Owen is Co-Founder and CEO at Forum, the first regulated exchange to trade on cultural attention and relevance. Forum is part of Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch and is pioneering attention as a new asset class.

Owen traded long/short equities at Balyasny Asset Management, one of the world's top hedge funds. He attended Northwestern University before dropping out to launch Forum.

Owen recognized that attention has become the primary driver of global value in the digital age, yet it has never been directly tradable. Forum creates indices from search, social, and streaming data to measure what the world cares about.

Forum enables users to go long or short on the popularity of topics, from artists to cultural trends. The platform is working with regulators to bring real-money trading to the US market.

Forum is backed by Y Combinator and mentored by core YC partner Jared Friedman. The company is transforming how people participate in markets by making cultural relevance tradable for the first time.