Co-Star's Playbook for Founders
How "decision hygiene" became a $3B category — and why timing tools are the next founder productivity unlock
AI & Data
AI & Data tracks where intelligence meets infrastructure. From large language models to automation tools and data pipelines, every opportunity here emerges from a shift in how humans and machines collaborate.
Calm's Missing Category: Dream Incubation Marketplace
Sleep content hits 2M hours monthly, MIT proved you can steer dreams with audio, and creators need new monetization surfaces. Monetize the one place creators still don't own: your unconscious mind.
The Shopify Moment for AI Labor: Owning Worklines on MuleRun
MuleRun hit 600K users offering promotional economics to fill their marketplace. Workline owners capture value; single-agent builders get commoditized.
Build the Auth0 of AI Context Control
Redaction destroys LLM context. Pseudonymization preserves it. Ship the governance control plane regulated industries will pay six figures for.
The Creator Pension Fund Heist
Spotter raised $200M proving creator catalogs are worth billions. YouTube shipped localization tools that grow them. The operating company is still unbuilt.
DoorDash Just Opened the Taste Graph Gold Rush. Here's How You Win.
DoorDash's Zesty proves taste graphs beat social graphs. Beli and Letterboxd validated the model. The infrastructure layer is wide open.
Build the AI Music Passport Agencies Will Pay $999/Month For
Universal and Warner legitimized licensed AI music while Spotify mandated disclosures. Agencies deploying tracks commercially need compliance documentation that doesn't exist yet.
The PrayScreen Playbook: 90 Days to $50k MRR on Organic TikTok
VCs poured $175 million into faith apps, validating what religion knew all along: obligation beats motivation. The micro-niches are wide open.
Snack Drop Hunter + Data Play
QSRs run $200K limited drops with no real-time visibility. Build the verified hunt map that becomes their demand oracle.
Build the Training Layer Series B Companies Actually Need
L&D headcount down 4%, external training spend up 23%—Series B companies need workflow training that auto-updates when their SaaS tools change.
Search In The AI Age (Build What Google Can't)
AI-generated content now sits at 17-19% of search results. RAG teams manually rebuild allowlists. Build the trust graph as infrastructure before specialized data providers do.
The Stripe Play for AI Companion Apps (Collect the $5M Compliance Toll)
New York and California mandated crisis detection for AI companions. 337 apps need compliance infrastructure by January. None want to build it themselves.
The Bluesky Feed Heist
Bluesky's custom feeds fragment distribution across hundreds of micro-algorithms. The cross-tool measurement and monetization layer doesn't exist yet—same opportunity SEO tools captured with Google.
Agent-Ready Infra for Local Business (Don't Do AIO)
AI assistants are shifting from ranking links to selecting winners. Multi-location businesses will pay six figures annually to become the trusted source agents call first.
The $20 TikTok Launch Lab
A repeatable system for identifying, validating, and scaling visually demonstrable products through creator-native distribution and structured experimentation.
TikTok-to-SKU for Micro-Trends
Enterprise pays $50K+ for trend detection. Microbrands need execution speed. The gap is infrastructure that delivers shippable SKU packs instead of dashboards.
"Oh-Shit" Bar for WordPress
Most newsrooms use AI daily but lack pre-publish safety gates. When prompt remnants ship to print, screenshots go viral and Legal starts asking questions.
B2B Human-Verified Content Engine
AI content abundance collapses trust while regulators demand proof-of-human. A productized agency selling verified founder media becomes the compliance layer, then the standard.
Ghost Job Detection Infrastructure
Job boards sell hope without proof. Regulators want disclosure. Build the hiring internet's "nutrition label" for jobs. Start as a ghost-job detector. Finish as the verification standard.
Morning Triage for Niches
Google and OpenAI are training users to expect AI-run mornings. The free briefing normalizes the habit. The paid opportunity is vertical execution.
"Small Brand Hollywood" for TikTok Shop
Video drives 58% of TikTok Shop's $33B GMV. The creative bottleneck creates infrastructure opportunity in the protocol layer above commodity UGC.
Compliance-First Script Engine for Beauty Creators
Beauty influencer trust dropped 8 points while ingredient transparency became Gen Z's top driver. The gap is a compliance infrastructure opportunity.
The Creami OS Heist
Viral kitchen appliances are training millions in process engineering. The software layer for troubleshooting complex workflows doesn't exist yet.
Organic Ad Underwriting Platform
Meta validated organic-to-paid workflow. The $37B opportunity is cross-platform prediction, rights management, and routing intelligence that platforms won't build.