Contrario YC Application

Winter 2025Active

Contrario went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2025 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 2025
Industry: B2BRecruiting and Talent
Team size: 15
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Arya MarwahaFounder & CEO
Aditya SoodFounder

What Contrario does

Contrario is an AI recruiting and hiring platform on a mission to help companies build generational teams. In the age of AI, the best teams are still built by the best people. Recruiting has become a zero-sum game where speed and quality decide who wins. Contrario is a network of expert recruiters supercharged by vertical AI agents purpose-built for hiring. Teams at Wispr Flow, Listen Labs, Slash, and 200+ of the fastest-growing companies use Contrario to power their hiring. In under six months, Contrario has crossed $6M in annualized revenue, paid out $1M+ to recruiters, and placed 150+ candidates - making it one of the fastest-growing AI recruiting platforms on the market. Backed by Y Combinator, Nexus Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, and Inventum Ventures, alongside angels including David Chen (ex-HRT), Abhijeet Dwivedi (OpenAI), Hank Couture (DoorDash), and Jerry Cain (Stanford CS). Built by Stanford dropouts. Headquartered in San Francisco.

Contrario's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Contrario, Winter 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Contrario

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

AI hiring platform powered by expert recruiters

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

We build an AI recruiting and hiring platform that combines a network of expert recruiters with AI agents specialized in hiring. Our product helps companies find and hire high-quality candidates faster by automating parts of recruiting while preserving human judgment. Teams at fast-growing startups use Contrario to place candidates efficiently without sacrificing quality.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and the company is headquartered here. We will continue to be based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where most of our customers and recruiters are, and it's where we can attract the talent we need. Being here keeps us close to our market and investors.

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 Contrario YC application?

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