Hey Vishal!
I’m building RouteForge / PurposePath solo: creator-rights infrastructure for the AI-native media economy.
The wedge is a free tool that helps illustrators protect their work from unauthorized AI scraping/training. The MVP works, but it’s still early and output quality needs improvement. I’m actively developing the tech and benchmarking against University of Chicago’s Glaze/Nightshade-style protections.
The larger vision is a licensing marketplace where creators, studios, and production teams can purchase exclusive AI model-training rights from illustrators, then use those licensed models in an AI-native production pipeline for story, anime, games, music, and interactive media.
I’ll be honest: I’m an outsider to the SF/YC scene, but I’ve been working hard, learning fast, and building with real conviction. I’d be deeply grateful for an opportunity to break through into a higher-signal room like Startup School.
The credits would also be extremely helpful because my biggest bottleneck right now is funding GPU access to improve the protection algorithms and make the service reliable for early users.
Would be very grateful for this opportunity 🙏