New startup ideas · Direct giving, without the middlemen · Proof of need as infrastructure
startup concept
Groundproof
One API call that says the disaster victim and address are real
A verification API for disaster giving: is this address inside the federally declared disaster footprint, does the claimant actually control that address, and is the photo or video in the appeal stolen from news coverage or AI-generated.
- Infrastructure and APIs
- Enterprise
- FBI
2
similar startups, last 2 years (4 all-time)
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$700 · 5 weeks · 20 prospects
For $700 and 5 weeks, prove that disaster fund operators will pay an outside vendor rather than build, by signing 2 paid $2,500 verification pilots before any API exists.
Riskiest assumption · Trust and safety leads at giving platforms and disaster fund officers at community foundations will pay an outside vendor per check for footprint, address, and image verification rather than treat it as core and build it in-house
1Focus group: who and where
The trust and safety lead at a mid-size giving platform with a disaster vertical, or the program officer who runs the disaster fund at a community foundation in a hurricane or wildfire state, staring down the fall 2026 hurricane season with no pre-payout check on whether a claimant is inside the declared footprint
where to find 20 · The Trust and Safety Professional Association (TSPA) member community; the Council on Foundations community foundation locator cross-referenced with the Center for Disaster Philanthropy's directory of active local disaster funds; the Center for Disaster Philanthropy's year-round webinars, where the foundation staff who stand up these funds show up by name
2Sell first, build later
A 60-day design-partner pilot: Groundproof screens up to 2,500 of the buyer's disaster payouts against the FEMA declaration footprint, address control, reverse-image matching, and a deepfake check, with 24-hour turnaround and a findings memo per batch, starting within 15 days of payment; the partner shapes the API spec that gets built from it
the ask · $2,500 per pilot up front, pricing out at $1 per check after the pilot
a real yes · A real yes is a paid $2,500 invoice, or a signed LOI with a dated start and a named budget line for buyers stuck in procurement; a real no hides inside compliments, requests for a free integration, and offers to revisit after hurricane season
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Twenty build-or-buy interviews
$300 · 14 days
Book 20 calls: 8 platform trust and safety leads via TSPA, 12 community foundation disaster fund officers via the CDP and Council on Foundations lists. Ask what check runs today before a payout, what fraud they ate in 2024-2025, and the direct question: would you buy this per check or build it. One founder runs all 20 against a fixed sheet.
keep going if · 12 of 20 confirm no footprint or image check runs before payout, and 6 of 20 book a pilot scoping session; kill signal inside this experiment: 10 or more say they would build in-house
2. Free 10-appeal sample audit
$150 · 10 days
For every prospect who takes a call, offer to screen 10 of their past appeals within 48 hours: FEMA declaration footprint match on the address, reverse-image search on the photos, and a deepfake screen, delivered as a one-page findings memo. Run it by hand with the public FEMA declarations data and reverse-image tools.
keep going if · 8 of 15 offered audits are accepted with real appeal data, and at least 2 audits surface an out-of-footprint address or a stolen image, which becomes the sales evidence
3. Paid design-partner pilot close
$250 · 21 days
Send the 6 scoped prospects a two-page pilot agreement: $2,500 invoiced up front for 60 days of manual verification of up to 2,500 payouts at 24-hour turnaround, plus a seat shaping the API spec. Where procurement cannot release money in the window, take a signed LOI with a dated start and a named budget line instead.
keep going if · 2 of 6 scoped prospects pay the $2,500 invoice, or 1 pays and 2 more sign LOIs with start dates inside 90 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 $2,500 pilot fee invoiced up front against a two-page agreement signed by the trust and safety lead or the foundation's program director; for community foundations whose disbursement policies block prepaying an unvetted vendor, substitute a signed LOI with a dated start and a purchase order under review, and count it separately from paid pilots set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗
what it reserves · One of three design-partner slots for the fall 2026 hurricane season: 2,500 screened payouts, 24-hour turnaround, and naming rights on the first API integration
refund · Refunded in full if Groundproof misses the 24-hour turnaround on any batch in the first two weeks of the pilot.
