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The company has streamlined over $5B in gigs for DJs, musicians, comedians, and public speakers. Prior to launching Gigwell, Jeremie held senior Sales & BD positions at Cisco and several early-stage SaaS companies like OpenDNS where he helped grow the company from 0 - $100 m in revenue. 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Ashutosh co-founded Gigs Live with a vision and passion to bring best-in-class technology and product experience to Music aficionados across the world. He truly believes that Music is one of the mediums that brings people together and connects them.\n\nAshutosh earned his Bachelors from New York University and MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashutoshnayak/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/AshuNayak159", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/f2084f6b6314125ab052f7a45b304052d51c86b2.jpg" }, { "user_id": 591647, "full_name": "Vaibhav Kharat", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Vaibhav Kharat has spent the last 20 years leveraging technology to transform great ideas into reality. Vaibhav co-founded and serves as the CTO of Gigs.live. Prior to Gigs.live, Vaibhav held technology positions at Amazon.com for the past 19 years. He has built robust and extensible systems that scale to and delight millions of customers. \n\nVaibhav holds a Masters in Industrial Engineering from University of Cincinnati, OH, and a MBA from MIT Sloan, Cambridge MA. 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Previously, he worked as a machine learning engineer at Bytedance and Quora and as an equity associate at AllianceBernstein. Long is also the co-founder and advisor of Pencil Philosophy, a liberal arts education non-profit program in Vietnam. He earned a Master's degree from Stanford and a Bachelor's degree from Columbia with Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/longvtran/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/cb7a6b7a9f9354f3fa1d9fa3d221484dd06090e4.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [] }, { "id": 24818, "name": "BlackOakTV", "slug": "blackoaktv", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/41c332786204766da2f20d0713ecf7263a1e799b.png", "website": "https://blackoak.tv", "all_locations": "New York City, NY, USA; New York, NY, USA", "long_description": "BlackOakTV is a subscription video platform hyper-serving black viewers and creators. We make it easy for black viewers to find, watch and engage with the content and creators that most reflect their lives and experiences. 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He's deeply passionate about building impactful products for underrepresented communities and currently he's working alongside Uzo Ometu on BlackOakTV where they are building a unique black streaming experience.", "is_active": false, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/iyanu-obidele-8513a879", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/6f31ba9151da612e5f370eb5aca67c722981927f.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [] }, { "id": 25279, "name": "Drama Drama", "slug": "drama-drama", "former_names": [ "Take1 Financial", "Muse Card", "OnScale", "Muse - OnScale", "Moots AI", "Moots" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/c317c036345682d427208c925256d74c3cc72666.png", "website": "https://dramadrama.ai/", "all_locations": "New York City, NY, USA", "long_description": "Drama Drama is building the monetization platform for AI character and drama creators.\r\n\r\nCreators are already building AI characters and serialized stories that attract audiences on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social platforms, but turning that fandom into direct revenue is still difficult.\r\n\r\nDrama Drama lets creators monetize their existing characters and series through gated episodes, paid AI character chat across text, voice and video, personalized fan experiences and other direct-to-fan products.\r\n\r\nCreators can bring the content and audience they already have. 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So I'm a bit of a jack of all trades which allows me to have a good understanding of how different types of systems work with each other and how to work in non-dev roles. In my personal life I'm a cat person with 2 of my own, a fan of anime/manga/film/games, non-alcoholic by choice, and like to go to comedy shows.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/basoukazuma/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/92b1b7650b28370e02c609d130b46bd7d7b856ac.jpg" }, { "user_id": 842527, "full_name": "Adela Chang", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Co-founder at KiraKira Media Inc., musician, and published webtoon writer. Prior to Azuki, I worked as senior mobile developer at companies such as Crunchyroll, Yelp, Medium, and Facebook. Graduated in 2014 from U.C. 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Worked in the fintech industry since my early career.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinhart-hermanus-6a149115/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/reinharthrm", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/2971648f4ffd1be094426d339f44eb4c7dabc20c.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [ { "title": "Bukalapak founders, YC back Indonesian insurtech firm", "url": "https://www.techinasia.com/aigis-1-million-funding", "date": "May 12, 2022" } ], "launches": [] }, { "id": 26812, "name": "Hype", "slug": "hype", "former_names": [ "the402", "Hypeshot", "Hype", "Hypeshot" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/54f6fccc5aacf88b46483ea7bf6cb22f5728b09d.png", "website": "https://www.hype.meme/", "all_locations": "New York City, NY, USA", "long_description": "Trade memecoins, crypto and send crypto to your friends\r\nDownload Hype here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hype-trade-memes/id6477802830", "one_liner": "Trade memecoins ", "team_size": 3, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1662071336, "tags": [ "Fintech", "Crypto / Web3", "Consumer", "Entertainment" ], "tags_highlighted": [ "Crypto / Web3" ], "top_company": false, "isHiring": true, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Summer 2022", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/hype", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2022/hype.json", "year_founded": null, "city": "New York City", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/71632005", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/gethype_hq", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/54f6fccc5aacf88b46483ea7bf6cb22f5728b09d.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Brad Flora", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/brad-flora" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 492765, "full_name": "Ravi Bakhai", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Founder/CEO of Hype", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravi-bakhai-ba785791/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/ravibakhai", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/255d22fd7cfcc216adb3a8ef8667bb90f63f124e.jpg" } ], "jobs": [ { "id": 71004, "title": "Senior Software Engineer", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/hype/jobs/TSdR1ed-senior-software-engineer", "location": "New York, NY, US", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Engineering", "role_type": "Full stack", "salary_range": "$140K - $210K", "equity_range": "", "experience": "3+ years", "visa": "US citizen/visa only", "skills": [ "Amazon Web Services (AWS)", "Node.js", "React Native", "Next.js" ] }, { "id": 73622, "title": "Software Engineer", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/hype/jobs/Aabj9TY-software-engineer", "location": "New York, NY, US", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Engineering", "role_type": "Full stack", "salary_range": "$120K - $180K", "equity_range": "", "experience": "1+ years", "visa": "US citizen/visa only", "skills": [ "Amazon Web Services (AWS)", "Node.js", "React Native", "Next.js" ] } ], "news": [ { "title": "Venture Capitalists Take Crypto Back to School in New Courtship - Bloomberg", "url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-01/venture-capitalists-take-crypto-back-to-school-in-new-courtship?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc1NDA2NTQ5NywiZXhwIjoxNzU0NjcwMjk3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTWkYzWEdEV0xVNjgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCRUI5MjYwQTE0NTQ0ODlFQTc4RkNFOTZENzcxQzkwQiJ9.P5I_o9Up0PW-QWi7oJUWbHgKrqFR59hIaQueStRFPkI&leadSource=uverify%20wall", "date": "Jul 31, 2025" }, { "title": "Trump meme coin unsettles some blockchain leaders", "url": "https://www.axios.com/2025/01/21/trump-meme-coin-crypto", "date": "Jan 21, 2025" }, { "title": "How memecoins could bring back the retail investor in crypto - Blockworks", "url": "https://blockworks.co/news/midwest-blockchain-conference-highlights", "date": "Nov 10, 2024" }, { "title": "Memecoin trading tool Hype launches ‘President Memecoin Index’ ahead of Election Day | The Block", "url": "https://www.theblock.co/post/324430/memecoin-trading-tool-hype-launches-president-memecoin-index-ahead-of-election-day?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss", "date": "Nov 03, 2024" }, { "title": "In Defense of Meme Coins", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/06/10/in-defense-of-meme-coins/", "date": "Jun 10, 2024" } ], "launches": [] }, { "id": 27907, "name": "Storyboarder", "slug": "storyboarder", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/fdaa90707265a548984bceb0ca01f4971e16d6c3.png", "website": "https://storyboarder.com", "all_locations": "New York City, NY, USA; Remote", "long_description": "Storyboarder is a tool and a platform for anyone to create, share, and sell webcomics.\r\n\r\n\r\nIn East Asia, the webcomic (or digital manga) industry is an $12B market and rapidly growing to the rest of the world. Webtoon, the largest company in the space, generates $100M / month in revenue. However, their addressable market is limited by their content creators, who need know how to draw. Readers are desperate for a greater variety of stories in webcomics.\r\n\r\n\r\nThrough years of working with filmmakers, we’ve built extremely easy to use storyboarding software that has 700K users. We’re democratizing visual storytelling to everyone. We’re working on the next generation that, through advances in video game interfaces, ubiquitous 3D compute, and AI, will allow anyone to easily create scenes, pose characters, to create webcomics. \r\n\r\n\r\nStoryboarder is backed by Y Combinator (W23), David Karp (Tumblr Founder), Andrew Kortina (Venmo Founder), and other product focused investors.", "one_liner": "Tool and platform to create and sell webcomics", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer -> Content", "launched_at": 1677558181, "tags": [ "Entertainment", "Media", "Creator Economy" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": true, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2023", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer", "Content" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada", "Remote", "Fully Remote" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/storyboarder", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2023/storyboarder.json", "year_founded": 2022, "city": "New York City", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/storyboarder", "x_url": "", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/fdaa90707265a548984bceb0ca01f4971e16d6c3.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Aaron Epstein", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/aaron-epstein" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 73262, "full_name": "Charles Forman", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Charles Forman is the co-founder of Storyboarder. With a background in computer science and design, Charles is passionate about building great product experiences that make the world a more enjoyable place. Prior to co-founding Storyboarder, Charles was the founder of OMGPOP (YCS06), a gaming startup that gained international recognition for its popular game \"Draw Something\". OMGPOP attracted millions of users and was ultimately acquired by Zynga for $210 million.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/iminlikewithyou/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/charlesforman", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/3227d0e81f001594d91ca5b7060a736acdb6557f.jpg" }, { "user_id": 1176853, "full_name": "Joe Watkins", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Joe Watkins is the co-founder and CTO of Storyboarder. Prior to Storyboarder, Joe lead a computer vision/machine learning team at Google before working on generating maps with machine learning at Waymo.\nJoe's passion for web-native fiction played a significant role in inspiring Storyboarder's design. As a teenager, he was captivated by the potential of the internet to tell stories in new and exciting ways, and spent countless hours exploring different forms of digital storytelling.