What changed
New state reports (Kentucky, cited) show the bulk of local opioid settlement money is sitting UNSPENT — Kentucky local governments have spent only ~10% (Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, cited). States are launching public spending dashboards (KY AG, Maryland, cited), which turns unspent balances into publicly visible, auditable, politically embarrassing facts — raising pressure on localities to spend and document correctly.
Why now
~$50B in national opioid settlements (inference on national total) is being paid out over ~18 years to states and 3,000+ local governments with restricted approved uses and mandatory annual reporting. The money is already allocated (FACT that KY funds exist and are largely unspent), the reporting cycles are recurring for 15+ more years, and new state dashboards create a visible accountability gap NOW. Small localities have no staff to produce compliant spending plans, so the funds stall — the exact bottleneck a software layer removes.
Converging signals
Three signals meet at one point: (1) a defined pool of restricted public money already owned by localities; (2) a defined forced class — city/county fiscal officers and opioid abatement committees who MUST produce approved-use spending plans, council resolutions, subrecipient agreements, and annual expenditure reports; (3) state reporting portals/councils (KY Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, cited) that receive those filings. Unspent balances are publicly reported, so prospects are identifiable from public data.
Customer pain
Small localities received money they cannot easily use: they must justify every dollar against Exhibit E approved uses, pass council approvals, subgrant to providers with monitoring obligations, and file annual public reports — with zero dedicated staff or expertise. FACT: KY money is largely unspent and communities 'struggle to spend opioid settlement funds properly' (WTHR 13 Investigates, cited). The pain is fear of clawback/audit and administrative paralysis.
Who pays
City/county governments (the beneficiary is also the buyer here) — specifically finance departments, county administrators, and opioid abatement committees. Secondary buyers: regional planning commissions, councils of government that administer for clusters of small towns, and the consultants/law firms already advising localities (white-label). Critically, most settlement agreements permit administrative costs, so the subscription is paid FROM the settlement admin allowance, not the town's general fund — removing the budget objection.
Solved today
Manually: overworked clerks with spreadsheets, ad-hoc guidance from the state AG/commission, expensive public-health or grants consultants billing hourly or a percentage, or simply doing nothing (why the money sits unspent). Some states built spending DASHBOARDS (KY, MD, cited) but those are transparency tools for the public/state — they do NOT help a locality PRODUCE a compliant plan, resolution, subrecipient agreement, or report.
Why current solutions are bad
Consultants are expensive and don't scale to thousands of tiny jurisdictions. State dashboards report what was spent but give no workflow to plan and document spending correctly. Spreadsheets produce audit risk. The result — money unspent for years while the crisis continues — is the proof the status quo fails.
Proposed product
A vertical SaaS: (1) an approved-use library mapped to the national Exhibit E abatement uses, kept current per-state; (2) guided spending-plan builder that outputs a council-ready resolution and a defensible approved-use justification; (3) subrecipient/mini-grant module — agreement templates, monitoring checklists, and expenditure tracking; (4) one-click annual expenditure report generator formatted to the state council/administrator's required schema; (5) a public-facing transparency page localities can publish to satisfy disclosure duties. Sold per jurisdiction.
MVP version
Start with ONE state (Kentucky — the trigger, with a live commission and public dashboard to model the report format). Build: the Exhibit E approved-use library, the spending-plan-to-resolution generator, and the KY annual report generator. Skip subrecipient monitoring for v1. A working demo can be pre-populated with a real unspent-balance town from public data to sell against.
30-day build
Extract and structure the national Exhibit E approved-use list and KY's specific reporting requirements from the KY Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission and AG site. Interview 5-10 small KY county/city fiscal officers and one grants consultant to confirm the workflow and pricing tolerance. Build the approved-use library + spending-plan/resolution generator MVP.
60-day build
Add the KY annual expenditure report generator and a simple subrecipient agreement template pack. Pilot free/discounted with 2-3 KY localities identified from the 'unspent' public data to produce a real filed plan as a case study. Line up the association channel (KY League of Cities / KY Association of Counties) for distribution.
90-day revenue plan
Convert pilots to paid annual subscriptions ($3-10k/jurisdiction, paid from admin allowance). Sell into KY through the municipal/county association and direct outreach to towns with publicly-visible unspent balances. Begin templating a second state (a large-pool state with a clear commission) to prove the 50-market replication path. Target first paid contracts in this window.
Distribution path
Direct outbound to localities with publicly-reported unspent balances (prospect list is free public data). Leverage municipal/county associations and regional councils of government as channel partners — they aggregate small towns and lend credibility. White-label to the consultants/law firms already advising on abatement funds. Sell through a demonstrated pre-built compliant plan, not relationship sales — the founder's stated strength.
Pricing hypothesis
$3,000-$10,000/jurisdiction/year subscription, tiered by population/fund size, explicitly positioned as an eligible administrative cost payable from settlement funds. Optional white-label/data tier for consultants and providers. Undercuts percentage-of-award consulting fees with fixed-cost software.
Technical difficulty
Low-to-moderate. Core value is structured domain content (approved-use mappings, report schemas) + document/report generation + light tracking — not hard engineering. The moat is the compliance content per state, which is exactly the founder's public-records/compliance-monitor wheelhouse.
Legal / regulatory risk
Low. Public funds, no licensure required to build reporting software (FACT per input: no major legal constraints). Must avoid giving legal advice — position as document/workflow tooling, not counsel. Some states cap administrative spending percentages, which bounds price but doesn't block the model. Do not overstate audit-proofing.
Platform dependency
None in the deplatform sense — filing goes to government councils/administrators, no private platform owner can cut access. Dependency is on each state's reporting requirements, which change slowly and publicly.
Founder fit
Very high. This is the founder's proven shape: a mandate forces a defined class to document/report to a government body, and a solo operator builds the compliance/submission layer and charges per jurisdiction — directly analogous to his shipped FMCSA ELDT portal-filing product. Public records, compliance monitoring, and public-money paperwork are all stated strengths. Buyer is reachable (public prospect list), pays from allocated funds, and there are ~50 near-identical state markets to replicate into.
Breakout potential
Strong. Win one state, then replicate the same product against 49 other states' abatement rules and thousands of localities — a 15+ year recurring-reporting annuity. Adjacent expansion: the same locality-grants-compliance engine generalizes to ARPA/SLFRF reporting, other restricted state funds, and subrecipient monitoring broadly.
Final recommendation
PURSUE — high-conviction, textbook founder-fit. Restricted public money already owned by a defined, under-staffed, forced-reporting class, with a fee payable from the funds themselves and a 50-state replication path. Validate willingness-to-pay against the 'free state dashboard' objection in the first 30 days, and secure a municipal-association channel early to solve small-town CAC.
Next action
Pull the Kentucky list of localities with publicly-reported unspent opioid settlement balances and their required annual-report format from the KY Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission / AG site, then call 5-10 small-county fiscal officers to confirm the workflow pain and $3-10k price tolerance before building.