At Starup Weekend Seattle last summer, my team and I built this <i>exact</i> product. Seriously, down to the last detail. Obviously it was a prototype but the pieces were all there.<p>Our business pitch was to focus on developers for easy integration. Out of sixty participants, we won best pitch judged by our peers, but didn't even place top 3 with the judges (VC's plus CEOs), who could not see how this was a "defensible" idea. Their issue was that these knowledge based questions (called "wallet questions" -- multiple choice, like "what street did you live on in 2005?) were from public data sources, and therefore, not "defensible." In the judges minds, any large company like Transunion could replicate this business fairly trivially.<p>I argued then, and I'll argue now, that there's a lot to be said for first mover advantage, developer friendliness, and a small, agile engineering team to back it up. Sure, all those data sources are public. But the existing API's for accessing them really suck. Transunion and other incumbent competitors have shown no indication that they're capable of improving upon those API's. Even if they did, it would only be out of reaction to a company like this, and at that point the battle for developers is already lost.<p>Best of luck to this team. With the YC name and a developer friendly approach, I maintain that this product has a very good shot at profitability. Its customers are developers, and you can charge a nominal fee per check, because those developers are likely building a product that profits per customer. So these guys can go after tens, or hundreds, of developers, but reach potentially hundreds of thousands of customers. It's a great business model.<p>This story also goes to show that ideas are a some a dozen. It's the execution, team, and positioning that will determine success. Good luck!