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-watkins-06925295", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/292cc2868728f7817b98e5382b45fce1321fd4f8.jpg" } ], "jobs": [ { "id": 66669, "title": "Backend Engineer", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/storyboarder/jobs/hmyhqGZ-backend-engineer", "location": "New York, NY, US", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Engineering", "role_type": "Backend", "salary_range": "$120K - $140K", "equity_range": "0.25% - 1.00%", "experience": "3+ years", "visa": "US citizen/visa only", "skills": [ "Node.js", "React", "TypeScript" ] }, { "id": 67565, "title": "Backend Engineer", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/storyboarder/jobs/T0QqbIb-backend-engineer", "location": "New York, NY, US / Remote (US)", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Engineering", "role_type": "Backend", "salary_range": "$120K - $140K", "equity_range": "0.10% - 1.00%", "experience": "3+ years", "visa": "US citizen/visa only", "skills": [ "Node.js", "React", "TypeScript" ] } ], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 69867, "title": "Storyboarder - Create, buy, and sell webcomics", "tagline": "Storyboarder is a tool and platform that enables anyone to create, buy, and sell webcomics.", "body": "# TLDR: Storyboarder is a tool and platform that enables anyone to create, buy, and sell webcomics. Over 650,000 users have used Storyboarder to make movies like Black Panther, Cruella, I Tonya, and Modern Family — and now we're expanding to webcomics.\n\nHi Everyone! We’re [Charles Forman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/iminlikewithyou/) and [Joe Watkins](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-watkins-06925295/), the founders of [Storyboarder](https://storyboarder.com/).\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=69867&key=user_uploads/73262/1d6bac9f-7694-4132-b0e9-b6f55630014f)\n\nIf you have an idea for a story, you can use Storyboarder to tell it by adding characters to a scene and typing in dialogue - the tool will automatically generate the shots you need to tell your story. You can post episodes of your story to the platform as part of a series, and other people can buy the episodes to read them.\n\n## 🤬 **Currently, it’s too hard to make webcomics - You have to be able to draw!**\n\nIn East Asia, the webcomic (or digital manga) industry is a $12B market - and it’s rapidly growing to the rest of the world. People are addicted to reading webcomics. For example, the largest company in the space, Webtoon, has 100M MAU and generates $1.2B in annual revenue. The problem is that the variety and appeal of webcomics is constrained by the number of webcomic artists - you need to know how to draw to make a webcomic.\n\n## 💜 **We make it easy for anyone to make webcomics!**\n\nStoryboarder is a 3D scene editor. You pick a scene. You add characters. You type in what they say. Storyboarder makes the panels for you, and then you can edit them as much as you want. We have a world class rendering system, so everything ends up looking absolutely beautiful!\n\nStoryboarder is also a platform for posting your comics as episodes in series. After your readers read 5 of your episodes, they can pay the equivalent of 20 cents to read additional episodes.\n\n## 🧔🧔‍♂️ **Why are we building this?**\n\nI, (Charles), was working on making a movie. I wanted the story to be good, but I had no experience. Pixar uses storyboarding as a tool to iterate on their stories. They can see each version of their movie and rapidly iterate on it. Being the creative / engineer that I am, I made a storyboarding tool so I could create storyboards without having to draw. I released the tool, Storyboarder, and 700K people use it to storyboard movies and tv shows like Black Panther, Cruella, I, Tonya, and Modern Family.\n\nWe were ready to start shooting my movie in March of 2020 - then the pandemic hit. We realized we wouldn’t be able to make the movie. So I focused on Storyboarder. Working with some of the best writers, directors, and storyboard artists in the world, I saw a bunch of fantastic storyboards for movies that would never be filmed. They were cancelled because of covid. I realized that there are tons of stories that never see the light of day because they can’t get made into movies.\n\nBeing depressed about COVID, I spent time on Clubhouse, where I met my cofounder Joe. We talked a lot about the world of online fiction and webcomics and how it relates to storyboarding. We learned that Webtoon is huge and makes tons of money, but very few of their stories appeal to us, or many people I know. Webtoon creators are a particular type of person that need to know how to draw.\n\nI used to make videogames. I started OMGPOP (YC06). We built 35 games and a game called “Draw Something” We sold the company for $200M. Joe was running a team of ML engineers at Google and worked on computer vision at Waymo. So we thought we could combine forces to build the next generation of storytelling with online 3D tech, game tech, and AI.\n\nJoe and I thought, what if we make a tool where anyone can make webcomics without having to draw? The stories created would appeal to so many more people. We did the math: 3 out of 10 Americans buy e-books: 100M people X $12 (ARPPU on Webtoon). That’s $1.2B. 10X Globally: $12B!\n\n## **Checks all the boxes:**\n\n✅ **Making stories is important and fun!** \\\n✅ **Huge Market: $12B.** \\\n✅ **Built in 650K Users.** \\\n✅ **Previous YC06 videogame company with success: $200M Exit.** **\\#29 Top YC Exit.**\\\n✅ **Investors include**: David Karp (**Tumblr Founder**), Andrew Kortina (**Venmo Founder**), **Jonathan Glick** (NYT), **Andy Artz** (Best man in the world), other top secret celebs and good looking rich people.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=69867&key=user_uploads/73262/c4ddcafc-e38e-49f9-8259-b90af30cfb5c)\n\n_Various gingers: Laura (Joe’s partner), Joe, some freakishly tall guy, and Charles._\n\n### **The Ask:**\n\n🚀 Do you want in on this rocket ship? Interested in using our tool? 💌 Email us and we’ll add you to the waitlist or set up a call: [founders@storyboarder.com](mailto:founders@storyboarder.com)", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/IAt-storyboarder-create-buy-and-sell-webcomics", "votes": 114, "created_at": "2023-03-02T15:10:31.514Z" } ] }, { "id": 27947, "name": "Shortbread", "slug": "shortbread", "former_names": [ "KURUKURU" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/078f1845141c235e73d8a7d865841150d50fcf92.png", "website": "https://www.shortbread.ai/", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Shortbread app is Netflix for romance comics built by a team of women writers, artists and engineers. We work with bestselling authors on Kindle and #BookTok to turn their romance fictions into comics. Our content specialize in viral romance fiction tropes such as mafia and dark romance. The comics are free to read with options to buy a subscription.\r\n\r\n", "one_liner": "Read romance comics.", "team_size": 4, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer -> Content", "launched_at": 1677185733, "tags": [ "Consumer", "Entertainment", "Media", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2023", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer", "Content" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/shortbread", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2023/shortbread.json", "year_founded": 2023, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/shortbreadai/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/ShortbreadAI", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/078f1845141c235e73d8a7d865841150d50fcf92.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Diana Hu", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/diana-hu" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 1139029, "full_name": "Fengjiao Peng", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Founder at Epsilab. Previously co-founded Shortbread (YC W23), generating $500K revenue and 2M episodes sold for AI-created comics. Founding member of Vimeo's AI team, pioneering multi-modal deep learning and RL for video streaming. Researcher at MIT Media Lab. BS Physics from University of Hong Kong, MS from MIT Media Lab.", "is_active": false, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/fengjiao-peng/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/5862bd598d2f2176dc6aa4b24c4581b799eb3045.jpg" }, { "user_id": 1156004, "full_name": "Yiping Lyu", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "", "is_active": false, "linkedin_url": "http://www.linkedin.com/in/yiping-lyu", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/62c0bf6b8fcd054dbf2931a66ae9b9af45aaef96.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [ { "title": "Our favorite startups from YC's Winter 2023 Demo Day — Part 1 | TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/05/y-combinator-demo-day-favorites-part-one/", "date": "Apr 05, 2023" } ], "launches": [ { "id": 81122, "title": "Shortbread App: Netflix for comics", "tagline": "Indulge in the binge-worthy romance comic series, at your fingertips.", "body": "Introducing the [Shortbread App](https://shortbreadapp.com/)—a Netflix for bite-sized mobile comics featuring premium romance series from bestselling authors on Kindle, Wattpad, and Chapters. \n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=81122&key=user_uploads/89898/cc20cad3-81dc-4693-b992-159d93e7430a)\n\n# **Founders**\n\nHi, we’re [Fengjiao](https://www.linkedin.com/in/fengjiao-peng/) and [Evan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanhu1/), building Shortbread to transform the $130B webcomics industry.\\\n**Fengjiao** is an engineer who has worked at Vimeo, Adobe, and MIT Media Lab. A former comics creator, she pitched her own projects to webcomics platforms and saw the lack of advanced tech in the space. \\\n**Evan** is an AI researcher at the Berkeley AI Research Lab and was SWE at Amazon. He founded Generative AI @ Berkeley and grew it to 70 members + partnerships with Microsoft and YC startups in 7 months. He also built talk2arXiv, an open-source RAG system that reached 1st place on Hacker News, 500 stars on GitHub, and is still used by thousands today.\n\n# **Why Shortbread**\n\n**🩷 We’re building something _women_ want**. We marry the most advanced tech to a centuries-old genre: ROMANCE. A women-led founding team, we deeply understand our audience’s taste and meticulously optimize every algorithm, every storyline, every panel, and every pixel to visualize what today’s women seek. \n\n**📖 Story is king.** Our debut Shortbread Original series are brought to you by bestselling authors from Kindle, Wattpad, and Chapters—collectively with 64+ million views—and webcomic artists with 2+ billion views. Each story undergoes a rigorous revision process with the best minds in the industry to ensure unparalleled quality.\n\n**🎨 We build technology for our creators**. We’re building the best technology to enable artists to express their creativity and be freed by the tedious side of drawing. Enabled by our creative studio tools, our team are bringing best-of-its-kind graphics and artwork to the mobile romantic fictions.\\\nA video of our tools: https://youtu.be/QgYWf9rtBp4\n\n# **Our Ask**\n\nDownload the [Shortbread App](https://shortbreadapp.com/) on iOS (Android next week ;) with the code YC2024 and get 100 free coins to read beautiful romance stories :). \n\nInvite friends with your personal code in the app for more free bonus coins!", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/L6Q-shortbread-app-netflix-for-comics", "votes": 88, "created_at": "2024-05-28T14:04:08.841Z" }, { "id": 70027, "title": "KURUKURU (now Shortbread.ai): 3D engine in the browser for comics creation", "tagline": "One destination for anyone to create, publish and monetize comics stories.", "body": "**TL; DR:** Webcomics platforms like webtoon generate $1.2B+ in ARR, engaging 90M monthly active readers. KURUKURU is a 3D engine in the browser to allow every storyteller to create, publish and monetize comics.\n\nThis is a page of a comics story (aka webtoon, manga, manhwa)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=70027&key=user_uploads/1139029/ddde28f5-c960-4ffb-a7ef-8a421be9b6a3)\n\nCreated with KURUKURU\n\n**Reality:**\n\nWebcomic platforms like Webtoon generate $1.2B+ in ARR from comics sales, engaging 90M+ monthly active readers. Tapas, a webcomics platform, was sold for $550M. Over 2B people watch anime globally, and the total market cap of anime, webtoon and comics is $47.3B in 2022.\n\nCurrently, creators make comics by drawing, which requires art skills and is incredibly labor intensive and time consuming.\n\n**Solution:**\n\nDemo: \n\nKURUKURU is an all-in-one 3D engine and platform that enables every storyteller to create, publish and monetize comics. By uploading or generating characters, posing panels, and applying stylized filters, anyone can make comics in minutes, not hours.