Assembly YC Application

Summer 2015Active

Assembly went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2015 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: Summer 2015
Industry: B2BSupply Chain and Logistics
Team size: 12
Status: Active
Launched: 2015

Founders

Jonathan FriedmanFounder/CEO

What Assembly does

Crowdfunding has fueled an increase in innovative product companies turning to Chinese factories for production. Yet, Chinese factories seem undifferentiated because they all make the same, unverifiable claims of excellence. This results in competition centered on price. Factories are forced to under-bid contracts to win business, but often, they later surprise the customer with quality problems and delays. This process is broken. We install cameras and remote monitoring software on the assembly line, and this ensures compliance with test protocol, improves quality, reduces liability, and helps fight warranty fraud. We charge a nominal per-unit fee to the OEM and revenue share with the factory when they demonstrate compliance with quality standards (whether units pass or fail). It encourages better behavior from factories and rewards those who perform with an audit trail of good performance that helps them win new foreign business. On average, defect rate will fall 75% within 5 months of deploying Assembly at a factory.

Assembly's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Assembly, Summer 2015 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Assembly

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Advanced manufacturing monitoring for Chinese factories

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

We built a remote monitoring system that installs cameras and software on Chinese assembly lines to track compliance with test protocols. The system reduces quality issues and warranty fraud by providing an audit trail factories can't fake. Customers are overseas OEMs who want verified quality from their Chinese manufacturers.

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

We live in South San Francisco, CA, and plan to keep the company based there after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

South San Francisco is near our current network and key partners. It's a strong base for dealing with US-based OEMs while managing remote manufacturing in China.

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 Assembly YC application?

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