Request for Startups

Rhian spent this weekend drafting a Request for Startups for her firm. I always love reading requests for startups because it feels like an immediate snapshot of the venture market, the zeitgeist.

What are investors desperate to get into right right now, and what do they see as the immediate future. The lists serve as soft influence for potential founders to build in investable areas and as a way to open potential funnels, especially for niche firms.

Not surprisingly, the lists are heavily focused on different AI applications or the infrastructure around it.

Requests For Startups to look through:

My Favorite Request for Startups recently is from Ben Lang at NextPlay, which you can read here, which asked a series of investors the same question as above: what problems need solving, what is the future going to look like, what should people be building?

Two examples:

1. Alex Brussell: A dating app where you get only one swipe called One In The Chamber.

2. Nitesh Banta: There should be an AI tutor for early childhood education. AI's impact on education will be profound. I'm excited about new modalities to personalize education at the earliest stages when many parents are unsure how to introduce technology to infants and toddlers.

YC’s Spring Request for Startups

• A Secure AI App Store

• Datacenters

• Compliance and Audit

• DocuSign 2.0

• Browser & Computer Automation

• AI Personal Staff for Everyone

• Devtools for AI Agents

• The Future of Software Engineering

• AI Commercial Open Source Software (AICOSS)

• AI Coding Agents for Hardware-Optimized Code

• B2A: Software Where the Customers Will All Be Agents

• Vertical AI Agents

• Startup Founders with Systems Programming Expertise

• Inference AI Infrastructure in the World of Test-Time Compute

A16z SpeedRun and A16z Big Ideas for Tech

• American Dynamism

• Bio + Health

• Consumer

• Crypto

• Enterprise + Fintech

• Games

• Growth-Stage Tech

• Infrastructure

• (Recent addition) Vibe Creation Platforms

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