Candle YC Application

Fall 2024Active

Candle went through Y Combinator in the Fall 2024 batch as a Consumer 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: Fall 2024
Industry: Consumer
Team size: 2
Status: Active
Launched: 2024

Founders

Alex RuberCo-Founder and CEO
Parth ChopraCo-Founder and CTO

What Candle does

Most relationships, romantic or platonic, don’t end in one moment, they drift apart over time. Missed check-ins, surface-level conversations, busy lives, and routines replace real connection. Candle helps couples and friends stay close through 1-minute daily rituals that bring back presence, play, and curiosity. Candle gives couples and friends a daily, low-pressure game designed to create emotional momentum: the most essential, and often most neglected, ingredient in long-term connection. What started as a swipeable questions game has grown into a full platform and private space for your relationship: - Daily Prompts & Games: Thoughtful, funny, and unexpected questions, couple quizzes, audio and photo challenges that update and adapt monthly - Shared Canvas Widget: Leave notes, doodles, or drawings right on each other’s home screen - Now in beta: Date Ideas Swiping**: Get 60 curated date ideas based on your area (yes, even San Francisco:)), updated weekly. Swipe to match on what you both want to try. From pop-up events to hidden gems, it’s the easiest way to try something new together or even with friends or family! We’d love feedback here! - Streaks & Shared Progress - Build accountability and a shared rhythm - Adaptive Decks: Smarter, more relevant questions over time - Shared Photo Albums & Memories: Keep track of all your photos and logged memories

Candle's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Candle, Fall 2024 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Candle

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Helps friends and couples grow closer daily in 5 minutes

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

We make Candle, a platform that helps couples and friends stay emotionally close through daily 1-minute rituals. It started as a swipeable questions game and evolved into a richer space with daily prompts, games, shared notes and doodles, adaptive question decks, streaks, and curated date ideas. Our product focuses on building emotional momentum through low-pressure, daily interactions that many relationships miss.

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

We live and are based in San Francisco, CA, and the company will remain based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we both live and work now. It's also where our initial users are and where we can best build and test new features in real life.

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 Candle YC application?

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