The Debugging Gym: $100K MRR Hiding Inside Your Git History
Forty-two percent of developers say AI now writes at least half their code. Verification is the new bottleneck, and a team's own fixed bugs are the debugging curriculum.
Long Game
High-commitment ventures that demand time, expertise, and resources. These are complex products, regulated markets, or infrastructure plays built for founders chasing defensible, lasting impact—not quick flips.
The Exception Desk: $40K MRR Hiding Inside Dental Payer Portals
The dental industry spent $2.1 billion verifying insurance benefits in 2024, and a third of private-practice dentists plan to bring in AI for it. The wedge runs through Open Dental.
The Paper Trail Newsletter: $5K MRR From Council Agendas
Council agendas, zoning filings and permits are public, and almost nobody reads them. With reporters gone and AI summaries misfiring, the record under the rumor mill is up for grabs.
Fannie Mae's Condo Crackdown Opened a $1M ARR Software Gap
Fannie Mae just retired Limited Review for condo projects, and lenders need far more HOA evidence. Between contract and underwriting sits a document workflow nobody owns yet.
The $83 Billion Junk Drawer Behind the Repair Counter
Phone repair shops sit on bins of dead iPhones nobody has inventoried. With used-phone sales at $83 billion and memory prices up 300%, that pile just became a real asset.
The IOLTA Detective: Finding the $275 Clio Can't Explain
California now bills attorneys $5,000 to $10,000 for CTAPP trust audits, and 83% of pilot firms failed three-way reconciliation. Clio bundles the checkbox. The forensic cleanup layer is still empty.
The Microdrama Ad Studio: $60K MRR From Romance Backlists
China industrialized AI vertical drama, ReelShort proved paid creative sells it, BookTok moved 50 million books, and top romance authors spend $4,500 a month on ads. The bridge is unbuilt.
Returns Software's Regulatory Cousin: 276,000 Recalled Toys, One Inbox
CPSC approved five destroy-and-photograph recall remedies in one September day, and the sellers are processing claims through an Outlook inbox. Recall fraud is now a federal docket.
The $850 Billion Returns Pile Has a Tiny Software Bottleneck
BuyWander raised $21 million automating the ugliest job in reverse logistics. Regional liquidation warehouses still do it with Google Lens and twenty browser tabs. That gap is the wedge.
The $500,000 Water Bill: Auditing Laundromat Deals by the Gallon
A cash laundromat can argue with its P&L. Its water meter is harder to argue with. Acquisition diligence still runs on broker spreadsheets while the median laundromat listing asks $500,000.
FamilyMart's Labor Math, Shrunk to a 7-Store Chain
FamilyMart is re-engineering labor across 16,500 stores from predicted demand. Multi-location grocers and pet retailers on Square still schedule by habit. A Square-first labor planning layer fits between them.
The Firing Receipt: $40K MRR Hiding Inside California's AI Labor Bill
California's SB 947 would require employers to prove a human corroborated any AI-recommended firing. Governance dashboards, bias auditors, and HR systems all miss the evidence window in between.
The Fit Passport: Shopify Sizing That Asks Instead of Tracks
Apparel returns run 24% and fit is the top reason, yet fewer than 1% of Shopify stores run a sizing app. Zero-party fit data is the opening.
Mobbin's Blind Spot: Rights-Cleared Design Data for Cursor and Claude Code
Mobbin and Refero already feed design screenshots to Cursor and Claude Code over MCP. The gap is rights-cleared, human-reviewed UI evidence filtered by what a client already approved.
The Data Center Next Door: $99 a Month from County Records
Homebuyers can pull a flood map in ten seconds. Nothing tells them about the data center campus being rezoned three miles out. Northern Virginia agents will pay for that answer.
6,000 GitHub Stars, Zero Revenue: The Cloud Architecture Game
A free MIT-licensed cloud game passed 6,000 GitHub stars while AWS Skill Builder and the relaunched Cloud Quest charge for courses. The gap between watching architecture and practicing it is still unpriced.
Getting Paid $750 to Tell a Company Not to Bid
Small IT firms walk away from $180,000 municipal contracts because the RFP is unreadable, not because they can't do the work. State and local buyers spend $1.5 trillion annually.
The Trust Handoff: Proof for AI Shopping Picks ($12K MRR)
Half of U.S. shoppers now verify AI product recommendations on Reddit before buying. Fakespot and GigaBrain died chasing that moment. The verification step is still unowned.
The $349 Answer to $99-a-Month Elder Care Monitoring
Cactus Compute's Needle 2 runs a 45-million-parameter agent on a $45 Raspberry Pi. Camera-free elder care monitoring stops needing the cloud, and stops needing a $99 monthly subscription.
The Buy-Box Network: Charlotte's $40K MRR Land Play
Parcel data is commoditized. Nobody sells what homebuilders are actually buying this quarter, verified by phone and timestamped. A Charlotte-only network of builder buy-boxes runs $6K to $40K MRR.
The Cashback Handcuff Keeping Plant Sellers on Palmstreet
Whatnot is worth $20 billion and a16z-backed Palmstreet pays top plant sellers cashback not to go live elsewhere. Exclusivity clauses mark where a customer relationship is turning portable.
The Consultation Leak: $10K MRR Between a Clinic's Ad and Calendar
Cash-pay longevity and functional medicine clinics buy expensive inquiries and lose them to unanswered phones, missed bookings, and no-shows. The revenue operations layer between inquiry and consult is unbuilt.
The $15 Million Price Tag Nobody Verifies
Walmart finishes digital shelf labels across 4,600 stores this year. CPG brands route up to 27% of revenue through trade promotions and still verify execution by hand.
Fibermaxxing's Week-Two Problem: A $40K MRR Retention Play
Searches for fibermaxxing are up 115%, yet DTC fiber brands lose most subscribers before shipment two. Every retention tool fires at cancellation. Nobody owns the weeks before it.