Forum
Product & Competitive Intelligence
Building the first regulated exchange where attention is traded as a standardized commodity.
Company Overview
The first regulated exchange for trading attention as a standardized commodity, enabling advertisers, brands, and creators to buy, sell, and hedge digital engagement as a quantifiable asset class.
Competitive Advantage & Moat
Product Roadmap & Public Announcements
Forum has publicly launched a beta platform at forum.market where users trade with simulated currency ($1,000 starting balance). They are building an Attention Index that aggregates engagement signals (views, likes, comments, shares) across search, streaming, and social platforms. Users can go long or short on the index for various topics. Forum is actively working with regulators to bring real-money trading to the US market, pursuing regulated exchange status (likely DCM or SEF).
Signals & Private Analysis
Sophisticated quantitative trading infrastructure informed by Owen Botkin's Balyasny background in long/short equities. Deep stealth-mode IP development around attention pricing models. The simulated-money beta suggests a deliberate regulatory-first approach, building user adoption and market data before real-money launch. Likely bootstrapping to regulatory milestone before institutional raise. The attention index methodology combining search and social metrics creates a proprietary data asset that could attract institutional interest from hedge funds and media companies.
Product Roadmap Priorities
ML-powered real-time quantification and dynamic pricing of human attention across digital platforms to create standardized tradable contracts.
It's like a stock ticker for eyeballs—AI watches how people actually engage with content and instantly puts a fair market price on that attention so it can be traded like a commodity.
It's like turning the vague concept of "going viral" into a precise stock price that updates every millisecond—finally giving Wall Street types something to argue about besides oil futures.
ML-driven detection of fake engagement, bot traffic, and market manipulation to ensure the integrity of attention contracts traded on the exchange.
AI acts as a bouncer at the door of the exchange, instantly spotting fake clicks, bot farms, and shady trading patterns before they can corrupt the market.
It's like having a lie detector test for every single click on the internet, except this one actually works and reports directly to the SEC.
ML models that forecast future attention supply and demand across content categories, demographics, and platforms to enable forward contract creation and fair settlement.
AI predicts how much attention different topics, creators, and platforms will get next week or next month—so brands can lock in prices today like farmers selling wheat futures before harvest.
It's like a weather forecast for internet fame—except instead of telling you to bring an umbrella, it tells brands whether to buy attention futures before Taylor Swift drops her next album.
Company Overview
Key Team Members
- Owen Botkin, Co-Founder & CEO
- Joseph Thomas, Co-Founder & CTO
Founder Force Multiplier
Owen Botkin's institutional trading background at Balyasny Asset Management (L/S equities, dropped out of Northwestern to build Forum) gives Forum crossover expertise in exchange microstructure and quantitative pricing, while Joseph Thomas's engineering experience at NASA and GEICO provides the systems infrastructure foundation, enabling them to architect an attention exchange with financial markets rigor rather than ad-tech sensibility.
Funding History
- 2026 | Owen Botkin and Joseph Thomas co-found Forum.
- 2026 | Accepted into Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch.
- 2026 | Beta launched at forum.market with simulated trading.
- 2026 | Working with regulators for real-money trading approval.
Competitors
- Ad Exchanges: Google Ad Exchange, The Trade Desk, Xandr.
- Attention Measurement: Adelaide, Lumen Research.
- Creator Economy: Rally, Patreon.
- Prediction Markets: Kalshi, Polymarket.
- Blockchain: Basic Attention Token/Brave.
