Y Combinator has released a new Request for Startups. Today, I went through the list and picked out the ideas I think are the most promising — plus one of my own.

1. New Defense Technology. Group Partner Jared Friedman wants startups to build defense tech and replace the old, slow contractors that dominate the business.

There’s a huge opportunity here.

Today, defense contracts are almost all cost-plus. That means there’s no incentive to be efficient.

We need nimble startups doing fixed price contracts that reward efficiency. If we can do that, we will have the world’s best defense industry.

YC is right that we need new defense tech, but we also need better ways of making the tried-and-true weapons like artillery shells and Javelin missiles. Our stores are badly depleted from the Ukraine war.

The big, slow defense contractors could take years to replenish our armories. We need startups that can produce those common munitions cheaply, quickly, and at massive scale.

2. A Way to End Cancer. Cancer is the second biggest killer in America after heart disease, claiming over 600,000 lives a year.

YC’s Surbhi Sarna notes that MRI’s can now detect a cancer the size of a millimeter. But they also surface a lot of false positives.

If we had better AI systems to tell a tumor from normal tissue, we could get more use out of these MRI’s and catch more cancers early. Catching cancer early is the key to defeating it.

3. Foundational Models for Biological Systems. Over 90 percent of drug candidates fail to make it to FDA approval.

Imagine the time and money we spend on this! If we could model the human body in a computer and test on silicon, drug development would be dramatically cheaper and faster.

My Request for a Startup: A Derivatives Clearinghouse

$715 trillion — that’s the notional value of all outstanding over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives in the world today. It’s a number I cannot even contemplate.

Believe it or not, these massive financial contracts are mostly recorded in spreadsheets!

What happens when someone deletes a line and CTRL + Z doesn’t work? I shudder to think.

We need software to manage and track these massive transactions. I once saw a startup take a shot at this, but it didn’t catch on and they pivoted to something else.

Nonetheless, someone is going to capture this massive market. It may as well be you!

Wrap-Up

Request for Startups is fun! We investors get to turn the tables and pitch you ideas for a change.

You definitely don’t need to do one of my ideas or one of YC’s. Work on a problem that means a lot to you.

But hopefully the YC partners and I gave you some interesting ideas. Play with them, make them your own, then give us a chance to get our beaks wet. 🙂

Which Request for a Startup was your favorite?

More on tech:

Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

Why I Don’t Invest in CPG Startups

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