Alpaca YC Application

Winter 2019Active

Alpaca went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2019 batch as a Fintech 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: Winter 2019
Industry: FintechBanking and Exchange
Team size: 150
Status: Active
Launched: 2018

Founders

Yoshi YokokawaCo-founder & CEO
Hitoshi HaradaFounder/CTO

What Alpaca does

Alpaca is an API infrastructure and licensed financial services company that allows developers and businesses to offer stock and crypto investing to their end-customers. We work with more than 100 companies across the globe to enable their investing products, and our mission is to provide financial services to everyone on the planet. Alpaca’s globally distributed team consists of developers, traders, and brokerage business specialists and backed by a group of well-capitalized investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Unbound, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Y Combinator as well as highly experienced industry angel investors and founders. We are also very tech-enthusiastic with notable track records in open-source and startup communities.

Alpaca's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Alpaca, Winter 2019 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Alpaca

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

API-first stock and crypto brokerage platform

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

We provide a licensed brokerage platform focused on APIs that let developers and businesses integrate stock and crypto investing directly into their own apps. Our product handles the trading, compliance, and clearing behind the scenes so users can build investing features without building their own brokerage.

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

We live in San Mateo, CA, and have a distributed remote team. After YC, the company would remain based in San Mateo while continuing remote operations.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Mateo places us close to major talent pools and financial tech hubs, which suits our needs. Remote work lets us access specialists globally, crucial for building complex brokerage infrastructure.

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 Alpaca YC application?

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