Braden Wong

Braden Wong is the founder of Epicenter, a Y Combinator-backed technology startup in the S25 batch developing open-source, local-first tooling for data storage and applications. He previously studied Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University, where he authored a comprehensive 65-page academic senior thesis analyzing open-source governance and digital platforms. After teaching himself to program at the age of eighteen, Wong gained early technical experience working as a software engineer across three different Y Combinator-backed portfolio companies. As an active open-source contributor and tool builder, he maintains a high development output, averaging approximately 10,000 code commits per year on GitHub while creating tools to automate the writing process. His current professional focus centers on bridging technology, public policy, and the humanities by building decentralized software ecosystems that maximize user data ownership and platform transparency.