Nothing valuable is lost forever. FINDERS turns every city into one shared lost and found, where a photo from a stranger and a description from an owner meet in seconds instead of sitting in separate drawers at the tram depot, the police desk and a café till.
2. Why people can't resist it
Loss panic, instantly soothed. Posting takes 40 seconds and a live "we're watching" feed gives hope right away.
Being the good stranger. Finders get a public thank-you, a reputation badge and an optional tip. Doing the right thing feels rewarded.
The match reveal. A similarity score with glowing matching features is a small, addictive mystery solved.
3. How it works for real
Found photo in. A vision model (Gemini 2.5 Flash or GPT-4o-mini via OpenRouter) writes a structured description: category, colours, materials, brand-free distinguishing marks.
Privacy pass. On-device face and document detection blurs faces, ID cards, bank cards and screens before upload. A second server check rejects any photo with readable ID numbers.
Owner text in. A fast cheap model (DeepSeek or Gemini Flash) turns the free-text report into the same structured schema.
Matching. Text and image embeddings in a vector index, filtered by geo radius and time window, then a frontier LLM (Claude Sonnet) re-ranks the top 10 and writes the "matching features" explanation.
Ownership proof. The finder's private details (keychain shape, sticker, contents) become secret questions. The owner never sees the answer list.
Handover. Partner cafés and shops hold items with a 6-digit handover code. Optional tips go through Stripe or USDC on Base with a smart wallet using email login, so crypto stays invisible.
4. Cost per use
About $0.004 per found photo (vision plus redaction), $0.0005 per lost report, $0.01 per re-ranked match. Free for owners and finders, always. Revenue: partner venues pay a small monthly fee for foot traffic, transit operators and venues license a white-label desk, and a 10% platform fee applies only on optional tips.
5. Growth loop
Every reunion produces a shareable "returned by a stranger" card. Partner cafés display a FINDERS sticker and a drop-off counter, so finders discover the app at the exact moment they find something. Owners who get items back become finders. Each week a Sunday digest shows what was found near home, people register more valuables in advance, and finder reputation keeps rising, so both owners and finders open the app every week.
6. Risks and guardrails
Never show IDs, faces, addresses or card numbers publicly. Photos are redacted before anyone else sees them, and precise found locations are rounded to about 200 m.
Fraud claims: secret questions, a 3-try limit, and high-value items (phones, wallets, passports) are routed to police or transit desks.
Handovers happen only at partner venues, never at homes. No exchange of personal contact details.
Tips are optional and never a condition of return.
7. MVP build order
Lost report form with structured schema and a city map picker.
Found photo upload with vision description plus face and ID blur.
Embedding match with geo and time filters, email alerts on a hit.
Secret question verification and a handover code.
Sign 5 cafés in one neighbourhood as drop-off points.