Request for Startups

Young companies trying out a new business idea usually need outside money at the start. This money often comes from investors, that is, from people or funds who buy stakes in the company and hope for later profit. Some of these funders don’t wait for ideas to come to them. Instead, they publish a list of topics for which they wish to see new companies. That is exactly what a Request for Startups is, roughly translated: a call for founding. Such a list might include, for example: software for trade businesses, tools for hospitals, robotics for agriculture.

What such a wish list reveals about the market

For founders, the list is a hint as to where money currently sits. Anyone who picks up a topic from the list doesn’t first have to convince the funder of the idea’s merit. This shortens conversations and increases the chance of getting funded. Conversely, though, this doesn’t mean that every idea from the wish list automatically gets money. The team and the concrete execution still decide.

For everyone else, such a list is a mood barometer of the industry. If several major funders call for AI tools for accounting in the same quarter, that says something about market expectations. Journalists and analysts therefore read the lists closely. They show early on which technologies are considered mature and which have already been written off.

There is, however, a typical misconception. A Request for Startups is not a forecast, but a wish. Funders are regularly wrong, and entire topic areas from old lists are meaningless today. Anyone who founds a company only because a topic is on a list often lacks real motivation for the matter.

From topic call to funding commitment

The process is usually the same. A fund or a founder program publishes the list on its own blog. It often contains ten to twenty topics, each with a short paragraph of justification. This justification is more important than the buzzword itself, because it describes the actual underlying problem.

After that, teams apply in the normal way, usually via an online form. They describe their idea, their team, and their progress so far. A connection to the call is a plus point, not a ticket. Many programs explicitly also accept ideas that appear on no list at all.

You can think of it like a city’s tender for building a new bridge. The city says what it needs, but it doesn’t prescribe what the bridge should look like. The construction companies deliver their own designs, and the best one gets the contract. It’s similar with a Request for Startups: the topic comes from the funder, the solution from the team. This should be distinguished from a state funding program, which involves fixed rules, deadlines, and proof obligations.

Well-known lists and how to read them

The best known is the Request for Startups from the US program Y Combinator, which has been funding very young companies since 2005. Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox, among others, emerged from this program. For some years now, AI topics have dominated the list there, such as software that handles office work autonomously. Other funds and founder programs have also started publishing similar calls.

In news articles, the term usually appears as a hook. A headline like “Y Combinator is looking for startups for AI-powered defense technology” is almost always based on such a list. Anyone who knows the background can better classify such reports: it is a statement of intent, not an actual investment made. It’s therefore worth looking back at previous years' lists, since it shows which wishes actually gave rise to companies.