\n\n**👧🏻 Optimized for comics storytelling.** Characters take up >90% of panel areas. KURUKURU offers easy and detailed control of characters to express those \\~feelings\\~.\n\n**🖼️ Making art in clicks.** Creators want panels that look like hand-drawn art, not photorealism as in traditional 3D engines. KURUKURU has proprietary filters to render webtoon, manga, and comics styles (w/ provisional patent pending), in addition to continuous integration with generative AI.\n\n[**🔮**](https://emojipedia.org/crystal-ball/)**User generated content + oceans of assets.** Comics creation is art asset heavy: character poses, props, backgrounds. KURUKURU offers massive amounts of native assets, and encourages creators to upload, share and trade.\n\n**🧙‍♀️Character generation.** Working with the 3D art teams behind games like Genshin Impact and Onmyoji, we’re building powerful character generation tools with a variety of aesthetics that Gen Z and Gen Alpha love.\n\n[**🚀**](https://emojipedia.org/rocket/)**Share everything through a link**. Collaborate in realtime.\n\n[**💰**](https://emojipedia.org/money-bag/)**Helping creators from distribution to monetization.** Comics creation is a whole journey, and creators need so much more help and support than a great tool!\n\n**Who are we?**\n\nTwo frens who like to draw and write ٩(●˙▿˙●)۶…⋆ฺ\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=70027&key=user_uploads/1139029/278f04cb-2d65-4557-a5dd-e6b13ef2be2a)\n\nFengjiao has had a fascination with visual storytelling her whole life. In college she wrote and created several animated films, some of which went viral. A veteran from MIT Media Lab, Adobe and Vimeo, she made algorithms on generative animation and AI.\n\nIn 2019, she co-created a webcomics series, 少女，香草，及其他易燃物 (Girl, Herbs and Other Inflammable Objects), which was accepted to Dongman, a Chinese webcomics platform. Trying everything out there to get her comics done, Fengjiao developed deep insights in the comics creation process, from story to art, and saw the total vacancy of advanced technology in this space.\n\nIn 2022, she teamed up with Yiping, a fellow creative, and financial engineering guru, who developed large-scale trading systems for SMBC Capital Markets, & former analyst at Alliance Bernstein since graduating from Columbia University. In their bedrooms, the two concocted the first prototype of KURUKURU. In 6 months, KURUKURU landed in the hands of the first cohort of creators that the founders befriended on Reddit.\n\nWe are fortunate to be backed by supportive investors and experts in the field, including YC, Joi Ito and Louis Kang @ GMJP, Ben Casnocha, Amrit Rao and Anne Dwane @ Village Global, Habib Haddad and Calvin Chin @ E14. Our founding advisor [Peter Dolch](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterdolch/) orchestrated content systems & warehouses for HP, Merriam Webster and AT&T, and has been a strategic advisor to numerous startups including WOMP and Gentle Beast.\n\n**Ask**\n\nTell your friends/cousins who love comics, manga, animation, anime, visual storytelling … about us. Say “yc fren“ in the sign up form. We’ll help them skip the waitlist and turn their stories into comics.", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/IDT-kurukuru-now-shortbread-ai-3d-engine-in-the-browser-for-comics-creation", "votes": 395, "created_at": "2023-03-07T23:21:47.841Z" } ] }, { "id": 28707, "name": "Kino AI", "slug": "kino-ai", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/a0a46950ff7350dee9729b6aa2da1c83cce56306.png", "website": "https://kino.ai", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Kino is a web-native video editor where your footage, your team, and your AI agents work together — video editing never had its Figma moment, and it certainly never had its Cursor moment. We proved our platform on Hollywood's biggest shows, and soon it's free for everyone.", "one_liner": "Kino is an AI media manager and video editor for humans and agents.", "team_size": 4, "industry": "B2B", "subindustry": "B2B -> Productivity", "launched_at": 1689168813, "tags": [ "Entertainment", "Video", "AI", "AI Assistant" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": true, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Summer 2023", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "B2B", "Productivity" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kino-ai", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2023/kino-ai.json", "year_founded": 2022, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/kino-ai/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/trykino", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/a0a46950ff7350dee9729b6aa2da1c83cce56306.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [ "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/52609552ecc219aa286d083e6762bd2c7d259e8c.png" ], "primary_partner": { "name": "Jared Friedman", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/jared-friedman" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 312544, "full_name": "Luke Igel", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "MIT '23. Formerly NASA JPL, SpaceX, Slack, CSM, KoKo.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/igel", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/lukeigel", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/a9a158b88470f651167c3e4c3e4fc38f56a0cde4.jpg" } ], "jobs": [ { "id": 85108, "title": "Founding Engineer", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kino-ai/jobs/4ur7YIG-founding-engineer", "location": "San Francisco, CA, US", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Engineering", "role_type": "Full stack", "salary_range": "$120K - $185K", "equity_range": "0.75% - 2.50%", "experience": "3+ years", "visa": "Will sponsor", "skills": [] } ], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 73000, "title": "📸 Kino AI - Silicon Valley meets Hollywood", "tagline": "Kino automatically organizes footage so filmmakers can edit faster.", "body": "Hey! [Wes](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleyblock/) and [Luke](https://www.linkedin.com/in/igel/) here! We’re building software for filmmakers at [Kino AI](https://kino.ai).\n\nLuke Igel and I actually started our entrepreneurial journey as amateur documentary filmmakers. We met as freshman at MIT in 2018 and have been friends ever since. In November 2020, we began working together on a [feature-length documentary film](https://regressions.net) about the history of MIT and technology in the United States. It’s called MIT:Regressions.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=73000&key=user_uploads/1357272/52fb4698-dd83-4a2b-8d92-5c62be30347e)\n\nMaking Regressions inspired us to build tools that help professional storytellers.\n\n### **Cool…but what’s the problem?**\n\nImagine watching this footage and transcribing all of the slated information by hand.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=73000&key=user_uploads/1357272/43e60a01-2a4a-4ab2-a5be-7db2bbeec90e)\n\nPeople have to do this - and much more - to organize the troths of footage that go into a movie, or a commercial, or a trailer, or a YouTube video, or a…you get the point.\n\nThe process of manually logging this _metadata_ is expensive and time consuming, and mistakes can be catastrophic.\n\n# What does Kino do?\n\nKino automatically infers metadata and uses it to label and organize footage, saving hours every day for assistant editors. We transcribe audio and “describe” the video and turn an unstructured mountain of footage into a useful index. And it all happens locally on the editor’s machine.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=73000&key=user_uploads/1357272/f705576a-30de-41fe-ae3a-f74397903714)\n\nOur first feature lets users use natural language to find specific moments within their entire footage library. Check out this [demo video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwon6fWvmco)!\n\n### Want to use Kino at your company?\n\nWe’re running pilots with production companies, creative agencies, and corporate video teams. Please contact sales: [sales@trykino.com](mailto:sales@trykino.com)\n\nConnect with us!\n\n* Sign up for our mailing list! ([https://kino.ai)](http://trykino.com)\n* Follow us on Twitter! ([twitter.com/trykino](http://twitter.com/trykino))\n* Follow us on Instagram! ([instagram.com/try.kino](http://instagram.com/try.kino))\n* Or reach out directly. We appreciate introductions to media professionals, and always welcome words of encouragement. Drop us a note at [hello@trykino.com](mailto:hello@trykino.com)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=73000&key=user_uploads/1357272/0cafe0de-299d-4421-aa52-7809250926e0)\n\n\\-Wes and Luke", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/IzQ-kino-ai-silicon-valley-meets-hollywood", "votes": 167, "created_at": "2023-07-12T19:02:29.659Z" } ] }, { "id": 28938, "name": "Glade", "slug": "glade", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/39e64fe4e49894144581ae2ef69befe4cb83f6b8.png", "website": "https://gladestudio.ai/", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Glade is helping everyone build games with AI. GladeCore powers hundreds of studios and developers with locally powered AI NPCs that include TTS, STT, emotional tuning, and RAG. GladeKit is Cursor for Games - an AI agent that lives directly in your game engine and builds games for you. ", "one_liner": "Build games at the speed of thought", "team_size": 3, "industry": "B2B", "subindustry": "B2B", "launched_at": 1687994809, "tags": [ "Generative AI", "Consumer", "Entertainment", "Gaming", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Summer 2023", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "B2B" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada", "Remote", "Partly Remote" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/glade", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2023/glade.json", "year_founded": 2023, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/gladegamestudio", "x_url": "https://x.com/GladeStudio", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/39e64fe4e49894144581ae2ef69befe4cb83f6b8.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [ "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/a26e6511816713a17d7f2cec1d66dc6d5d18441c.png" ], "primary_partner": { "name": "Diana Hu", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/diana-hu" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 424004, "full_name": "Daniel Fang", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Daniel is the CEO and co-founder of Glade. He has years of experience working in banking, strategic finance, and venture capital. He has previously worked at Navan, Ocean Tomo, and Goldman Sachs.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/danielfang7", "x_url": null, "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/2d257131f2a20e76faf35a42e3d3955091e1c875.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [ { "title": "Our favorite startups from YC's Summer 2023 Demo Day, Day 1 | TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/06/ycombinator-demo-day-one-summer-2023/", "date": "Sep 06, 2023" } ], "launches": [ { "id": 98702, "title": "GladeKit: AI agent for game development", "tagline": "AI agent that understands your Unity project and builds directly inside it (Unreal Engine next)", "body": "GladeKit is an AI agent that understands your Unity project and can create systems, modify scenes, and fix bugs directly inside your engine. It doesn’t just generate code snippets - it takes direct action inside your project.\n\n**Demo**: \n\n# **The problem**\n\nMost AI tools for game development don’t see your scene hierarchy, prefabs, or existing systems, so developers end up copying code into Unity, wiring components together, fixing errors, and repeating the process.\n\nThis constant context switching slows down shipping real gameplay.\n\n# **The solution: an engine-aware AI agent**\n\nGladeKit connects directly to your Unity project and understands the full context of your game. It reads your scripts, assets, scene hierarchy, and components, then plans and executes changes directly inside the engine.\n\nWhat that looks like in practice:\n\n* 150+ native Unity actions: create prefabs, wire up Animator Controllers, configure physics, build UI, set up lighting, bake NavMeshes - all from natural language\n* Full project awareness: the AI sees your scene hierarchy, active errors, render pipeline, selected objects, and script content before it does anything\n* Three modes built for different workflows: Agent, Debug, and Ask\n* Turn-by-turn revert: every change the AI makes is tracked and reversible, with a built-in script diff viewer so you see exactly what changed\n\nYou describe what you want, and GladeKit builds it inside your project.\n\n# **How it works**\n\nGladeKit indexes your Unity project and builds a structured understanding of:\n\n• Scripts and APIs\n\n• Scene hierarchy and GameObjects\n\n• Prefabs, assets, and components\n\nWhen you request a change (for example: “Create a player controller with WASD movement” or “Fix this null reference error”), it generates a plan and applies the required changes directly to the project.