← /daily-startup-idea
May 15, 2026
Excusly
“ChatGPT, but it just lies to your mom for you. Calibrated excuses, delivered on a schedule, with built-in plausibility decay.”
The Problem
Inbox · unanswered · last 14 days
Mom“did you ever call dr. patel”9d
Boss“circle back on the deck?”4d
Dentist“you missed your cleaning (3rd)”11d
Brunch group“still on for sat?”6d
Landlord“re: the smell”13d
Sister“👀”2d
The average adult owes 17 explanations at any given moment. They will draft 4 of them in the shower and send 0. That’s a $0.00 ARR opportunity — until now.
The Solution
A composer that takes a recipient, a thing you didn’t do, and a vibe — and returns a plausible excuse, ranked by burn rate. Slide the sliders. Hit “Send.” Live your life.
Excusly · Composer · Draft #4plausibility 78% · est. forgiveness 6.2/10
recipient
Mom
what you didn’t do
call her back (Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed)
intimacybiological
guilt budgetlow
plausibilityborderline
generated draft
hi mom!! sorry — phone’s been weird, work is insane this week, and i think i had a little bug. calling tonight after a thing ❤️
The Plausibility Decay Curve
Every excuse has a half-life. “Food poisoning” works once a quarter; on the third use the recipient quietly opens a spreadsheet. Excusly tracks reuse and rotates inventory.
believability vs. uses, per excuse
“my phone died”
×1
88%
“work is crazy right now”
×3
71%
“i think i have a little bug”
×2
64%
“family emergency”
×4
31%
“food poisoning”
×5
12%
“my grandma (again)”
×6
4%
The model learns per-recipient. Your mom remembers everything; your boss has the memory of a goldfish on a yacht.
Pricing
Free
$03 excuses/mo
- ✓Generic templates
- ✓Watermark: “sent via Excusly”
- ✓Mom mode (read-only)
Flake+
$12/mo · most popular
- ✓Unlimited excuses
- ✓Per-recipient memory
- ✓Auto-schedule “delayed reply” at 11:47pm
- ✓Vibe slider (warm → unbothered)
Executive
$89/mo · 1 seat
- ✓Calendar-aware (won’t double-book your bug)
- ✓Voice-note generation (9 regional accents)
- ✓Lawyer-safe phrasing
- ✓“On a flight” mode (geofenced)
TAM
Total addressable avoidance
4.6B people with a phone and a mother × $12/mo × 12 mo
= $662.4B
(figure assumes 100% market penetration; we believe this is conservative)
The Ask
$5M seed for: 3 engineers, 1 ethicist (window dressing), and a fine-tune run on 4 million screenshots of conversations our friends sent us “just to get a second opinion.”
Series A pitch:“We’re Grammarly, but for not showing up.”