Orthogonal YC Application

Winter 2026Active

Orthogonal went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2026 batch as a B2B 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: B2BInfrastructure
Team size: 2
Status: Active
Launched: 2026

Founders

Christian PickettFounder
Bera SogutFounder

What Orthogonal does

APIs weren't built for agents. Orthogonal fixes that. We enable agentic payments so any agent can instantly discover, access, and pay for hundreds of APIs. No subscriptions, no sales calls, just pay per use. API providers list once and get paid every time an agent calls their API.

Orthogonal's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Orthogonal

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Agentic Payments for APIs

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

We've built a payment system designed specifically for autonomous software agents to discover, access, and pay for APIs on-demand. Instead of requiring subscriptions or sales calls, any agent can instantly pay per use. This lets API providers list their APIs once and automatically get paid every time an agent calls them.

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

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

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where both of us live and work. It's the hub for API-driven companies and autonomous software development, so it's the best place for us to recruit, build product, and connect to customers.

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 Orthogonal YC application?

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