Company:

Company name Open Community

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less. OS AI community empowering makers & creators.

Company URL, if any https://imcook.in/open-community

Demo Video

Please provide a link to the product, if any. https://imcook.in/OpenCommunity

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do. Open Community is building a decentralized, AI-powered platform where developers, researchers, and creators collaborate on high-impact projects. We provide tools (like PaperAI for collaborative research and CoMedAI for medical diagnostics), mentorship, and infrastructure to rapidly prototype and deploy solutions. Think "GitHub meets Hackathons" for open-source AI innovation.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC? Uzbekistan. Silicon Valley, USA (with a hybrid remote team).

Explain your decision regarding location. While our team will remain remote-first to leverage Uzbekistan's cost efficiency and growing tech talent, we plan to establish a legal HQ in Silicon Valley post-YC. This gives us direct access to:

Critical networks: Partner with investors, YC alumni, and enterprise clients (e.g., hospitals using CoMedAI).

Top-tier universities: Engage Stanford/Berkeley students as early adopters for tools like PaperAI.

Global credibility: Strengthen partnerships with US-based AI/ML API providers and open-source leaders like GitHub.*

We'll maintain engineering ops in Uzbekistan to scale affordably while anchoring growth in the Valley's ecosystem.

Progress:

How far along are you? Built 20+ flagship projects (e.g., CoMedAI, PaperAI, PrepAlly) used by 100K+ people globally. Launched the world's first AI startup album, a viral storytelling tool to attract developers. 200+ active hackers in the community, shipping projects 3x faster than industry averages. 40+ tutorials on AI/ML tools like Langflow and OpenAI, viewed 500K+ times. Partnered with a $3M-funded AI/ML API startup for resource sharing. Hosted a 72-hour hackathon with 307 participants (73 projects deployed), judges from Google, Meta, and YC.

How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain. Founded June 2024 (8 months). Full-time since launch.

What tech stack are you using, or planning to use, to build this product? Rust (backend), TypeScript (frontend), AWS (cloud), and AI frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).

Are people using your product? 200+ active builders in the community; projects like CoMedAI used in 1,400+ hospitals for trials.

Do you have revenue? Open-source core, but monetizing via: Enterprise support contracts (e.g., CoMedAI subscriptions at $220/hospital/year). Premium collaboration tools for teams. Sponsored hackathons/APIs.

If you are applying with the same idea as a previous batch, did anything change? If you applied with a different idea, why did you pivot and what did you learn from the last idea? Not applicable.

If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator, "accelerator" or "pre-accelerator" program, please tell us about it. Not applicable.

—----------- Idea: Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? I led 70+ open-source AI projects and mentored 200K+ developers. Developers and researchers lack structured, collaborative environments to rapidly prototype AI solutions. Competitors (GitHub, Hugging Face) focus on code hosting or models - we prioritize collaboration-first tooling.

Who are your competitors? What do you understand about your business that they don't? GitHub (code hosting, no AI/community focus). Hugging Face (model hub, not collaborative). Devpost (hackathons only). Unique Insight: Open Community combines open-source agility with AI tooling to turn ideas into deployable projects faster.

How do or will you make money? How much could you make? Enterprise tier: Custom AI solutions and support ($50K+/year contracts). API partnerships: Revenue share with AI/ML API providers. Sponsored challenges: Brands pay to host hackathons. Potential Revenue: 1M + in 12 month post−scale ( e.g., CoMedAI's 1M+ in 12 months post−scale (e.g.,CoMedAI's 3.6M hospital pipeline).

Which category best applies to your company? Open Source

If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we've been waiting for. Often when we fund people it's to do something they list here and not in the main application. PaperAI, an innovative web application that transforms academic research experience, allowing users to collaborate on research papers without geographical barriers and efficiently. Researchers and scholars often face challenges like information overload and time-consuming literature review. Aside from making personal notes, Paper Ai enables users to annotate, discuss collaboratively and ask AI for quick summary on complex points across a piece of article or research paper. It fosters a shared learning ecosystem and encourages collaboration across disciplines and geographic boundaries. Our goal is to be the go-to platform for academic collaboration and research enhancement. We want to help all learners navigate research and complex articles in a way that is both enjoyable and fulfilling. CoMedAI (Collaborative Medicine with AI) makes brain MRI diagnosis more accurate, faster, and more affordable. By seamlessly integrating two models; CNN and NLP, we've confirmed that we can achieve even higher accuracy. Currently, our paper is under peer review, and our platform has been launched for testing purposes only. We have secured contracts with 1,400 hospitals and clinics. With a subscription cost of $220 USD for the first two years, integrating into these hospitals' workflows can generate $3,696,000 USD in revenue. —----- Equity:

Have you formed ANY legal entity yet? No. We have not formed the company yet. The planned equity ownership breakdown among the founders is as follows:

Ibrohim (Founder, CEO & CTO): 50% Community Pool: 20% (for future contributors).

