1849 bio YC Application

Summer 2024Active

1849 bio went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2024 batch as a Industrials company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2024
Industry: Industrials
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2024

Founders

Jai PadmakumarFounder
Yongjin ParkFounder

What 1849 bio does

1849 bio designs microbes enabling cheap metal extraction allowing miners to unlock value from low quality copper and gold ores. Surprisingly, the mining industry is one of the largest scale users of biotech in the world with biomining processes accounting for ~1% of global copper production. Biomining is ultra-low cost, running around ~$1/ton of ore vs ~$7/ton for conventional processes. Unfortunately, while biomining is cheap, it can’t be applied to over 80% of copper ores, leaving vast resources without profitable extraction methods. An estimated ~$800B of copper sit today in waste materials and stockpiles with negative unit economics. While a great deal of effort has been spent on optimizing microbial metal extraction processes, very little effort has been spent on optimizing the microbes themselves. To change that, we’re creating new biotech tools and platforms applied directly to the types of biology most relevant to miners. This enables us to develop new microbes and tackle some of the most difficult problems in biomining, unlocking billions in value from unprofitable resources while being more environmentally friendly than conventional processes. We’re world class microbial engineers. We met while doing our PhDs in synthetic biology, where we spent our time applying and developing the most advanced bioengineering technologies to engineer living cells.

1849 bio's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

1849 bio, Summer 2024 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

1849 bio

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Engineering microbes for miners to unlock billions in trapped metal

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

We engineer microbes specifically for mining companies to extract metal from low-grade ores and waste that conventional biomining can't handle. Our biotech platform creates new strains optimized to unlock value from unprofitable copper and gold resources at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

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

We live in San Francisco, and the company will be based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where our team lives and works. It also has biotech infrastructure and access to engineering talent we need to develop our synthetic biology platform.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real 1849 bio YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from 1849 bio's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like 1849 bio would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.