CSPA YC Application

Summer 2018Acquired

CSPA went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2018 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 2018
Industry: B2BRecruiting and Talent
Team size: 6
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2018

Founders

James LinFounder
Angel PoonFounder

What CSPA does

The Computer Science Proficiency Assessment (CSPA™) is a comprehensive standardized exam for software engineers. The CSPA assesses your technical knowledge, skills, and abilities across a broad array of topics. We write the CSPA exam questions, software engineers take the test, and we share the results with employers and schools. MARKETING & SALES: We actively find software engineers to take our test, whether direct or through partnerships. On the other side, we actively partner with employers looking to hire. PRODUCT: We build the exam content manage system, a proctoring framework, and autograding system, as well as a SaaS employer product to browse the candidate database.

CSPA's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

CSPA, Summer 2018 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

CSPA

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Standardized exam for software engineers

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

We make the Computer Science Proficiency Assessment (CSPA), a standardized exam that tests software engineers across a broad set of technical topics. We build the exam content management system, a proctoring framework, an autograding engine, and a SaaS product for employers to review candidate results and profiles.

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

We live in San Francisco, and the company is based here.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Being in San Francisco keeps us close to both the tech recruiting ecosystem and partner employers who want to hire engineers. It's also where the founders live and work comfortably.

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 CSPA YC application?

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