Have you taken any investment yet? No.

Are you currently fundraising? Actively fundraising ($500K target).

—--- Curious: What convinced you to apply to Y Combinator? Did someone encourage you to apply? Have you been to any YC events? We apply to Y Combinator because of its reputation for empowering startups with the resources, mentorship, and network they need to succeed. We are convinced that the support at YC, from fundraising to scaling, aligns perfectly with our vision for growth. The shared experiences and success stories of YC companies like Airbnb and Coinbase have inspired us to take the leap and apply though we have not yet attended any YC events.

How did you hear about Y Combinator? Learned via YC alumni podcasts and blogs.

How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?

Wei and I met in July 2023 at a hackathon where we teamed up to work on Langflow and won third place. Inspired by our collaboration, we began developing PaperAI to revolutionize the research process. Our project ranked in the top 100 submissions of the IBM TechXchange Pre-Conference WatsonX Hackathon 2024 out of thousands of entries. We have known each other for several months, have not met in person, and have been working closely together since then.

Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder? Please explain.

I am the sole person who has written all the code and handled all technical development for our product. No non-founders have contributed to the technical work.

I've been in IT and AI stuff for 5+ years. I've 4+ years of research experience. I've 2+ years of hands-on experience in different fields including web/mobile app and software development, UI/UX design, and AI model training & tuning. I usually code in Python, Typescript/Javascript, Dart and have intermediate knowledge in Java, C/C++, R, Swift, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Rust. I use frameworks such as Flutter, React, Django, Flask, FastAPI, Next.js, Tauri, PyTorch, and TensorFlow. I prefer the following tools: Redux, Postman, Vercel, Jira, Git, Colab, Firebase, Docker, Tailwind CSS, and ChatGPT.

At the moment, I am a senior Computer Science (Software Engineering) student with extensive experience in AI, Neuroscience, and Quantum Computing. I'm the 1st AI/ML API Regional Ambassador in Central Asia. I'm the Founder & CEO at Open Community, where 160+ developers build AI-powered Open-source tools for the benefit of humanity. I authored 5+ research papers, participated in 60+ hackathons, and collaborated with 100+ industry leaders. I'm also an Open Source contributor at Anarchy Labs (477+ stars on Github), Langflow (31,2K+ stars on Github). Over the last 2 years he has mentored & facilitated 200K+ both students and developers.

(ps: Almost dropped out from my college)

Are you looking for a cofounder?

No, I have a Co-founder.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Speech script:

[I] Hello there! I am Ibrohim and

[W] I am Wei. We're the co-founders of Paper AI.

[I] We're building Paper AI, an all-in-one research platform that leverages AI to streamline literature reviews and empower collaboration for researchers and scholars.

[W] Researchers, scholars, and students—especially those in fields like law—often face information overload and time-consuming tasks.. Summarizing and collaborating on research can take hours, if not days. This inefficiency limits productivity and slows the pace of innovation. [I] At Paper AI, we use AI to help users collaborate and engage with challenging topics in real-time, ensuring an engaging learning experience. The platform also integrates AI to quickly search for complex concepts and provide voice notifications for any updates. [W] Our goal is to make academic research faster, more efficient, and more engaging by enabling seamless collaboration across disciplines and geographical boundaries. [I] With backgrounds in AI, computer science, and law, we understand these challenges firsthand and are uniquely positioned to solve them. [W] We believe Paper AI will be the go-to platform for the next generation of scholars, [I] and with YC's support, we can take it to the next level.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vision Statement: To revolutionize academic research by becoming the world's leading open-source platform that makes collaboration seamless, research enjoyable, and knowledge accessible to all, transcending geographical and disciplinary boundaries.

Mission Statement: Our mission is to empower researchers, scholars, and learners by providing an AI-powered collaborative platform that enhances research efficiency, simplifies complex academic content, and fosters a global ecosystem of shared learning and innovation.