEMA's declarations page and run a 72-hour manual scan: certificate transparency logs and WHOIS data for new domains carrying the disaster's name, cross-checked against that state's charity registry and good-standing records. Write a 2-page evidence memo formatted the way a cease-and-desist exhibit reads, send it to that state's bureau, and send it as a work sample to 14 others.

    keep going if · 5 of 15 bureaus reply and 4 book a 30-minute briefing within 10 days of the memo landing

  2. 2. Fifteen bureau briefings

    $50 · 14 days

    On each briefing, walk through what the scan caught hour by hour and ask two questions: when did your office first hear about the last disaster scam, and could you sign a no-cost 90-day pilot MOU without a procurement cycle. Log the answers verbatim.

    keep going if · 8 of 15 confirm complaints arrive after money has moved, and 5 say a no-cost MOU is signable at bureau level without procurement

  3. 3. MOU with conversion pricing

    $300 · 21 days

    Send interested bureaus a 3-page pilot MOU (reviewed once by a lawyer): 90 days of monitoring scoped to the next federally declared disaster in their state, daily flags, evidence packet within 24 hours, no cost, with an attached pricing letter fixing the post-pilot subscription at $24,000 per year. Ask for a signature, a dated start and a named point of contact.

    keep going if · 2 bureaus return signed MOUs with dated starts and named points of contact

  4. 4. NASCO conference push

    $1,500 · 4 days

    Attend the NASCO Annual Conference in Washington DC with printed copies of the live-scan memo. Book hallway meetings with 10 state officials, demo the scan from the actual disaster, and hand the MOU to any state that engaged earlier but stalled.

    keep going if · 3 additional states request the pilot MOU by name during or within a week of the conference

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.

$0

no cash yet: take a signed commitment

how · A state charities bureau cannot hand a deposit to an unregistered vendor before procurement, so the collected commitment is paper with teeth: the bureau chief signs the 90-day pilot MOU with a dated start and a named evidence custodian, and countersigns the $24,000-per-year pricing letter that governs conversion, which is the strongest instrument this buyer can legally execute in six weeks

what it reserves · One of two state pilot slots for the next federally declared disaster in that state, and the $24,000 annual price locked through 2027

refund · No money changes hands; either party may exit the MOU with 15 days written notice.

target · 2 signed MOUs with dated starts from 15 bureaus within 42 days

before taking money · Never contact suspected scam operators, send takedown demands, or act on the evidence yourselves - hand every packet to the bureau - and follow each state's procurement and gift rules when offering the no-cost pilot so it cannot be construed as an improper gratuity.

Go: build it if

2 signed pilot MOUs with dated starts and countersigned pricing letters, plus 8 of 15 bureaus confirming their current process misses the first-hours window the FBI alert describes

Kill: stop if

After 6 weeks and 15 bureaus contacted, zero signed MOUs and fewer than 4 briefings booked - if regulators will not even take a free pilot with the evidence in hand, the procurement risk the card names is fatal

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

outreach message

Your bureau hears about fake disaster fundraisers from complaints, days after the money has moved; the FBI's January 2025 alert says the scam sites go live within hours of a declaration. I ran a 72-hour scan after the most recent federally declared disaster and found newly registered fundraising domains carrying its name that appear in no charity registry - the memo is attached, formatted the way a cease-and-desist exhibit reads. I'm building Foundwatch to do this automatically for state regulators. Could I get 20 minutes to walk you through what the scan caught?

landing page

See scam disaster fundraisers in their first hours, not after complaints No-cost 90-day pilot for two state charities bureaus; $24,000 per year per state after conversion Request the pilot MOU

deposit terms

The pilot MOU costs your bureau nothing and reserves one of two state slots: 90 days of monitoring the next federally declared disaster in your state, with an evidence packet within 24 hours of each flag. Either party may end the MOU with 15 days written notice. The attached pricing letter fixes your post-pilot subscription at $24,000 per year through 2027.

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

Ranked against every idea in the catalog: trend, demand and 100x potential from the corpus, competition relative to the other ideas. A generated concept has no judges or swipes yet, so its pillars use the data signals only.

