Apollo.io YC Application

Winter 2016Active

Apollo.io went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2016 batch as a B2B 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 2016
Industry: B2BMarketing
Team size: 800
Status: Active
Launched: 2015

Founders

Tim ZhengFounder/CEO
Ray LiFounder

What Apollo.io does

Founded in 2015, Apollo.io is a lead intelligence and sales engagement platform trusted by nearly 9,000 paying customers, from rapidly growing startups to some of the largest global enterprises. Our community-based approach to crowdsourcing data gives users maximum coverage while ensuring data accuracy. Our advanced algorithms and unique data acquisition methods help over 500,000 sales professionals enrich and analyze prospects' data to increase quality conversations and opportunities. We have notable investors: Y Combinator and Nexus Venture Partners. We recently completed a Series B financing to fuel our next growth phase. We have reached and maintained profitability for the last 18 months. Our growth and customer feedback set us apart from competitors. Apollo had over one million sign-ups for its platform in the past year, and the number of weekly active users increased by over 400%. We are a top-ranking G2 Crowd vendor in the Sales Intelligence, Lead Intelligence, Marketing Account Intelligence, and Sales Engagement categories. Our highest scores are in the B2B data space for accuracy and ROI based on customer reviews.

Apollo.io's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Apollo.io, Winter 2016 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Apollo.io

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Apollo is the foundation of your entire go-to-market strategy.

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

We built a lead intelligence and sales engagement platform that helps sales teams find and reach prospects more effectively. Our platform uses crowdsourced and proprietary data combined with algorithms to deliver accurate B2B contacts and insights, driving more quality conversations and sales opportunities.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and the company is based here with a remote workforce.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco gives us access to skilled technical talent and proximity to customers in B2B SaaS. Remote work lets us scale the team efficiently without geographic limits.

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 Apollo.io YC application?

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