All Questions
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- Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video introducing the founder(s).
- Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder?
- How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?
- Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together.
- Please tell us in one or two sentences about something impressive that each founder has built or achieved.
- Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.
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- How far along are you?
- How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time?
- When will you have a prototype or beta?
- How many active users or customers do you have? How many are paying? Who is paying you the most, and how much do they pay you?
- We're interested in your revenue over the last several months. (Not cumulative and not GMV).
- Anything else you would like us to know regarding your revenue or growth rate?
- If you are applying with the same idea as a previous 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.
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- 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? What do you understand about your business that they don't?
- How do or will you make money? How much could you make?
- How do users find your product? How did you get the users you have now? If you run paid ads, what is your cost of acquisition?
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- Have you formed ANY legal entity yet?
- Please list all legal entities you have and in what state or country each was formed (e.g. Delaware C Corp, Mexican SAPI, Singapore Pvt Ltd, etc.).
- Please describe the breakdown of the equity ownership in percentages among the founders, employees and any other stockholders. If there are multiple founders, be sure to give the equity ownership of each founder and founder title (e.g. CEO).
- Have you taken any investment yet?
- How much money do you spend per month?
- How much money does your company have in the bank now?
- How long is your runway?
- Is there anything else we should know about your company?
How many active users or customers do you have? How many are paying? Who is paying you the most, and how much do they pay you?
How 14 YC companies answered the "How many active users or customers do you have? How many are paying? Who is paying you the most, and how much do they pay you?" question from the YCombinator Application.
— 14 answers
Dendron(W21)
Full applicationWe have over 100 active users in our community Discord, 28 of which are very active users (people who use Dendron multiple times a day and are active on our Discord channel at least once a week).
MagicBell(W21)
Full application* MagicBell is powering notifications for SupportBee, my previous company with over 500 enterprise customers and 20,000 enterprise users. * We are live on another B2B product in the SaaS collaboration space. They are using the free tier. * We are currently onboarding a series-A funded insurance marketplace in Europe. They have signed a contract to bill them at $299/mo once they go live in October.
Virtually(S20)
Full applicationYes, five different training programs are using Virtually as their primary hosting platform. In total, over 200 students have participated in these online training programs. These programs are largely being led by online creators with large online followings.
InEvent(S19)
Full application45 active customers, 250 customers on our whole history (in the beginning, we had a lot of one time events). Each customer pays an average of about 25,000 dollars per year. Our largest contract is 212,000 dollars per year. We currently have customers in India, China, Singapore, USA, Belgium, UK, Netherlands, Chile, South Africa and Brazil. Our best customers are Embraer, Santander and XP. We are very proud of them because they are global - they use our product in multiple countries - and being global is our vision for 2030. Other known customers that we have are Coca-Cola, Amazon, Bosch, Bayer, KPMG, Honda, DuPont, Ely Lilly and Carrefour.
Prolific(S19)
Full applicationWe have 2000+ active researchers (paying customers) and 30,000+ monthly active participants. We have dozens of customers who have spent over $10,000 with us, and a few who have spent over $100,000, including [redacted] (in collaboration with [redacted], a major grocery store in the UK), respectively.
Goodly(S18)
Full applicationWe have five alpha customers that we're onboarding this week.
OpenPhone(S18)
Full applicationWe now have 1,500 users and growing at 200% MoM.
Slite(W18)
Full applicationWe launched our private beta to a limited set of pilots 5 months ago and we currently have 400+ active users spread among 50+ teams. Interesting fact: we both onboarded small teams and SMBs. Our largest by far, ABTasty, has more than 100 users active on Slite.
bxblue(S17)
Full applicationWe are working with the biggest and best banks in Brazil, like Banco do Brasil (30% market share), BRB, PAN, Daycoval, Promotiva, Santander, Bradesco.
Simple Habit(W17)
Full applicationSince our launch in June 2016, we've had 85k sign ups. Our weekly [redacted].
Paystack(W16)
Full application12 Pilot merchants and up to 400 on the waiting list
Mimir(S15)
Full application350
GitLab(W15)
Full applicationWe estimate more than 1M
Shotput(S15)
Full application1 Beta Customer
— advice from YC partners
Jason Shen (Co-founder & CEO of Headlight, YC alum)
SourceBadly enough — having users is not the same as having engaged users. Do your users login more than once? Are they actually doing stuff on your site? Are they willing to pay for it? Do they share the product with their friends? Show YC how happy you are making your users. You need to convince YC that your startup’s trajectory is toward success. That you are going to make more and more users happier and happier in a way that you’ll be able to build a legit business around it. Speed matters, size of growth matters. Try to choose your strongest points of traction when writing your app.
