DAGWorks Inc. YC Application

Winter 2023Acquired

DAGWorks Inc. went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2023 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 2023
Industry: B2B
Team size: 2
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2023

Founders

Stefan KrawczykFounder
Elijah ben IzzyFounder

What DAGWorks Inc. does

We’re on a mission to enable everyone to build reliable AI agents & AI applications. We're fully open source, and provide a unique integrated development & observability experience for those building anything in the AI space. This is the first step towards laying the foundations for Composable AI Systems; all AI systems need observability and introspection to be first class for them to be reliable. How? We're standardizing how people write python to express data, ML, LLM, & agent workflows/pipelines/applications with lightweight frameworks. So that no matter the author, it'll be easy to collaborate, connect, and importantly in one line integrate observability and datastore needs. This speeds up time to production and reduces TCO because code remains easy to maintain and your data flywheel stays manageable. So you can increase the top line & bottom line of your business by delivering on AI that is reliable. We've got two open source projects: - one focused on AI applications, called Burr ( - one focused on AI pipelines/workflows, called Hamilton ( see Both Hamilton & Burr come with self-hostable UIs (+ enterprise & SaaS offerings). With a one-line code change, you get versioning, lineage / tracing, cataloging, and observability out of the box with Hamilton. With Burr you get tracing, observability and persistence in a single line addition.

DAGWorks Inc.'s YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

DAGWorks Inc., Winter 2023 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

DAGWorks Inc.

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Open source tools for reliable AI agents

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

We build open source frameworks - Hamilton for AI pipelines and Burr for AI applications - that let developers write Python code describing workflows, agents, and pipelines. With just one line of code, users get integrated observability, versioning, lineage, and persistence out of the box. Our products help teams build AI agents and applications that are easier to maintain, monitor, and reason about, reducing time to production and operational complexity.

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 as well, with a remote-friendly setup.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose San Francisco because it's where we live and where much of the AI and developer ecosystem is centered. We also work remotely to attract talent and be flexible as a small team.

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 DAGWorks Inc. YC application?

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