Zoa Research

Zoa Research YC-Bewerbung

Summer 2024Active

Zoa Research durchlief Y Combinator im Summer 2024-Batch als ein B2B-Unternehmen. Unten: Was das Unternehmen tut, wer es gegründet hat und seine Bewerbung bei YC, Frage für Frage im echten YC-Formular rekonstruiert.

YC-Batch
Summer 2024
Branche
B2B
Teamgröße
5
Status
Active
Gestartet
2024

Gründer

  • Greg Volynsky
    Greg VolynskyFounder
  • Sam Damashek
    Sam DamashekFounder

Was Zoa Research tut

Historically, quantitative models are domain specific. Brilliant people spend their best years testing features, tuning hyperparameters, and iterating architectures within a narrow domain. But scale is the panacea: large models will find patterns people, and specialized models, could not. Forecasting generalizes. Zoa trains cross-domain event forecasting engines. *Automating Iteration* LLMs - embedded in multi-agent optimization loops and evaluated against fixed policies - can automate the build-test-improve modeling cycle. Think AlphaEvolve for forecasting problems. *Sample-Efficient General Models* Today’s forecasting models are narrowly crafted with deep human priors. But larger models will outperform state-of-the-art specialized models. Unlike existing event models, our models leverage data from across contexts and rely less on human intuition. And compared to LLMs, our models are built with more inductive priors and rely more heavily on inference-time compute - improving sample efficiency. *Why It Matters* In the real economy, our models could be useful for forecasting supply chain volatility, energy supply and demand, even earthquake risk. Science is, Ian Hacking writes, the taming of chance. It is the process of iteratively updating priors (something like: identify uncertainty, conceive experiment to reduce uncertainty, execute, update). If science is uncertainty-reduction, forecasting is a critical measure of progress. Better forecasting improves our ability to select interesting experiments (roughly those with greatest expected uncertainty reduction) and update priors. Our models will be used by labs and academics in data-heavy domains. Sam's ex-girlfriend introduced him to Greg back at Carnegie Mellon in 2017, and while that relationship didn't last, their friendship has. After college, Greg went to Harvard Law School, while Sam worked for three years at Jane Street on their Options desk, building & leading a satellite dev team.

Zoa Researchs YC-Bewerbung, rekonstruiert

Y Combinator Bewerbung

Zoa Research, Summer 2024 Batch. Die echten Fragen des Antrags, beantwortet aus öffentlichen Daten.

  1. Founders2
  2. Company7
  3. Progress7
  4. Idea4
  5. Equity3
  6. Curious2
  7. Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Zoa Research

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Powerful quantitative forecasting models

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

We build generalizable event forecasting models that train across diverse domains rather than specializing narrowly. Our models automate the build-test-improve cycle by embedding LLMs in multi-agent optimization loops. This extends forecasting beyond traditional domain-specific models, making predictions about supply chains, energy, and risk using data integration and sample-efficient inference.

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

We live in New York, NY, and the company is based here now and would remain so after YC, at least initially.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Most of our experience and network is in New York. We don't see a pressing reason to relocate; YC is remote-friendly and we can engage with the network while continuing to build where we are.

21 weitere Antworten in der vollständigen Bewerbung

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference sind in der Vollversion. Erstelle ein kostenloses Konto, um es in YC Insights neben jedem anderen YC-Batch zu öffnen.

Häufig gestellte Fragen

Ist das die echte YC-Bewerbung von Zoa Research?

Nein. Y Combinator hält eingereichte Bewerbungen privat. Dies ist eine Rekonstruktion: die echten Fragen des YC-Formulars, beantwortet aus den öffentlichen Daten von Zoa Research (Veröffentlichungsnotizen, Gründerhintergründe, Produktbeschreibung). Sie zeigt, wie sich ein Unternehmen wie Zoa Research bei YC präsentieren würde, nicht den Text, den sie eingereicht haben.

In welchem YC-Batch war Zoa Research?

Zoa Research war Teil des Y Combinator Summer 2024-Batches.

Wer hat Zoa Research gegründet?

Zoa Research wurde von Greg Volynsky, Sam Damashek gegründet.

Was macht Zoa Research?

Powerful quantitative forecasting models

Wie lese ich die vollständige, rekonstruierte Bewerbung?

Erstelle ein kostenloses Round Funded Konto. Die vollständige 26-Antwort-Version der Bewerbung von Zoa Research, und jede andere YC-Kohorte, findest du in YC Insights.

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