target · 2 paid pilots, or 1 paid pilot plus 2 dated LOIs, from 20 conversations within 35 days
Go: build it if
2 paid $2,500 pilots signed and funded from 20 conversations, and the sample audits caught at least one real out-of-footprint or stolen-image case; build the footprint API first because that is what every audit used most
Kill: stop if
0 paid pilots and fewer than 2 dated LOIs after 20 conversations and 6 scoping sessions, or 10 or more of the 20 prospects say trust and safety stays in-house; that confirms the card's stated risk and the wedge has no buyer
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
When the next declared disaster hits, appeals will reach your fund within hours, and some of the photos in them will be lifted from news coverage or generated outright. Before your next payout cycle, I will screen 10 of your past appeals against the FEMA declaration footprint, address control, and a reverse-image and deepfake check, results back in 48 hours, free. If it catches something, we talk about a paid pilot at a dollar a check. Do you have 20 minutes this week?
landing page
Know the claimant and the address are real before money moves $1 per check after a $2,500 design-partner pilot covering up to 2,500 payouts over 60 days Book a scoping call and send 10 past appeals; we screen them free in 48 hours
deposit terms
The $2,500 pilot fee, invoiced up front, reserves one of three design-partner slots for the fall 2026 hurricane season: up to 2,500 payouts screened against the FEMA declaration footprint, address control, and reverse-image and deepfake checks, with 24-hour turnaround. The pilot starts within 15 days of payment, and the fee is refunded in full if we miss the 24-hour turnaround on any batch in the first two weeks.
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.
72
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 43.8 x 1.64
Warm
competition: more crowded than 44% of ideas · headwind x0.78
+3.0
government priorities, secondary (11 matching grants)
Trend
58
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)92
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector33
- Sector direction (live batch)50
Demand
32
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)33
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 call, says, disaster, victim, address, are, verification, giving.
The concept in full
- What
- A verification API for disaster giving: is this address inside the federally declared disaster footprint, does the claimant actually control that address, and is the photo or video in the appeal stolen from news coverage or AI-generated. Giving platforms and community foundations running disaster funds call it before releasing money. It stops fraud before money moves; the signals are the declaration footprint, address control, reverse-image matching and a deepfake test on the appeal itself.
- Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
- FBI IC3 alert of January 16, 2025: more than 4,500 complaints and about $96 million lost in 2024 to fraudulent charities, crowdfunding accounts and disaster campaigns; during the Los Angeles wildfires, scam sites carrying the disaster's name went up within hours with stolen news photos, some fronted by AI-generated deepfakes. YC's Fall 2026 RFS includes 'Proving You're Human'.
- What it rides
- FBI: $96 million lost to fake charities and crowdfunding in 2024. Groundproof turns the exact patterns the FBI alert describes, scam sites with stolen news photos and AI-generated faces, into pre-payout checks.
- Why now
- The FBI counted about $96 million in charitable fraud losses and over 4,500 complaints in 2024, announced January 16, 2025, and scam sites now appear within hours of a disaster with AI-generated faces; platforms have no shared pre-payout check for whether a claimed victim is inside the declared footprint.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One mid-size giving platform's disaster vertical, priced per check: a three-person team ships footprint matching from FEMA declarations plus a reverse-image and deepfake screen, and expands to community foundations that stand up local disaster funds.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- none tracked
- Main risk
- Large platforms treat trust and safety as core and build the checks in-house rather than buy them.
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Companies whose pitch matches most of the concept's terms (call, says, disaster, victim, address, are, verification, giving).
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Public money in this direction
US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K
National Science Foundation · MSPA-INTERDISCIPLINARY · $558K
National Science Foundation · CSCS: Circuits and Systems for · $536K
National Science Foundation · EPCL: Energy, Power, Control, · $495K
National Science Foundation · Use-Inspired NextG · $900K
National Science Foundation · EPSCoR RII: Focused EPSCoR Col · $2M
National Science Foundation · EPSCoR RII: Focused EPSCoR Col · $2M
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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.