Company

 

Company name:

 

Company url, if any:

 

If you have a demo, what's the url? Demo can be anything that shows us how the product works. Usually that's a video or screen recording.

(Please don't password protect it; just use an obscure url.)

 

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

 

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

 

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

(List as City A, Country A / City B, Country B.)

 

Contact

 

Personal email address of the founder who is filling out this application:

 

Please enter an email address that you check often and that you will have access to for a long time.

 

Phone number(s):

 

Your founder profile is incomplete. Please enter your email address.

 

Founders

 

Please provide the personal email addresses of the other cofounders in the startup. No need to add yours again. Founders must have at least 10% equity in the company. We will send an email to each founder to fill out additional information about themselves.

Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube or Youku video introducing the founder(s). This video is an important part of the application. (Follow the Video Guidelines.)

 

How many founders are on the team?

 

(Fill out this number of founder profiles)

 

Category

 

Which category best applies to your company?

 

Progress

 

How far along are you?

 

How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time?

 

Please explain.

 

Are people using your product?

 

Do you have revenue?

 

If you are applying with the same idea as last batch, did anything change? If you applied with a different idea, why did you pivot and what did you learn from the last idea?

 

If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator, "accelerator" or "pre-accelerator" program, please tell us about it.

 

Idea

 

Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?

 

What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or they don't know about it)?

 

Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

 

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

 

How do or will you make money? How much could you make?

(We realize you can't know precisely, but give your best estimate.)

 

How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?

 

Equity

 

Have you incorporated, or formed any legal entity (like an LLC) yet?

 

Have you taken any investment yet?

If you have not formed the company yet, describe the planned equity ownership breakdown among the founders, employees and any other proposed stockholders. If there are multiple founders, be sure to give the proposed equity ownership of each founder.

(This question is as much for you as us.)

Please provide any other relevant information about the structure or formation of the company.

 

Legal

 

Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? If so, please explain.

 

Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder? Please explain.

 

Is there anything else we should know about your company?

(Pending lawsuits, cofounders who have left, etc.)

 

Others

 

If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we've been waiting for. Often when we fund people it's to do something they list here and not in the main application.

 

Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered.

(The answer need not be related to your project.)

 

Curious

 

What convinced you to apply to Y Combinator? Did someone encourage you to apply?

 

How did you hear about Y Combinator?