What convinced you to apply to Y Combinator? Did someone encourage you to apply? Have you been to any YC events?

While I have a great team, as a transgender female founder, I lack the industry network to make this business become the industry leader it can be. I can benefit tremendously from the advice, connections, and support that YC offers.

We want to access the mentorship and network that comes with Y Combinator brand as we think it would greatly accelerate our trajectory to become a massive technology company. I won the YCombinator hackathon in 2018 (Astral Trade); also have attended Startup School the past three years and have experienced, first-hand, the value in the YCombinator community.

Stripe Atlas

We hope to learn from the best of the best. We've learned so much from YC podcasts, YC Startup Class, essays, and other YC founders, so we would love to have the opportunity to get advice from YC partners first-hand. We admire many YC alumni building world-changing marketplace and infrastructure companies (e.g. Airbnb & Stripe) and we can see the impact of being part of a community of ambitious, optimistic people motivated to solve fundamental problems at global scale. We have strong traction, and now is the first time we could go to YC for the full-time program.

We want to be a part of a fast-paced program with big hairy audacious goals, surrounded by people who are building the future. We want to learn how to scale the product and user base from those who have done it before. Looking at YC Alum Front that offers a similar product for a different audience, we believe OpenPhone can go through the same growth trajectory by joining YC. Beyond being an accelerator, YC is a mindset and a set of values we believe in. Daryna witnessed this at Vidyard where YC made a long-term impact. Many years later, the company has maintained YC values and principles. Being relentlessly resourceful and making something people want are some of them.

Feedback from startups that went through it. It feels like a must for companies like Slite that need to be mainstream super fast. Plus, after having exchanged with Alumni, I have the sensation YC makes a lot of sense in 2 different cases: companies with the right energy but that need to pivot, and companies with a beginning of product market fit, ready to deploy really fast. Slite is definitely in this phase, and YC could be gamechanger for us.

The first thing Parker said when Greg told him what we're building was "Apply to YC!" We want to rapidly accelerate our growth and saw first-hand the value YC provides to early stage companies during our time working at YC companies, including at Rippling W17 and Optimizely W10. Many of our friends and colleagues are YC founders and pushed us to apply for the S18 batch, including: Parker Conrad Rippling W17 and Zenefits W13, Ryan Jackson MicroEval S12 and Paid S14, Jeff LaBarge Tule S14, Marta Jamrozik VanGo W17, and Zack Brown Haiku W18.

Y Combinator has an incredible network of entrepreneurs and mentors — many of whom have used Simple Habit and directly fall into our target audience. Being part of YC would be an impetus of growth in terms of learning from the community and attracting the best talent. I'm at Stanford GSB right now and I'd happily consider dropping out for YC.

Several of our friends have founded YC companies (e.g., StyleLend, iCracked, Airhelp, Her). We’ve seen the positive impact that their experience has had on their businesses. Our desire to accelerate growth of the business and the strong recommendation of these founders motivated us to apply.

oothenigerian

After three years in research mode, we want to scale massively. We’ve spent some time in the Bay and feel there’s a lot we could learn from other startups and the tech startup scene. We think our approach to making a difference is aligned with Y Combinator: go with the numbers and maximise scale.