Visual stories like comics, but with voices and sound effects. Building a new medium to rival Youtube, TikTok, and Netflix.
The New Medium: Scroll Visual Stories with Audio Effects and Sounds.
Title: Merse: Visual stories like comics, but with immersive audio effects. | Y Combinator

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Merse: Visual stories like comics, but with immersive audio effects. | Y Combinator
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Merse
=====

Visual stories like comics, but with immersive audio effects.

[S24](

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[generative-ai]( Francisco](

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### Visual stories like comics, but with immersive audio effects.

Visual stories like comics, but with voices and sound effects. Building a new medium to rival Youtube, TikTok, and Netflix.

### Latest News

[The Journal by Fondo | Merse launches: Netflix for Audio-Visual Comics](

Jul 16, 2024



Merse

Founded:2024

Team Size:2

Location:San Francisco

Group Partner:[Aaron Epstein](

 []( "LinkedIn profile") []( "Twitter account") []( "Github profile")

### Active Founders

### Mark Rachapoom, Founder

Co-Founder & CEO of Merse. Previously developed a top-ranking iOS app, reaching #3 on the App Store. Selected as one of 40 participants in the Vercel AI Accelerator program. Design engineer with a strong sense of design. \[markrachapoom.com\]



Mark Rachapoom

[Merse](

 []( "Twitter account") []( "LinkedIn profile")

### Kumar Abhirup, Founder

Helped lead Web Team at Airchat. Sold my first company Beam (Substack for Texting) at the age of 16. Helped my mom scale a newsletter from 0 to 300K subscribers. At Merse, we are working on changing the future of content consumption.



Kumar Abhirup

[Merse](

 []( "Twitter account") []( "LinkedIn profile")

### Company Launches

[### Merse: The Netflix for audio-visual comics](



**⏰ TLDR;**
===========

**WE are the Netflix for Audio-Visual Comics,** with a wide range of premium entertaining content for comic readers.

**YOU** can **HEAR THE CHARACTERS SPEAK** in 6 languages, with immersive soundtracks and crispy audio effects.

**ARTISTS** can **EARN A LIVING** by creating, uploading, publishing, and monetizing comics. With a wide range of characters, voices and soundtracks to choose from. Artists can also generate audio effects and soundtracks at will using Merse AI. Our AI tooling handles text and voice translation of speech bubbles.

**GET THE APP** @ [merse.co](

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**⚠️ The Problem**
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**Creating comics is a labor-intensive process** that requires significant time and effort.

Despite the popularity of comics, producing them often **takes hours of meticulous work** using tools like Adobe Illustrator, or requires plain drawings. This limits the number of creators who can participate and the volume of content available to readers.

The comic reading experience has been the same for decades. On the other hand, **readers are looking for new and more immersive experiences.** While static images are the norm, there is a growing demand for interactive content that brings characters and stories to life with character voices and sounds.

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**🫶 Our Solution — Audio-Visual Comics**
=========================================

[**

The Merse platform enables creators to generate high-quality, audio comics quickly and easily, and offers readers an immersive experience. You focus on crafting engaging stories; Merse handles all your tech, distribution, and monetization.

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**📸 Features**
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**• Generate comics using AI:** Our GenAI features create detailed comic panels from your scripts, creates compelling voices in multiple languages for each speech bubble, with AI generated sound effects, significantly reducing the time from concept to publication.

**• Audio Effects + Soundtracks:** Be it the sound of gulping water, or cracking knuckles, it has it all.

**• Read and Hear in 6 different languages:** 🇮🇳Hindi 🇫🇷French 🇨🇳Chinese  
🇯🇵Japanese 🇰🇷Korean 🇺🇸English

**• Monetization options:** Choose how to monetize your content – keep it free, or charge users per episode.



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**🏪 The Market**
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The biggest incumbent in this industry is Naver Webtoons. It’s the YouTube for static, hand-drawn comics. Over 120,000 artists draw and upload their episodes and get paid over $27M for their work, clocking in a revenue of over $1.4B a year and 170M monthly active readers.

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**🇺🇸 The Founders**
=====================



[**Mark Rachapoom**](

**CEO of Merse,** 21-year-old founder, an engineer at heart with a great sense of design, college dropout, and fellow at Vercel AI Accelerator. He created Diary Dingo, an iOS journaling app that hit the top 3 in the App Store's Lifestyle category within 24 hours of launch.

[**Kumar Abhirup**](

**CTO of Merse,** 20-year-old founder, dropped out of high school in Nashik, India, and worked alongside Naval Ravikant as an **Engineer at Airchat**, **1x Exited founder** @ [itsbeam.com](

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**🙏 Our Ask**
==============

• **Connect us to creators and readers:** We’re looking to connect with comic artists, writers, and enthusiasts interested in innovative storytelling methods. Please reach us at [hey@merse.co](mailto:hey@merse.co), and we’ll follow up.

• **Create on Merse:** Are you a passionate comic creator looking to transform your storytelling process? Start creating on our platform and own your storytelling journey! Share the comics you love on the Merse feed and on your socials, and help us gauge what content works best.

• **We are looking to seed content:** CONTENT IS KING! It’s important we have a good catalog of content before future launches. If you want to help us with filling Merse up with exciting content, and have ideas, or want to work with us, contact [hey@merse.co](mailto:hey@merse.co)

• **If you have experience going viral on TikTok / Reddit or are a good growth hacker and would love to help us**, contact us.

Join us in helping artists story-tell with Merse.



#### YC Sign Photo



### Selected answers from Merse's original YC application for the S24 Batch

#### Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Immersive Comic Reader & AI Creator with Audio FX

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

A fully immersive Comics reading and creation platform which uses Audio Effects. Creators can use our AI-native platform to generate characters, backdrops, and compelling audio speeches for each speech bubble.

### YC S24 Application Video

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