Markets are built to hear supply. Anyone selling something has a hundred ways to say so — and you, the buyer, have none. Unsolved Needs is where demand becomes legible. Sign a CAPP — a Conditional Advance Purchase Pledge — the standardized, verified, on-the-record statement of exactly what you would buy, if only it existed.
Not a wish. Not a values statement. A specification, a price threshold, a volume, and a timeframe — the four numbers a supplier, an innovator, or an investor can actually build against.
Every unmade product, every unbuilt service, every better version of an ordinary thing begins the same way: someone who would buy it, saying so where makers can hear. Unsolved Needs is where that gets said — and believed.
Real asks look like these. Notice what they have in common — a person who buys something today, and the better version they’d buy tomorrow.
Our lids and cups, home-compostable, within 10% of today’s unit cost — 90,000 units a year.
Cooking oil collected and refined into fuel, picked up weekly, at no worse than our disposal cost.
School uniforms in durable recycled fabric that survive three kids, at the price of two sets today.
Every lobby, hallway, and garage in our 14 buildings lit by fixtures with take-back recycling — at current lease rates.
Sterile packaging without single-use plastic for 2M units a year, at parity, meeting every clinical standard we already hold.
Our regional fleet — 60 trucks — electric at diesel’s total cost of ownership, delivered over 36 months.
Cotton with verified fair wages at every tier, 800 tons a year, at no more than 8% over today’s contract.
200 buses whose batteries are leased, recycled, and warranted for second life — at the financing terms we hold now.
Campus dining at 50% regenerative-farm sourcing within two years, at a board-rate increase students would never notice.
Every property on our land heated without fossil fuels, at today’s energy budget, within five years.
If you can envision it, you can ask for it.
Learn to expect what you can envision.
State your ask in the standard form: spec, requirements, price threshold, volume, timeframe. Thirty seconds to sign, because the format is the same every time, everywhere.
Identity, role, authority, authenticity — recorded in a tamper-evident registry. Verified demand is the difference between a wish and a mandate.
Suppliers and innovators respond to what you asked for — not what they hoped you’d want. You accept only an offer that conforms. Or you don’t, and owe nothing more than your word’s weight.
Every CAPP carries a visibility dial, set by you at signing: Private (just you and us), Network (your community, when group access opens), Profile (your organization and standing, publicly), or Public (the full ask, on the record). A CEO may want the stage; a procurement team may want the quiet. Both are first-class citizens here.
Standing works the same everywhere but shows only where you allow it: honor conforming offers and it grows; walk from them and it falls. And one thing never counts against you — an offer that never came, or one that missed your terms. Reliability measures what you did when you got exactly what you asked for, nothing else.
And what makes even a fully private signature worth something: the market learns, in anonymous aggregate, how often attested asks convert — while your name, your ask, and your standing stay exactly as visible as you decided.
“The biggest obstacle to progress I’ve met in my career was never the problem itself. It was that no one who could write a check would commit to wanting it solved. All I want is to know who actually wants to pay to be helped with a real problem — and to make sure they get their solution.”
Gold Darr Hood · Unsolved Needs
Even a ten-dollar deposit on a moonbase says more than a thousand statements of support. It isn’t the size of the commitment — it’s that it binds.
The instrument is universal — demand for anything the world lacks. Its debut belongs to sustainability: the week the world’s buyers gather in one city, some of them will stop waiting to be sold, and start asking. Be one of the first voices on the record.
Join the first cohort — sign a CAPP