What do they actually do
Hypercubic builds two linked tools for legacy mainframe estates. HyperDocs ingests COBOL/JCL/PL/I and related artifacts to generate structured, human‑readable documentation, architecture diagrams, and dependency graphs. HyperTwin records SME interviews and on‑screen workflows to capture tacit operational knowledge. The outputs are linked so engineers can search code, system artifacts, and the recorded rationale behind decisions in one place (site, Launch HN).
Today there’s a public HyperDocs playground and a demo video for HyperTwin, indicating working prototypes. The team is early‑stage (YC Fall 2025) and positions the product for large enterprises, but there are no public customer logos or independent case studies on the site yet (YC page, site, Launch HN).
Who are their target customer(s)
- VP/Director of Modernization at a bank, insurer, or government agency: They must lower the cost and risk of moving off mainframes, but projects stall without auditable understanding of how current systems work and why. They need documentation and traceability they can defend to stakeholders and auditors (site, Launch HN).
- Mainframe operations / production-support lead: Incident response is slowed by outdated runbooks and scarce SMEs; knowledge is concentrated in a few people who are retiring or overloaded. They need faster answers tied to real code and historical reasoning (site, Launch HN).
- COBOL/JCL developer or maintainer on a legacy team: They spend excessive time reverse‑engineering dense code and job dependencies to make safe changes. They need accurate, readable docs and dependency graphs to reduce analysis time (site).
- CTO / Head of Engineering evaluating a replatform or rewrite: They require traceable, high‑confidence artifacts (specs/tests) to prove a migrated system behaves the same and meets compliance; they don’t trust generic LLMs for mission‑critical logic. They want deterministic+generative pipelines and domain models with audit trails (Launch HN, site).
- External modernization consultant or systems integrator: Weeks or months go into manual discovery and interviews before delivery can start, making projects costly and risky. They want to compress discovery into a faster, repeatable process to hit timelines and budgets (Launch HN, site).
How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers
- First 10: Founder‑led, scoped 4–8 week paid pilots on a high‑risk subsystem with 1–2 measurable KPIs (e.g., onboarding time, MTTR), using the HyperDocs playground/HyperTwin demo to secure NDAs and produce 2+ referenceable wins (site, Launch HN).
- First 50: Package a repeatable pilot (fixed scope, deliverables, security checklist) and partner with 2–3 SIs to include Hypercubic in discovery phases; assign CSMs to standardize onboarding and convert pilots to annual contracts using early metrics/testimonials.
- First 100: Offer a low‑risk self‑service trial for non‑sensitive repos and a standardized enterprise onboarding bundle (audit trail, access controls, compliance). Expand partnerships with mainframe vendors/SIs and invest in industry‑specific model accuracy and documented audit pipelines to reduce reliance on founder demos (site).
What is the rough total addressable market
Top-down context:
Published estimates put mainframe modernization at roughly $8–9B annually in the mid‑2020s, with growth into the low‑ to mid‑teens of billions over the next decade (Grand View Research, MarketsandMarkets). Adjacent mainframe software/tooling/services add several more billions of spend today (IMARC).
Bottom-up calculation:
Assume 1,200 large enterprises with active mainframe estates run 2–4 critical applications each through modernization cycles annually, and spend $1–2M per app on discovery, documentation, validation and migration tooling/services. That implies ~$2.4–$9.6B/year of addressable spend relevant to Hypercubic’s problem space.
Assumptions:
- ~1,200 enterprises actively modernize mainframe workloads in a given year (banks, insurers, government, airlines, etc.).
- Each modernizes 2–4 critical apps per year (phased programs).
- Discovery+documentation+validation/tooling averages $1–2M per app in enterprise settings.
Who are some of their notable competitors
- IBM (watsonx Code Assistant for Z, ADDI, z/OS Connect): IBM offers end‑to‑end mainframe app modernization across software and consulting, including watsonx Code Assistant for Z for assisted refactoring/translation and tools like z/OS Connect for API enablement (IBM).
- AWS Mainframe Modernization: A managed service with replatforming (Micro Focus toolchain) and automated refactoring (Blu Age) options to migrate COBOL/PL/I workloads to AWS with cloud‑native operations (AWS).
- OpenText (Micro Focus) – Application Modernization & Connectivity: Long‑standing COBOL/mainframe tooling suite (e.g., Visual COBOL, Enterprise Server/Developer, Enterprise Analyzer) for dependency mapping, replatforming and incremental refactoring (OpenText/Micro Focus).
- CloudFrame: Niche vendor focused on automated, incremental COBOL‑to‑Java transformation and migration offerings, positioning on functional equivalence and maintainable output (CloudFrame).
- Advanced (Modern Systems): Provider of automated code/data migration and analysis tools (e.g., Application Analyzer) and services for mainframe modernization; its AppMod capabilities were acquired by IBM in 2024 to bolster IBM Consulting (Modern Systems, IBM Newsroom).