Epicenter YC Application

Summer 2025Active

Epicenter went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2025 batch as a Consumer company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2025
Industry: Consumer
Team size: 1
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Braden WongFounder

What Epicenter does

Epicenter is an ecosystem of open-source, local-first apps that share a memory. We store all your work - notes, transcripts, chat histories - in a single folder of plain text and SQLite. Every tool we build shares this memory: your text editor, personal assistant, etc.. It's open, tweakable, and yours. Grep it, open it in Obsidian, host it wherever you like. The choice is yours. Our vision is to build a personal workspace where you own your data, choose your own AI models, and replace siloed apps with open, interoperable alternatives. All while preserving authenticity and being free and open source. ❤️

Epicenter's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Epicenter, Summer 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Epicenter

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

ChatGPT's memory feature in an open format

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We are building Epicenter, an ecosystem of open-source, local-first apps that share a single memory. It stores all your work - notes, transcripts, chat histories - in a folder of plain text and SQLite. Every app shares this memory: your editor, your AI assistant, and more. The whole system is open and tweakable, letting users own and control their data and AI models instead of locking them into closed apps.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live in San Francisco, CA and the company would be based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco has the right ecosystem and network for YC and early-stage startups. It's where we already live and are building.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Epicenter YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Epicenter's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Epicenter would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.