\n\n# **The ask**\n\n1. If you’re building a game in Unity, we’d love for you to try GladeKit.\n2. If you know indie studios or teams experimenting with AI dev tools, intros would be hugely appreciated.\n\nTry it for free here:\n\n\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=98702&key=user_uploads/424004/56ba163b-c05d-45b7-a278-2107abed2ba8)\n\n", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Pfy-gladekit-ai-agent-for-game-development", "votes": 5, "created_at": "2026-03-12T15:09:48.531Z" }, { "id": 72665, "title": "Glade - Enterprise grade platform for financial planning", "tagline": "We helps companies build, manage, and visualize their financial plan in real-time", "body": "**_Tl;dr:_** _Finance teams spend 75% of their time on manual processes, and existing tools in the market are extremely difficult to adopt. Glade is a user-first, fully integrated platform that helps enterprises and scaling companies streamline their financial planning, reporting, and analytics. Check out our_ [_website_](https://gladetool.com) _to learn more._\n\nHi everyone, we’re Daniel and Aaron, the co-founders of Glade!\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=72665&key=user_uploads/424004/0b41811b-ce06-4f98-9c81-60bded2fe769)\n\n### **🧨 Problem: Financial Planning is Painful and Tedious**\n\nWithin growing companies and enterprises, there is no single source of truth for financial data, and finance teams are wasting too much time on manual tasks. Daniel was a finance manager at his last company and spent hours every day manually preparing data and handling simple requests from business partners. \n\nExisting tools are also extremely difficult to adopt and implement. Daniel’s previous company implemented Anaplan and paid hundreds of thousands each year for it, yet only one person in his entire company learned how to properly use it. \n\n### **🚀 Solution: A User-First, AI-Powered Financial Platform**\n\nGlade helps companies build, manage, and visualize their financial plan in real-time. \n\nUnlike existing enterprise tools, we fully integrate with all business apps (such as Netsuite, Workday, and Snowflake) to automate the flow of data directly from these apps to your team’s Google Sheets and Excel models. Through our integrations and data enrichment, Glade serves as the central source of truth for all financial data within a company. \n\nOur platform also empowers leaders across the company to make informed decisions and stay aligned. By leveraging AI, we allow users to self-serve financial data through our platform and use natural language to create custom, board deck-ready visualizations in seconds. Want to check how your business is performing in the APAC region? Just ask Glade: “How has my revenue trended in APAC over the last 3 months?” Using AI, we will produce a high-quality chart for you in seconds.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=72665&key=user_uploads/424004/75f11c06-8d2a-42e8-adc9-08f67408016f)\n\nUsing Glade, companies: \n\n✔️ Speed up financial planning, month-end close, and investor/board deliverables by 2x \n\n✔️ Improve reporting and forecast accuracy by eliminating errors from manual data pulls  \n\n✔️ Align leaders and teams across the company to financial objectives\n\n### **💲Opportunity Size:**\n\nThe total addressable market for enterprise financial planning is $50B. Anaplan is a leader in the space, with a market capitalization of almost $10B. \n\nHowever, with a recorded NPS of -38 and poor user adoption across its customers, legacy enterprise tools like Anaplan are bound to be replaced. \n\n### **❔Our Ask:**\n\nConnect us to CEOs, CFOs, and finance leaders in your network. To contact us, [click here](mailto:daniel@gladetool.com)\n\nIntroduce us to any warm connections you have in fast-growing companies or enterprises. [click here](mailto:daniel@gladetool.com)\n\nAre you a founder and interested in using our software to improve your financial planning process? To schedule a meeting with Glade, [click here](https://calendly.com/danielglade/30min)", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Iu1-glade-enterprise-grade-platform-for-financial-planning", "votes": 21, "created_at": "2023-06-29T22:04:03.669Z" } ] }, { "id": 29297, "name": "Eggnog", "slug": "eggnog", "former_names": [ "Fielder" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/192e30253e4b85adfd668365bd902971b258835c.png", "website": "https://www.eggnog.ai", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Interactive AI video apps where users create and play.", "one_liner": "AI-native entertainment", "team_size": 1, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1710803454, "tags": [ "Entertainment", "Social Media", "Video", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2024", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/eggnog", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2024/eggnog.json", "year_founded": 2024, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/eggnogai", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/eggnog_ai", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/192e30253e4b85adfd668365bd902971b258835c.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [ "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/01c857d63fd4c9045ae54d3f32f5abd9ddef5312.png", "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/b72f0878ce5a5f564359db84790e36e37805ee22.png" ], "primary_partner": { "name": "Harj Taggar", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/harj-taggar" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 649987, "full_name": "Sam Plank", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Cofounder of Eggnog. Previously at Meta and Quora. Studied applied math at Harvard.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/sam-plank-042b1199", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/SamuelMGPlank", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/77ee6465b6a95fa09e99a7cc6a6ef174eb4c31b1.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 79488, "title": "Eggnog — YouTube for AI-generated content", "tagline": "We let anyone create, watch, and remix AI videos", "body": "Hi YC! We’re Sam and Jitesh, and we’re building [Eggnog](https://www.eggnog.ai/). We’re on a mission to enable everyone to create, share, and enjoy the magic of AI-generated videos with consistent characters.\n\nCheck out [the most popular video](https://youtu.be/WnAzSG9PFO8) made with Eggnog - it got 100k views on Twitter in 24 hours! Paul Graham even said it was funny!\n\n### AI Videos don’t have consistent characters\n\nAI videos exploded in the past year, and we saw a deluge of content that was funny, spooky, and whimsical. But one thing has held these videos back from really being ready for primetime – AI video creators can’t create scenes with consistent characters.\n\nCreators try every trick in the book to give their wizard the same wizened face from one scene to the next, but no matter, the wizard always looks different.\n\nInconsistent characters kill so much of the magic of AI videos. It’s hard to get invested in the protagonist of a story if they look different in every scene!\n\n### Eggnog\n\nEggnog gives creators the control to design their characters exactly how they imagine and lets them use those characters in cinematic scenes. This unlocks AI video creation that is immersive with characters that viewers get attached to.\n\nCreators can also use and remix characters made by other Eggnog users, allowing creators to build worlds in a collaborative and social way.\n\nWe use a special mix of open-source diffusion models and post-processing to give creators control. Until now, the average creator couldn’t make a truly cinematic scene without a Hollywood budget for actors, sets, cameras, etc. Scenes from Interstellar, Dune, and Jurassic World were impossible to make without millions of dollars and months of time. But Eggnog changes that.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=79488&key=user_uploads/587051/bc4cf951-1c5c-422f-9a80-46b6f92c4b1f)\n\n### What’s next?\n\nCharacter consistency is the foundation of entertaining AI video, but it’s only the beginning. We’re excited about a future where users can remix characters and scenes to build infinite storylines.\n\nWe’re going to make it possible for viewers to get engrossed in a cinematic universe and then expand on that universe in a collaborative and social way.\n\n### Team\n\nWe’re excited to empower the most creative people to tell the best stories.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=79488&key=user_uploads/587051/f0cf8ab7-c747-44a8-87d6-c442985384c8)\n\nA bit about us— \\\n[Sam](https://linkedin.com/in/sam-plank-042b1199): BA in Applied Math from Harvard. Previously worked on creator monetization tools at Quora that grew from 0 to $1M ARR in under a year and built an AI assistant for podcasters.\n\n[Jitesh](https://linkedin.com/in/jitesh-m-62a533b3): BS, MEng in CS from MIT, trained a language model to generate music lyrics and worked on image models to help pulmonologists. Previously a consultant at McKinsey and PM at Flexport\n\n### Asks\n\n[Eggnog](https://www.eggnog.ai/) is live! Make a video, post it on Twitter, and tag @jitsvm and @SamuelMGPlank", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Kg4-eggnog-youtube-for-ai-generated-content", "votes": 137, "created_at": "2024-03-19T14:35:26.569Z" } ] }, { "id": 29372, "name": "Sagaland", "slug": "sagaland", "former_names": [ "Sevn.ai", "SevnAI", "Sevn", "sevn", "AdRizz.com", "PySpur.com", "PySpur", "PySpur.dev", "Rehearsal.so", "Ramble.gg", "Sagaland", "SevnAI" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/7bcc2515e31439799c6c2e2a9ca3667ca7af9de8.png", "website": "https://sagaland.ai/", "all_locations": "New York City, NY, USA; Remote", "long_description": "", "one_liner": "AI entertainment platform", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1703955205, "tags": [ "Consumer", "Entertainment", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2024", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada", "Remote", "Fully Remote" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/sagaland", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2024/sagaland.json", "year_founded": 2024, "city": "New York City", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/pyspur/", "x_url": "", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": "https://github.com/PySpur-com/PySpur", "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/7bcc2515e31439799c6c2e2a9ca3667ca7af9de8.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Diana Hu", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/diana-hu" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 1516981, "full_name": "Srijan Patel", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Building Sagaland", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/srijanpatel", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/srijanyaham", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/85b353cf6cb3b0d1582b5f0167a6dbce8f2b5e73.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [] }, { "id": 29403, "name": "HeartByte", "slug": "heartbyte", "former_names": [ "WonderfulWorld", "HeartByte", "Storio" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/603343e9fbe2c77651ae60c3646960caf9463a12.png", "website": "https://www.storioai.com", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Storio is a content platform where creators can create original fiction or derivative works based on other fictional worlds. Creators write fictions 10 times faster on Storio. It's a place for community to fully indulge in the fictional world that they wish they were in.", "one_liner": "GenAI Interactive story. Creator write fictions 10x faster.", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer -> Content", "launched_at": 1710193888, "tags": [ "Generative AI", "Consumer", "Entertainment", "Social Media" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2024", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer", "Content" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/heartbyte", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2024/heartbyte.json", "year_founded": 2023, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/heartbyteworld", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/603343e9fbe2c77651ae60c3646960caf9463a12.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Diana Hu", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/diana-hu" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 1548764, "full_name": "Rachel Wang", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Rachel Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Storio, which she started in 2023. Before founding HeartByte, Rachel was the Chief Data Officer at Wish, a cross border e-commerce marketplace. Rachel graduated from the Columbia University where she received a Master of Data Science and Peking University where she received a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering. Why does she work on HeartByte? She thinks the world can be a bit boring and needs more imagination. ", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelshuyanwang", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/2f8b23a2fbcd76fe5a8397444132192f47105940.