79

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 48.1 x 1.64

Warm

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

+3.2

government priorities, secondary (16 matching grants)

Trend

35

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)21
  • Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector33
  • Sector direction (live batch)50

Demand

57

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)83

100x potential

78

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

  • Neighbours still alive78

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 382 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were state, charity, regulators, radar, pop-up, disaster, funds, monitoring.

The concept in full

What
Monitoring software for state charity regulators. After a disaster it watches for new fundraising domains carrying the disaster's name, cross-checks them against charity registration and good-standing records, flags AI-generated faces and stolen imagery in appeals, and assembles the evidence packet for a cease-and-desist. Stops fraud before money moves by catching the scam site in its first hours, the window the FBI says matters.
Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
AB 488 first annual reports due July 15, 2025 and the November 2025 cease-and-desist from the California Attorney General, with other states drafting platform rules (Charity Lawyer Blog, December 22, 2025); the FBI's January 16, 2025 alert on Los Angeles wildfire scam sites going up within hours with AI-generated deepfakes.
What it rides
'California enforces its fundraising-platform law': AB 488 enforcement has begun and other states are drafting platform rules of their own, which creates regulator demand for tooling that can actually police platforms and pop-up funds at internet speed.
Why now
The November 2025 cease-and-desist shows a state regulator is now willing to act under AB 488, but the FBI's January 16, 2025 alert shows scam sites appear within hours of a disaster, faster than any manual complaint-driven process, so the first state to buy detection tooling sets the template the drafting states copy.
Wedge: first customer and entry point
A pilot with one state Attorney General's charities bureau scoped to the next federally declared disaster in that state; the first version is domain monitoring plus registry cross-check, no AI detection needed to be useful.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
none tracked
Main risk
Government procurement moves so slowly that the team burns out before the first contract clears.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the concept's terms (state, charity, regulators, radar, pop-up, disaster, funds, monitoring).

  • TrelliSenseplugandplay PnP 2025 · 2025 · Climate and energyalive

    We measure. You cut. Emissions detection, localization, and quantification for sites of all shapes and sizes.

  • Guardian RFyc S24 · 2024 · Defense and spacealive

    Drone detection for US defense and national security

  • Merkle Science500global · 2022 · Security and compliancealive

    Operator of a risk monitoring platform intended to detect and prevent the illegal use of cryptocurrency. The company's platform is an easy-to-use rule management interface that helps users visualize account activity across time and generate forensic reports, enabling blockchain companies, crypto-exchanges, investment funds, banks and regulators to perform due diligence and compliance on the blockchain to detect, investigate and prevent the use of cryptocurrency fraud.

  • Parsagonyc W21 · 2021 · B2B SaaSalive

    AI to track and analyze public policy

  • WeatherCheckyc W19 · 2019 · Fintechalive

    WeatherCheck monitors properties for hail damage so that insurance…

  • iLabServiceyc S18 · 2018 · B2B SaaSalive

    AIoT monitoring, workflow, and evidence systems for regulated labs.

  • OmniPreSense Corporationtechstars TS 2018 · 2018 · Robotics and physical worldalive

    Home - OmniPreSense

  • Synspectiveplugandplay · Defense and spaceacquired

    We provide solutions for customers’ challenges with utilizing and integrating data from “SAR” satellite constellations, big data, and so on.

  • Delivers.aiplugandplay · Robotics and physical worldalive

    Delivers.ai is designed to autonomously deliver food and grocery from shops to your doorstep, combining state of the art next-gen navigation technology with appealing design.

  • Protos Labsplugandplay · Security and compliancealive

    Protos Labs is a Singapore-based cyber insurtech company founded by ex-Booz Allen cyber leaders and supported by the Cybersecurity Regulator in Singapore. We empower insurers to (1) underwrite cyber risks accurately; and (2) monitor real-time changes in their policyholder's risk profile.

Public money in this direction

US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.

Other concepts in this collection

Fictional concept generated 2026-08-26 by claude-fable-5 from the collection's brief and MarkosWeb data. Treat it as a research prompt, not a plan.