Forum YC Application

Winter 2026Active

Forum went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2026 batch as a Fintech 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: Winter 2026
Industry: Fintech
Team size: 2
Status: Active
Launched: 2026

Founders

Owen BotkinFounder
Joseph ThomasFounder

What Forum does

Forum is building the first exchange to trade on cultural attention. We create indices from search, social, and streaming data to measure what the world cares about, enabling users to go long or short on changes in relevance. Attention is the primary driver of business success in the digital age, but it has never been directly tradable. Forum introduces attention as a new asset class for managing cultural and demand risk.

Forum's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Forum, Winter 2026 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Forum

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

The first exchange to trade on attention.

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

We're building an exchange where users can trade indices based on cultural attention derived from search, social media, and streaming data. Users can go long or short on shifts in what the world cares about, treating attention as a tradable asset class for managing demand and cultural risk.

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

We currently live and work in San Francisco, CA, and the company will remain based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we both live, and it's the ideal place for fintech startups with access to talent and investors.

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 Forum YC application?

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