Frequently asked questions

No. fobi is a paid product with no free tier.

The platform relies on a mix of paid APIs, AI models, data infrastructure, and ongoing processing costs to generate and maintain the analysis. Charging from day one keeps the product sustainable, allows the experience to improve over time, and avoids filling the platform with ads, sponsored content, or low-quality growth tactics.

The goal is to build something genuinely useful for people who care deeply about frontier technology — not to maximize vanity metrics.

The first 100 paid members lock in:

• $5/month, or
• $49/year

That’s 50% off standard pricing for as long as the subscription remains continuously active.

You can switch between monthly and annual billing without losing the rate. Founding Members are effectively helping shape the product in its earliest stage, so this pricing is a way of rewarding early conviction.

Yes.

Billing is handled through Stripe, and you can:

• Cancel anytime
• Switch plans
• Update payment methods
• Manage invoices

There are no retention calls, cancellation forms, or support tickets required.

If you cancel during the 7-day trial period, you won’t be charged.

fobi started with sectors I personally cared about and that people in my network actively track — areas like creator tools, developer tools, robotics, AI infrastructure, and health tech.

Rather than launching dozens of shallow categories, I wanted to focus on building depth and signal quality first.

As the subscriber base grows and infrastructure costs are covered, I plan to expand into additional frontier-tech sectors over time.

Probably, yes.

Every paid member is asked what sectors they want added next, and I use that feedback to prioritize expansion.

If enough members request the same sector, I’ll typically move quickly to support it.

For company-plan customers, if there’s a strategically important sector your team needs access to, I’ll prioritize adding it as soon as possible.

The company plan is designed to be frictionless. There’s:

• No SAML
• No seat provisioning
• No Slack approval workflows

A company purchases access through Stripe and registers their work-email domain (for example: acme.com). After that, anyone with an @acme.com email address can:

• Sign in via magic link
• Instantly access the platform

The purchaser becomes the billing admin and can manage everything through the Stripe Customer Portal.

Pricing:

• $100/month
• $999/year

fobi currently aggregates and synthesizes information from public sources, including:

• SEC EDGAR filings (Form D, 8-K, 10-Q)
• USPTO patent databases
• Company press releases
• RSS feeds and industry news sources

Where AI-generated synthesis is used — such as briefs, bull/bear cases, funding analysis, or sector summaries — sources are cited inline whenever possible.

Over time, I plan to:

• Integrate higher-quality paid data providers
• Build proprietary datasets
• Develop more sophisticated internal intelligence pipelines

Today, most of the underlying information is derived from public web data and then structured into a more usable format.

Most data pipelines update daily, while some feeds update monthly or quarterly, depending on the source.

AI-generated analysis layers are refreshed continuously as new information becomes available.

Coverage depth depends on:

• Public data availability
• Sector relevance
• News velocity
• Funding activity
• Patent and hiring signals

Some frontier sectors are dramatically easier to track than others.

No.

fobi is a research and intelligence platform designed to help users explore and understand frontier technology sectors.

Nothing on the platform should be considered financial, legal, or investment advice.

General-purpose AI tools are great at answering questions.

fobi is designed to continuously structure, track, and contextualize frontier-tech sectors over time — combining news, funding, patents, hiring signals, company data, and AI synthesis into a persistent research layer rather than a one-off conversation.

fobi is primarily built for:

• Investors
• Startup founders
• Operators
• Researchers
• Product and design leaders
• Curious people who want deeper context on emerging technology

If you enjoy understanding where the world is heading before it becomes obvious, you’ll probably enjoy fobi.

Probably eventually — but the current focus is making the core product genuinely valuable on desktop first.

I’d rather build something indispensable before optimizing where people use it.

Absolutely.

One of the advantages of being early is that user feedback genuinely shapes the roadmap. Founding Members especially will have disproportionate influence over where the platform goes next.

fobi started as a tool to solve my own problem.

As a designer, investor, and endlessly curious person, I found it increasingly difficult to stay on top of frontier technology without drowning in fragmented information, hype cycles, and low-signal content.

I built fobi to create a more structured, high-context way to track what’s actually happening across emerging industries.

Long term, I’d love for it to become:

• A trusted research layer for frontier technology
• A network of highly curious builders and investors
• Potentially even a low-cost investment syndicate that gives more people access to early-stage investing opportunities

The overarching goal is simple: help ambitious people understand the future a little earlier and a little more clearly.

The name predates the product by more than 15 years.

I bought the domain during my first year at university after seeing a Volkswagen advert that ended with the phrase: “Full Of Bright Ideas.”

I wrote down “FOBI,” thought it sounded memorable, and somehow convinced the domain owner to sell me the .com.

Originally it was meant to become the name of a future design studio. Instead, after years working in startups and technology, it eventually became the home for this project.

I’ve retroactively tried to make the acronym work:

• Frontier Opportunities & Business Insights sounds respectable
• But my friend’s version is probably better: Fear Of Being Ignorant

That one feels more accurate.

Absolutely.

The current asking price is: $1,000,000 after tax. And not a penny less.

The good news is I live in Texas, so at least you won’t have to worry about state income tax.

In the best-case scenario, fobi evolves into:

• A trusted intelligence platform for frontier technology
• A high-signal community of builders, operators, and investors
• A gateway into early-stage startup investing

I’d love to eventually leverage the network to create a low-cost investment syndicate where members could participate in startup investments with relatively small checks — potentially as little as $1,000.

Personally, the dream is less about building a massive corporation and more about:

• Keeping overhead lean
• Working remotely with talented people
• Spending time around ambitious builders
• Helping surface important ideas and companies earlier