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 79279, "title": "HeartByte 📚🪄 A global community creating the future of fictional universes", "tagline": "HeartByte uses GenAI to make fiction writing easy and fun", "body": "**TL;DR: **[**HeartByte**](https://heartbyte.ai/)** is a community where people can write novels effortlessly using AI-assisted tools and share them.**\n\nHey YC friends, we are Rachel and Xinyue building [HeartByte](https://heartbyte.ai)!\n\n\n\n👥 **The team**\n\n🦸‍♀️[Rachel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelshuyanwang): CEO. 8 years working with data and building product. ex-Chief Data Officer at Wish. ex-Columbia University. Blog writer with 40K followers.\n\n🥷[Xinyue](https://www.linkedin.com/in/xinyue-liang-2b5a60295/): CTO. Tech lead at Instagram and Google. ex-Carnegie Mellon University. A fanfiction OG for the past 15 years.\n\n😮‍💨 **The Problem**\n\nEveryone wants to be a writer, but no one wants to ✍️ write a book 📚. Writing a book is hard— **writers on average take 8-12 months to complete a 100,000-word novel. That’s too slow!** For the rest of us non-writers, we have fleeting passions wanting to turn those interesting fantasies 🧚‍♂️ in our minds into stories. Most of the time, these fantasies remain in our brains 🧠, never shared with others. Because of that, there are fewer good stories in the world, which is why Harry Potter or Game of Thrones seem so precious.\n\nBut it doesn’t have to be this way.\n\n🪄 **The Solution**\n\n**With HeartByte, we make it 10 times easier and faster to write fiction.** 🤩 We build an effortless flow that guides a creator through writing an entire novel 💅. We help users overcome writer’s block ✌️, and provide editing support and workflow management. We enable users to spend more time imagining 👁 and less time writing word by word.\n\nWe want using HeartByte to be like having your **personal writer's studio**, where you can easily exchange ideas, get inspired, and complete each other's sentences with AI. Instead of the old long grind 🥱, writing a novel becomes easy and fun 🤗.\n\n📚🔮 **The Magic**\n\nOur users are loving ❤️ the product. **We've seen users who previously published a chapter every five days now able to publish one chapter per day, with better writing!**\n\n📣 **Our Ask**\n\n* **Try our product** at [heartbyte.ai](http://heartbyte.ai). Share your feedback with us [rachel@heartbyte.ai!](mailto:rachel@heartbyte.ai)\n* **Share this post** if you think someone might be interested in effortless creative writing.", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Kch-heartbyte-a-global-community-creating-the-future-of-fictional-universes", "votes": 33, "created_at": "2024-03-11T22:13:22.500Z" } ] }, { "id": 29508, "name": "CrowdVolt", "slug": "crowdvolt", "former_names": [ "Mirage Match" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/49d2b2fe60b70ec0fe7e8a8f8b9fc420d26c4098.png", "website": "https://crowdvolt.com/", "all_locations": "New York City, NY, USA", "long_description": "CrowdVolt is rebuilding the infrastructure for live events, starting with an automated marketplace for raves and electronic dance music.", "one_liner": "The integration layer for live events infrastructure ", "team_size": 12, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1708402036, "tags": [ "Marketplace", "Entertainment", "Social Network", "Music", "Infrastructure" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2024", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/crowdvolt", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2024/crowdvolt.json", "year_founded": 2024, "city": "New York City", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/crowdvolt/", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/CrowdVolt", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/49d2b2fe60b70ec0fe7e8a8f8b9fc420d26c4098.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [ "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/925b83be77ddf7d77eda8bf61b56eff8a4b877d9.png" ], "primary_partner": { "name": "Jared Friedman", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/jared-friedman" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 1410116, "full_name": "Max Hammer", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Co-Founder and CEO of CrowdVolt (W24)", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/max-hammer-2360571b2", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/a9b1a595fa8a67948701694f466eb8cd8538ce44.jpg" }, { "user_id": 1153773, "full_name": "Josh Karol", "title": "Founder/CTO", "founder_bio": "I'm originally from Connecticut and am a Co-Founder and the CTO at CrowdVolt. I previously was a Software Engineer at Millennium. In my free time I like to go skiing and fishing.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/josh-karol-4b1a97143", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/1145713ea731701d221159a4a8320d99498f901f.jpg" }, { "user_id": 1167277, "full_name": "Aria Mohseni", "title": "Founder/COO", "founder_bio": "Co-Founder at CrowdVolt", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/ariamohseni", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/4a57541bb3ff2e253f7efd142f7a24b7e7be8c02.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [ { "title": "YC-backed CrowdVolt shakes up the secondary ticket market with its bid-ask model | TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/16/yc-backed-secondary-ticketing-startup-crowdvolt/", "date": "Jul 16, 2024" } ], "launches": [ { "id": 78886, "title": "⚡️ CrowdVolt - StockX for live event tickets", "tagline": "Exchange tickets to see your favorite DJs, electronic music shows and festivals!", "body": "**Tl;dr** [CrowdVolt](https://crowdvolt.com/) ⚡️ lets fans resell tickets to events, starting with raves & EDM concerts. We are a social, bid/ask style marketplace with counterparty security and favorable financing terms.\n\n❌ **The problem**\n\nThe secondary ticketing marketplace is fundamentally broken. Fees have skyrocketed, while the user experience has deteriorated. As giants such as Ticketmaster and SeatGeek have moved towards lucrative primary sales in partnership with large venues, they have disenfranchised a whole class of live event attendees.\n\nMany have naturally aggregated themselves on grey markets on legacy social media platforms (think Facebook marketplace and Reddit) to avoid institutional barriers and attempt to find better pricing/execution. These social platforms are not designed to house this type of exchange.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=78886&key=user_uploads/1410116/aaead000-ef6c-4e10-ac85-0cc03a7a3b9c)\n\n🔥  **Our solution – the StockX of tickets** (StockX uses a bid/ask style model for collectible sneakers and streetwear)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=78886&key=user_uploads/1410116/8ae6c463-3456-4f1c-83c5-4c63c4626f4d)\n\n* A two-sided marketplace for tickets: buyers can opt to “buy now” or bid, while sellers can opt to “sell now” or ask for a higher price, all with a publicly viewable transaction book\n* Counterparty security: CrowdVolt intermediates transactions with secure payment processing, avoiding fraudulent activity and scams; third-party issued tickets are automatically transferred between counterparties\n* Social: gone are the days of buying or selling from an anonymous blue dot on Ticketmaster; concerts are communal events meant to be experienced with others, so we’ve made buying and selling a social experience with social media integration and messaging\n* Financing: sellers do not wait until event occurrence to receive payouts, but rather receive payment within days, alleviating the cash flow burden\n\nCheck out our promo [here](https://youtu.be/WszI6Jfi650)!\n\n**🌃 Background**\n\n[Josh](https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-karol-4b1a97143/) and [Max](https://linkedin.com/in/max-hammer-2360571b2) grew up down the street from each other, while [Aria](https://linkedin.com/in/ariamohseni) and Josh met in college. We have diverse professional backgrounds across tech, finance, and consulting, but a common love for EDM (Aria is also a DJ, having played at iconic New York venues including the Williamsburg Hotel and Virgo Night Club in front of crowds numbering 2k+). We are avid attendees of this genre of events (80+ in 2023), and know the secondary marketplace experience through the existing mediums is poor, so have opted to rebuild it ourselves.\n\n_A few years ago…_\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=78886&key=user_uploads/1410116/adf1e869-6351-48ec-b912-d88b7b01efa3)\n\n_Now!_\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=78886&key=user_uploads/1410116/a49dd802-e56f-44fa-8d9c-64d0af809737)\n\n**Our ask 🙏**\n\nWe’ve started in our hometown, New York, with our favorite genre of music, and will look to expand to other geographies and primary point of sale in the future.\n\n* If you know anyone working in the live events space – ranging from artists to event managers to promoters – let us know! We’d love to connect.\n* If you’re a fan of dance music, festivals, or raves (or have friends who are!) – hit us up at [founders@crowdvolt.com](mailto:founders@crowdvolt.com)!\n* Sign up now at [https://www.crowdvolt.com](https://www.crowdvolt.com/) if you’re in New York, or join the waitlist for your city at !", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/KWM-crowdvolt-stockx-for-live-event-tickets", "votes": 93, "created_at": "2024-02-29T04:04:02.829Z" } ] }, { "id": 29716, "name": "CreativeMode", "slug": "creativemode", "former_names": [ "Condor Labs", "Argon", "Parity" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/2bdf22dccaa26c230a94ceee5b1728f0d487b3cd.png", "website": "https://creativemode.net", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "In the past 9 months, more Minecraft mods were made with CreativeMode than in the game's previous 17 years combined. CreativeMode is making every player a creator.\r\n\r\nGames like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox started a revolution by allowing players to shape the games they love. CreativeMode is taking it to the next level by giving every player the power of a game studio at their fingertips. Players on CreativeMode create new experiences, play them with friends, and share their creations with the community. It’s a new way to play and create where imagination is the only limit.\r\n\r\nCreativeMode’s founding team met as early engineers at Crusoe (soon to IPO) and studied CS+AI at Stanford, MIT, and CMU. The team is backed by top investors including YC and General Catalyst.", "one_liner": "Lovable for Minecraft mods", "team_size": 5, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer -> Gaming", "launched_at": 1723073466, "tags": [ "Consumer", "Entertainment", "Gaming", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": true, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Summer 2024", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer", "Gaming" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/creativemode", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2024/creativemode.json", "year_founded": 2024, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/creativemode1", "x_url": "https://x.com/usecreativemode", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/2bdf22dccaa26c230a94ceee5b1728f0d487b3cd.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Jared Friedman", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/jared-friedman" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 426535, "full_name": "Wilson Spearman", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Wilson is co-founder and CEO of CreativeMode. \n\nBefore CreativeMode, Wilson was a SWE working on building the AI cloud at Crusoe. Prior to that, he worked at Settle as a product engineer building new purchase order and AP tools for CPG brands. \n\nWilson studied CS at MIT with focus on systems. He's originally from upstate South Carolina.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilsonspearman/", "x_url": "https://x.com/wilson_spearman", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/50b55c51a05e7191c5a9ecb0e0d6459c549c318d.jpg" }, { "user_id": 894610, "full_name": "Coleman Smith", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Co-founder of CreativeMode.\n\nWorked as a software engineer at Crusoe, studied CS at Stanford, with an undergrad focus on Systems and a coterm masters in the AI track.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/colemansmith-/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/ec4a2b691ca39ca3dfc3262ddb4b1d2db87ddda0.jpg" }, { "user_id": 1979895, "full_name": "Jeffrey Tsaw", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Jeffrey is co-founder and CTO of CreativeMode.\n\nPreviously, Jeffrey worked as a Software Engineer at Crusoe, where he helped run the Bitcoin mining team alongside Coleman and Wilson. \n\nHe studied ECE at CMU where he received his BS and MS, and is originally from Hong Kong. \n", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-tsaw-561b35191/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/08f49f8fa9d9165b323b1503ad2b59006831f359.jpg" } ], "jobs": [ { "id": 95161, "title": "Founding Growth & Content", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/creativemode/jobs/fRFB52S-founding-growth-content", "location": "San Francisco, CA, US", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Marketing", "role_type": null, "salary_range": "$130K - $220K", "equity_range": "0.10% - 0.50%", "experience": "1+ years", "visa": "US citizen/visa only", "skills": [] } ], "news": [], "launches": [] }, { "id": 29990, "name": "DreamRP", "slug": "dreamrp", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/3b03e14b8a7d809f05b6579c758dc4fbbe6ff821.png", "website": "https://www.dreamrp.com/", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "AI entertainment feels like slop because companies bet on technology instead of people.\r\n\r\nCompanies chase tech because it usually lets them win. But what fans love has never been about the tech.\r\n\r\nA fan doesn’t fill their apartment with posters because of the lens a movie was shot on. They do it because of the mind behind the camera.\r\n\r\nAI is a power-up. In the wrong hands, more and more of what you see becomes sludge. In the right ones, the good stuff wins.\r\n\r\nDreamRP builds for creatives, from indie artists to global stars, because they’ve always been the real reason fans love what they love.\r\n\r\nIf you get it, message me why.", "one_liner": "Tech and platforms for human creators and the entertainment industry", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1724999023, "tags": [ "Generative AI", "Consumer", "Entertainment", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Summer 2024", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/dreamrp", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2024/dreamrp.json", "year_founded": 2024, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/dreamrp", "x_url": "https://x.com/dreamrpofficial", "fb_url": "https://www.facebook.com/people/Dream-RP/61564171643804/", "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/3b03e14b8a7d809f05b6579c758dc4fbbe6ff821.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Jared Friedman", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/jared-friedman" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 596461, "full_name": "Phillip Huang", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Phillip is the co-founder and CEO of DreamRP.\n\nHe studied Computer Science at Harvard and worked as a Software Engineer and Data Scientist at Meta, where he increased revenue by 6% (~$1B per annum) with US Patent #10,713,094.\n\nPhillip built video games with 3k+ reviews and fan community forums when he worked for What Pumpkin, the company behind Homestuck, a widely popular webcomic with over 1 million unique daily readers.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/philliphuang", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/c918c28fe61e59a0b37c3dabaa5b441c859c641d.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 83756, "title": "DreamRP: Character.ai meets Patreon", "tagline": "DreamRP lets creators earn money by turning their characters into chatbots.", "body": "### What is DreamRP?\n\n[DreamRP](https://www.dreamrp.com/) lets creators earn money by turning their characters into chatbots. For example, George R.R. Martin could charge fans to chat with a Jon Snow bot.\n\n### TL;DR\n\nAI roleplaying is wildly popular, but no existing platform focuses on the most impactful component of the experience: the creators who make the characters. With a more ethical implementation of AI and the right creation and monetization features, DreamRP has unlocked AI roleplaying for the most talented and successful creators.\n\n### What’s up with AI roleplaying?\n\nAI-driven roleplaying chatbots are going through a weird phase right now—grassroots demand for the experience has nearly outpaced the platforms that provide it. Offerings from companies like [Character.ai](https://character.ai/) and even Meta’s new [AI Studio](https://ai.meta.com/ai-studio/) emphasize practical GPT-like assistants, but leaderboards are filled with fantasy heroes, movie villains, and anime waifus. On their coattails are many scrappier alternatives (even the small ones reach hundreds of thousands in ARR), as well as an enthusiastic open-source community [fine-tuning their own roleplaying models](https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1bv2p89/new_rp_model_recommendation_the_best_one_so_far_i/) for home-brew solutions like [SillyTavern](https://sillytavernai.com/). It’s no surprise that 12 of the top 20 applications using [OpenRouter](https://openrouter.ai/) this month and [6 of the top 20 Gen AI web products](https://a16z.com/100-gen-ai-apps-3/) are mainly used for AI roleplaying.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=83756&key=user_uploads/596461/49947cd3-0555-403b-ae54-271b3ec1109f)\n\n### What they’re all missing: a creator focus\n\nCompeting in such a crowded space is challenging. With open source now advancing the frontier with models like [Flux.1](https://blackforestlabs.ai/) and [Llama 3.1](https://llama.meta.com/), once-rare levels of performance and innovative features are becoming commonplace. Pushing the boundaries of uncensored content frequently [leads](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterAi_NSFW/comments/1d9fz5f/yodayo_removing_nsfw_content_and_now_its_garbage/) to an [early death](https://www.reddit.com/r/aisekai/comments/1afim30/aisekai_is_shutting_down/?rdt=55501). User acquisition ads that were previously effective are now being [priced out](https://web.swipeinsight.app/posts/temu-s-ad-surge-sparks-dtc-turmoil-unraveling-meta-s-ad-cost-chaos-4612).\n\nAll of these platforms neglect a crucial component of the roleplaying experience: the creators who make the characters. Even with the best models and features, refining the character prompt, image, and scenario to be engaging takes effort and imagination, and users frequently need to dig through junk to find a character that performs well. When the tech is commoditized, the platform with the best creators has the best content and, therefore, the best product.\n\n### Untapped potential\n\nWhere are the best creators? Despite fans' demand for their content, the artists, authors, and other creators who traditionally make works of fiction are nowhere to be seen on these platforms. To them, current platforms are actually taboo: so marred by ethical concerns over industry usage of AI-generated art and the scraping of training data that even being associated with AI would [ostracize them from the creative community](https://x.com/Yuumei_Art/status/1813861897198096886). \n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=83756&key=user_uploads/596461/2e20d054-1d26-4e3c-bc1f-6c56fdbd56b0)\n\nWhat users are left with are inconsistent fan-made renditions of popular characters and a lack of community around the content itself. Stigma over using roleplaying chatbots has limited the sharing and discussion of these experiences in the vibrant fandoms surrounding these creators and their works.\n\n### Enter DreamRP\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=83756&key=user_uploads/596461/4f926d9a-c190-4c43-9de7-48e18a52610b)\n\nWe are [Phillip](https://linkedin.com/in/philliphuang) and [Nina](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-hu-91a53577/), and we built [DreamRP](https://www.dreamrp.com/) to empower creators in the AI roleplaying landscape. With an implementation of AI that addresses the ethical concerns of the creative community, specialized creation tools, and monetization features that reward creators for their work, DreamRP removes the barrier separating creators and their fans. With our platform, creators who previously would’ve been canceled for even mentioning the syllables “A” and “I” in adjacent sentences have onboarded onto our platform, created characters, and publicly promoted them to their fans on social media. Join us as we transform this exciting new medium of entertainment with the most talented creators and their immensely passionate fanbases.\n\n# **If you’re a creator—or know someone who is—come check us out at **[**dreamrp.com**](https://www.dreamrp.com/)** or get in touch at **[**founders@dreamrp.com**](mailto:phillip@dreamrp.com)**.**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=83756&key=user_uploads/596461/9bc99028-74fc-4563-b4ec-dc238f1a8e8c)\n\n", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Lmu-dreamrp-character-ai-meets-patreon", "votes": 24, "created_at": "2024-09-04T17:55:01.817Z" } ] }, { "id": 30246, "name": "Swerve", "slug": "swerve", "former_names": [ "Sapien", "Goldfinch" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/4cd4e09aaeb1f46dcf793d0eae3575ece7ac1c84.png", "website": "https://www.getswerve.com/", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Play stories in your own words. Swerve is AI fiction that unfolds around what you say and do.", "one_liner": "AI Chat & Stories", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1753392491, "tags": [ "Consumer", "Entertainment", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Winter 2025", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/swerve", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/winter-2025/swerve.json", "year_founded": 2025, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/getswerve", "x_url": "", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/4cd4e09aaeb1f46dcf793d0eae3575ece7ac1c84.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Brad Flora", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/brad-flora" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 2247154, "full_name": "Soroush Saryazdi", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Soroush is co-founder of Swerve (YC W25). Previously, he led AI at Matic, building perception systems for autonomous home robots that raised $30M from the founders of Stripe, Twitter, and Nest. He co-authored Gradslam (1.4K GitHub stars) and has published at RSS. Soroush holds an M.S. in CS from Concordia University.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/soroush-saryazdi-792365175", "x_url": "https://twitter.com/S_Saryazdi", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/c2f1fbfd51f754495ce3b1f2dcfec99770e60b85.jpg" }, { "user_id": 611689, "full_name": "Jason Zhou", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Jason is co-founder of Swerve (YC W25). Previously, he led autonomy and simulation at Matic, building autonomous home robots. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in EECS from UC Berkeley, where he conducted robotics and AI research and was named a Siebel Scholar.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonxzhou/", "x_url": "https://x.com/jsn_zh/", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/9793ba8e6b989044eb11ba0e47c55d5341997c07.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 92574, "title": "Swerve - Snap AI Videos with Friends", "tagline": "Capture a quick video and choose what you want to see next. Swerve makes it happen!", "body": "Hey! We're Jason and Soroush, co-founders of Swerve. Swerve lets you snap AI videos with friends:\\\nhttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/qJuJOQm9SWM\n\n📷 Capture a quick video and choose what you want to see next. Swerve makes it happen! You can also follow friends and discover trending videos from our community. Our users have gotten super creative with Swerve, and we’d love to see what you’ll create.\n\n👇 Check out our iOS app here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swerve/id6746973177\n\n🎉 If you like the app, we’d love it if you:\n\n* invite your friends \n* share your favorite clips on X / Instagram / TikTok\n* drop us a rating on the App Store\n\nQuestions, ideas, or feedback?\\\nReach out to us anytime: [founders@getswerve.com](mailto:founders@getswerve.com)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=92574&key=user_uploads/611689/9d3f8e7d-cb44-4354-8b96-255074427b3c)\n\n", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/O58-swerve-snap-ai-videos-with-friends", "votes": 16, "created_at": "2025-07-30T16:08:46.771Z" } ] }, { "id": 30812, "name": "Mixy", "slug": "mixy", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0b427a11c01acc7be86bdfb9bf97f62e7e9151a7.png", "website": "https://usemixy.com", "all_locations": "", "long_description": "Live out your DJ dreams with Mixy, the mind-blowing music app that lets you mash-up any song in seconds.\r\n\r\n⁕ Add your songs\r\n⁕ Instantly blend vocals and beats\r\n⁕ Play and share your mashup anywhere\r\n\r\nThere’s no limit to your imagination!\r\n\r\n⁕ Launched to #1 in Music on June 19th\r\n⁕ 1.5M users in 3 months\r\n⁕ 15M mashups made and growing", "one_liner": "Make mashups without knowing how to DJ", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer", "launched_at": 1758155628, "tags": [ "Consumer", "Entertainment", "Social", "Music", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Fall 2025", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer" ], "regions": [ "Remote", "Partly Remote" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": [ { "question": "How did your company get started? (i.e., How did the founders meet? How did you come up with the idea? How did you decide to be a founder?)", "answer": "Jonah and Joe first met as teen tech YouTubers in 2008 and began building iPhone apps together in 2009. At the end of 2024, we started Mixy as a fun way for fans to make mashups of their favorite songs.\r\n\r\nWe publicly iterated prototypes on TikTok, which led to over 350k pre-orders before launch. Mixy debuted on June 19th, hitting #1 in Music and reaching #3 overall in the App Store. Since then, more than 1.5M users have created and shared over 15M mashups." }, { "question": "What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?", "answer": "Derivative musical works are being created at an exponential rate, but artists aren’t getting credited, and billions of dollars are being left on the table.\r\n\r\nEvery year, millions of songs are uploaded to music platforms with uncredited samples. Generative AI has accelerated this problem: music is being trained on artists’ work and re-uploaded without attribution, ownership, or financial stake for the creators who made it possible.\r\n\r\nMixy flips this model. We celebrate artists by letting fans directly manipulate and share versions of their songs. Every time a fan shares their creation, the artist is automatically credited and their work is distributed more widely. Because Mixy owns the creation layer, attribution is native. We auto-credit every source track and pair it with a music-first social network built for playback and discovery.\r\n\r\nThe future isn’t millions of disconnected AI songs or samples, it’s millions of recognizable songs evolving through thousands of shared versions.\r\n\r\nWe’re tackling this because we love music, see a timely problem, and bring a world-class background in creative tools and consumer social." }, { "question": "What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?", "answer": "If we truly succeed, Mixy will be the platform that redefines music in the age of derivative works. What TikTok is to YouTube, Mixy is to music.\r\n\r\nWe’ll be the first to establish proper licensing and attribution standards for a future where songs constantly evolve into new versions. Every derivative creation, whether a mashup, remix, AI-generated variation, or fan edit, will flow back to the original artist with automatic credit and revenue.\r\n\r\nMusic expression and consumption will no longer be limited to static recordings. Instead, the world will experience songs as living, evolving works. Fans will become co-creators, artists will be celebrated more widely than ever, and the industry will unlock billions in new value.\r\n\r\nIn this future, music is not just listened to. It’s played with, passed around, and endlessly reinterpreted, with artists always at the center." } ], "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/mixy", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/fall-2025/mixy.json", "year_founded": 2025, "city": null, "country": null, "linkedin_url": "", "x_url": "", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0b427a11c01acc7be86bdfb9bf97f62e7e9151a7.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Aaron Epstein", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/aaron-epstein" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 42474, "full_name": "Joe Kennedy", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Making Mixy", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/joekndy", "x_url": "https://www.twitter.com/joekndy", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/9f7fc8528354984cf5755d40bdabce2a00649320.jpg" }, { "user_id": 2876566, "full_name": "Jonah Siegle", "title": "Founder/CTO", "founder_bio": "Building Mixy, the new way to make music.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/jonahsiegle", "x_url": "https://x.com/jonahsiegle", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/3254f9c6ea8002c211112defb0f7e93841b6e3d3.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [ { "title": "How to get viral song mashup music app Mixy all over Twitter", "url": "https://thetab.com/2025/05/12/ok-so-heres-how-to-get-the-viral-music-mashup-app-thats-all-over-twitter-right-now", "date": "May 12, 2025" }, { "title": "\nMixy (App) | Know Your Meme\n", "url": "https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/mixy-app", "date": "May 12, 2025" } ], "launches": [ { "id": 95158, "title": "Mixy - Make Mashups", "tagline": "Remix your music without knowing how to DJ", "body": "We’re [Joe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joekndy/) and [Jonah](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonahsiegle/), cofounders of [Mixy](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mixy-make-mashups/id6739403586).\n\nMixy lets anyone remix music without knowing how to DJ. We’ve optimized our own local models to produce real time, high quality mashups at no cost.\n\n⁕ Add your songs\n\n⁕ Instantly blend vocals and beats\n\n⁕ Play and share your mashup anywhere\n\n**Since Launch**\n\n⁕ $200k in donations, $20k MRR since launching our subscription last month\n\n⁕ #1 in Music and #3 Top Free overall on the App Store\n\n⁕ 1.5M users in 3 months\n\n⁕ 18M mashups made and growing\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=95158&key=user_uploads/42474/cd3aa913-8172-4a48-a472-4d21f4e03eb8)\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_6p6g2CdE\n\n**What’s Next?**\n\n⁕ Instantly enable people to create full length mashups and remixes through our own music mixing model\n\n⁕ Create the best listening experience where all of your favorite songs combine and blend into one another in unimaginable ways\n\n⁕ Instantly pay out artists and creators per second on plays\n\n⁕ The music industry will unlock billions in value and Mixy will change how we experience music forever\n\n**Our Story**\n\nJoe and Jonah met as tech YouTubers in 2008, and began building apps together in 2009. They’ve worked at Apple, Instagram, and Skillshare. Recently Jonah led mobile at Tithly (Stripe’s 8th largest customers), and Joe founded a consumer social startup acquired by CoinList ($100M Series A), where he led product.\n\nAt the end of 2024, we started Mixy was started as a fun way for fans to make mashups of their favorite songs. Prototypes were shared on TikTok, which led to over 350k pre-orders before launch. Mixy debuted on June 19th, hitting #1 in Music and reaching #3 overall in the App Store. Since then, more than 1.5M users have created and shared over 18M mashups.\n\n---\n\n**Problem & Vision**\n\nWe believe Remixing is the new Shuffle.\n\nFans are searching for infinite ways to experience their favorite artists, and the tools to remix and create derivatives are far too complicated.\n\nFor artists, derivative musical works are being created at an exponential rate, but artists aren’t getting credited, and billions of dollars are being left on the table.\n\nMixy flips this model. We celebrate artists by letting fans directly manipulate and share versions of their songs. Every time a fan shares their creation, the artist is automatically credited and their work is distributed more widely. Because Mixy owns the creation layer, attribution is native. We auto-credit every source track and pair it with a music-first social network built for playback and discovery.\n\nThe future isn’t millions of irrelevant AI songs, it’s millions of recognizable songs evolving through thousands of shared versions.\n\nIf we truly succeed, Mixy will be the platform that redefines music in the age of derivative works. What TikTok is to YouTube, Mixy is to Spotify.\n\nWe’re tackling this because we love music, see a timely problem, and bring a world-class background in creative tools and consumer social.", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Oko-mixy-make-mashups", "votes": 150, "created_at": "2025-11-04T17:11:11.326Z" } ] }, { "id": 30870, "name": "Koyal", "slug": "koyal", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0d6be5eec5520358437374d48ae33d4a26eadd56.png", "website": "https://koyal.ai", "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA", "long_description": "Koyal is an Agentic AI Filmmaking Platform that allows you to seamlessly convert script or audio into personalized, visually compelling stories. We’re a team from Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Meta, with experience in AI video generation.\r\n\r\nhttps://koyal.ai builds directly upon our published research at the AI conference NeurIPS in December. We’ve been covered in the international press for our patented secure personalization protocol CHARCHA: the genAI captcha.\r\n\r\nAnnouncement: https://x.com/meh_agarwal/status/1965866965425348687\r\nDemo: https://x.com/meh_agarwal/status/1965137062119752099\r\n\r\n\r\nWe currently have paid pilots with the biggest global music labels, podcasts and production houses, and just launched our public beta at beta.koyal.ai\r\n\r\nWe recently concluded a pilot with Universal Music and T-Series (world’s largest music label) alongside Bollywood production houses like Maddock Entertainment, and Collective Artists Network! As part of that, we launched 5 music videos for Grammy and Oscar winning artists like A R Rahman, Ricky Kej and Shankar Mahadevan all crossing 1.5 million views!\r\n\r\nWe've recently built SOTA capabilities in (i) multilingual script to audio to video, (ii) Agentic lip-sync with dynamic movement & (iii) Multi-character consistency.", "one_liner": "Agentic AI Filmmaking Platform", "team_size": 5, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer -> Content", "launched_at": 1759263547, "tags": [ "Generative AI", "Entertainment", "Video", "Media", "Creator Economy" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Fall 2025", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer", "Content" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada", "Remote", "Partly Remote" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/koyal", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/fall-2025/koyal.json", "year_founded": 2025, "city": "San Francisco", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/koyal-ai/", "x_url": "https://x.com/KoyalAI", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0d6be5eec5520358437374d48ae33d4a26eadd56.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Nicolas Dessaigne", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/nicolas-dessaigne" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 1057149, "full_name": "Mehul Agarwal", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "CEO, Koyal, Agentic AI Filmmaking\nCMU CS & ML / part-time Standup comedian \n", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehul-agarwal-a274a0287/", "x_url": "https://x.com/meh_agarwal", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/9bb654b37951dd53ebadfe160fd6ed4af5cc280e.jpg" }, { "user_id": 2383496, "full_name": "Gauri Agarwal", "title": "Founder/CTO", "founder_bio": "CTO, Koyal AI, Audio to Video GenAI \nMIT Media Lab '25 | Meta Instagram Video | CMU SCS '20", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauri-agarwal", "x_url": "https://x.com/gauriagarwal99", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/63da06468651d4cd0b94dfecca3d207565f4682d.jpg" } ], "jobs": [ { "id": 102118, "title": "Founding Engineer @Koyal", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/koyal/jobs/N7tedzJ-founding-engineer-koyal", "location": "San Francisco, CA, US", "type": "Full-time", "role": "Engineering", "role_type": "Machine learning", "salary_range": "$150K - $250K", "equity_range": "1.00% - 3.00%", "experience": "Any (new grads ok)", "visa": "Will sponsor", "skills": [] } ], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 94569, "title": "Koyal: The Agentic AI Filmmaking Platform", "tagline": "Turn your script or audio to short films, music videos & launches", "body": "https://youtu.be/j5t8kEuZpSc?si=q_Jcbcnanrjl4h-N\n\nTL;DR\n\nCreate cinema that feels real. Koyal captures emotional tone from your audio, turning emotion into cinematic scenes with consistent characters and settings. You can storyboard, direct, and edit every scene to perfection.\n\n# **The Problem**\n\nFilmmakers, musicians, and creators spend **weeks to months scripting, shooting, and editing** or pay **$100,000+** to agencies to get something that feels right.\\\n\\\nEven with new AI tools, you’re still wrestling with prompting, uncanny performances, and inconsistent characters.\n\n# **The Solution**\n\nKoyal lets you speak your story once, and watch it come to life.\\\nWe capture the **emotional tone** in your voice or script and translate it into expressive, cinematic performances with consistent characters, settings and storylines.\n\nYou can **storyboard, reshoot, and refine** each scene naturally, like directing your own crew: no complex prompts, no model wrangling, no editors needed.\\\n\\\nJust your voice, your script, and your vision.\n\n# **How Koyal Works**\n\n[Demo Video](https://youtu.be/6Slhq8fbQ1c?si=9OaAU2xVKzhEbre8)\n\n* **Upload your script or record your voiceover**: Koyal understands the emotion, pacing, and intent behind every line.\n* **Design your characters**: Create an AI character or safely place yourself in the film using **CHARCHA: our Character Captcha protocol** that ensures your likeness is used **with verified consent.**\n\n ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=94569&key=user_uploads/2383496/0f411243-c4be-4b15-af57-b5ae3f957e2d)\n\n* **Craft your world:** Create or find real-life locations to shoot your movie in, add assets and choose art styles (animated, realistic, etc.)\n* **Auto-generate cinematic scenes**: complete with consistent characters, environments, and shot logic.\n* **Storyboard and edit visually**: adjust lighting, camera angle, or emotion directly with simple directions like “make it more hopeful” or “change the setting to night.”\n* **Export your finished film**: ready to share across YouTube, socials, or investor decks.\n\n# **In Action**\n\nWe’ve battle-tested Koyal across **music, media, and startups**.\n\n* Worked with **Universal Music**, **T-Series**, and major Bollywood studios.\n* Created videos for **Grammy and Oscar-winning artists** like [A.R. Rahman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeaAHxFl-6A), [Ricky Kej](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT7NTK_Y_TY), and [Shankar Mahadevan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkpEaud9-o), each crossing **1.5M+ views**.\n* Partnered with **22 YC companies** to create their [launch videos](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/y-combinator_brickanta-isthe-construction-estimator-and-activity-7378775629376364544-A2vW?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABZ8s4EB2S4yNxvn-aoVAyfMlfkG_me_3f8) in days, not weeks.\n\n**Who We Are**\n\nWe’re **Mehul and Gauri Agarwal**, a brother-sister team obsessed with reimagining how stories are told. \\\n\\\nWe are a team from MIT, CMU and Meta with experience building in AI video. Koyal evolved directly from our [research published at Neurips 2024](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02610).\n\n# **The Future of Filmmaking**\n\nKoyal is inspired by how **Pixar builds stories** : audio first, visuals second.\\\nWe aim to replace the camera with intelligent AI systems that understand how to **translate human intent into cinematic storytelling**.\n\nYou no longer need cameras, expensive sets and set pieces, or prompts: just your voice and imagination.\n\nTry it now at[ ](https://koyal.ai)[koyal.ai](https://koyal.ai/)\n\nWe can’t wait to see what _you_ create.\\\nMehul & Gauri \n\n\\- kookoo\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=94569&key=user_uploads/2383496/5dba594a-7e70-48a9-b4de-f9c967f5701c)\n\n", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/ObJ-koyal-the-agentic-ai-filmmaking-platform", "votes": 125, "created_at": "2025-10-10T19:53:21.591Z" } ] }, { "id": 30958, "name": "Absurd", "slug": "absurd", "former_names": [ "Dune" ], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0753ba314978809fa3b7fa403a9b3a5c6982748c.png", "website": "https://absurd.com/", "all_locations": "Los Angeles, CA, USA", "long_description": "Absurd is an online whiteboard for filmmakers working with AI.\r\n\r\nWe use it for our own work: our Kalshi spot \"Election Day\" did 1M+ views, and our videos average 400K+ organic views.\r\n\r\nTry it at absurd.com", "one_liner": "The production canvas for AI film teams", "team_size": 10, "industry": "B2B", "subindustry": "B2B -> Marketing", "launched_at": 1760446134, "tags": [ "Generative AI", "Entertainment", "Video", "Media", "Marketing" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Fall 2025", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "B2B", "Marketing" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/absurd", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/fall-2025/absurd.json", "year_founded": 2025, "city": "Los Angeles", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/company/absurd", "x_url": "https://x.com/withabsurd", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0753ba314978809fa3b7fa403a9b3a5c6982748c.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Aaron Epstein", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/aaron-epstein" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 795572, "full_name": "Philip Ho", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Absurd", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/philiptho/", "x_url": "https://x.com/dopadealer", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/75d619d1fcefd9441def7c1d44d330f875dbeb22.jpg" }, { "user_id": 2980105, "full_name": "Damian Chng", "title": "Founder", "founder_bio": "Absurd | prev. Meta", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/damian-chng", "x_url": "https://x.com/damian_chng", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/64f7e305ef64bf77899f5a09421834b1665825eb.jpg" }, { "user_id": 2326296, "full_name": "Daniel Kathein", "title": "Founder/CTO", "founder_bio": "Absurd. Previously worked on agents at NVIDIA and studied CS at CMU", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kathein/", "x_url": "https://x.com/danielkathein", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/df62a922e02512d094e84cdaae4bdef242b4e601.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [ { "title": "NFMLA Expands NewNarratives Grants and Adds Absurd Fellowship", "url": "https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/nfmla-new-narratives-grants-absurd-ai-tools-1236651356/", "date": "Jul 21, 2026" } ], "launches": [ { "id": 94646, "title": "Absurd — The production canvas for AI video", "tagline": "Our launch video got 600K+ views on X ", "body": "Since this launch, Absurd has become the production canvas for AI film teams. More at [absurd.com](https://absurd.com).\n\nㅤ\n\nHey everyone — we'll make your launch video!\n\nWe’re Philip, Damian, and Daniel, co-founders of Absurd.\n\n### **TL;DR**\n\nAbsurd turns your ideas into viral AI ads. \\\n\\\nHere’s an ad we made that blew up on X ([690K views](https://l.gourl.es/l/68f21298ba10b07930efb63b9484bfe66f06080e?notrack=1&u=12901289)). Another one ([470K views](https://l.gourl.es/l/7a5ee89d2fb57e15d431d5a5fe413c280db4db76?notrack=1&u=12901289)). Here’s a more artsy one ([150K views](https://l.gourl.es/l/3ddd171616572212dc8e8000d70af58f6c5dcc49?notrack=1&u=12901289)). Our [portfolio](https://absurd.com).\n\nWe built a multi-agent system that plans, generates, and edits campaigns in real time.\n\n[philip@absurd.com](https://mailto:philip@absurd.com)\n\n### **The Problem**\n\nMaking entertaining AI videos is hard.\n\nScripting. Breaking an idea into scenes, pacing it, and keeping a story coherent takes real creative skill. Most people underestimate how much of a craft that is.\n\nGeneration. There are dozens of AI video models out there, each good at something different — one nails motion, another nails faces, another gets the lighting right. Knowing which one to use, and how to deal with their quirks takes serious trial and error.\n\nBecause of these factors, most AI-generated ads look generic and perform poorly.\n\n---\n\n### **Our Solution**\n\nAutonomous AI agents handle the creative process — while we stay in the loop, stepping in to steer the output when needed. This all happens inside an interactive platform where you can step in anytime to review progress, give feedback, or steer the direction alongside our team.\n\n\n\n### **Asks**\n\n1. Follow us on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/absurdco) and [X](https://x.com/dopadealer).\n2. If your team needs a studio-grade launch video with fast turnaround, we’d love to help.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=94646&key=user_uploads/795572/fab19a66-c5f0-4a03-ac02-44517f88e858)\n\n", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/OcY-absurd-the-production-canvas-for-ai-video", "votes": 147, "created_at": "2025-10-14T19:07:34.746Z" } ] }, { "id": 32221, "name": "Grocalo", "slug": "grocalo", "former_names": [], "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0fdeca47d8a703741544113635c43a9f56c783f7.png", "website": "https://grocalo.com/", "all_locations": "Los Angeles, CA, USA", "long_description": "Grocalo (S26) is an AI brain that runs content for creators. We understand their audiences, using video understanding and deep platform analytics to bottle up the taste behind each creator and personalize and distribute content to creator specific audiences.\r\n\r\nGrocalo generated 2B views and gained 4M followers for our creators in the last 2 months. Some of our clients include Jimmy O. Yang (Comedian, 11M followers), King Bach (72M followers), Leenda Dong (28M followers), Steven He (30M followers), Sheena Melwani (18M followers), and Jeannie Mai (TV host, 6M followers).\r\n\r\nContent should be personalized and data-driven. We’ve developed the most advanced AI brain replicating viral content for any given audience. \r\n", "one_liner": "AI brain for creators that runs their social content", "team_size": 2, "industry": "Consumer", "subindustry": "Consumer -> Content", "launched_at": 1787022465, "tags": [ "Entertainment", "Creator Economy", "AI" ], "tags_highlighted": [], "top_company": false, "isHiring": false, "nonprofit": false, "batch": "Summer 2026", "status": "Active", "industries": [ "Consumer", "Content" ], "regions": [ "United States of America", "America / Canada" ], "stage": "Early", "app_video_public": false, "demo_day_video_public": false, "app_answers": null, "question_answers": null, "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/grocalo", "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2026/grocalo.json", "year_founded": 2026, "city": "Los Angeles", "country": "US", "linkedin_url": "", "x_url": "", "fb_url": null, "cb_url": null, "github_url": null, "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0fdeca47d8a703741544113635c43a9f56c783f7.png", "app_video_url": null, "dday_video_url": null, "company_photos": [], "primary_partner": { "name": "Jon Xu", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/people/jon-xu" }, "founders": [ { "user_id": 3672474, "full_name": "David Hwang", "title": "Founder/CEO", "founder_bio": "Founder at Grocalo. Spent 5+ years in Investment Banking covering Enterprise Software and Internet & Digital Media and the last 4 years working with my partner to grow her content end-to-end, including generating 10B views and gaining 5M followers. BA in Economics from Johns Hopkins.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-hwang-b5301436/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/eb67ea357271a98b7f1d4c207e4d8f0206185662.jpg" }, { "user_id": 208755, "full_name": "Alex Yee", "title": "Founder/CTO", "founder_bio": "Founder, Grocalo. 2x YC founder, built & sold onederful (W18). Founding engineer at Lyra Health ($5B+). MS BioE, Stanford; BS, UCSD.", "is_active": true, "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexyee1/", "x_url": "", "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/94f0c17bfc19684d4c5c368f26fe48f9fcf46be2.jpg" } ], "jobs": [], "news": [], "launches": [ { "id": 111327, "title": "Grocalo: AI brain that runs content for creators", "tagline": "Running socials for top content creators and celebrities", "body": "![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=111327&key=user_uploads/208755/f101d76e-515f-4146-8bcd-78f1d81b4726)\n\n**What is Grocalo?** \n\nGrocalo (S26) is an AI brain that runs content for creators. We understand their audiences, using video understanding and deep platform analytics to bottle up the taste behind each creator and personalize and distribute content to creator specific audiences.\n\nWe’re developing the most advanced AI brain capable of replicating virality for any given audience.\n\n**We run content for top entertainers**\n\nGrocalo generated 2B views and gained 4M followers for our creators in the last 2 months. Our clients include Jimmy O. Yang (Comedian, 11M followers), King Bach (72M followers), Leenda Dong (28M followers), Steven He (30M followers), Sheena Melwani (18M followers), and Jeannie Mai (TV host, 6M followers).\n\n**Our team**\n\nWe have been best friends since middle-school. Alex is a 2nd time YC founder who built and sold Onederful (YC W18). David spent 5+ years in investment banking and for the last 4 years has been working with his partner to grow her content end-to-end, including generating 10B views and gaining 5M followers.\n\nEmail [team@grocalo.com](mailto:team@grocalo.com) to learn more.", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Sxb-grocalo-ai-brain-that-runs-content-for-creators", "votes": 9, "created_at": "2026-08-20T19:30:00.407Z" } ] } ]