Edlyft YC Application

Winter 2020Inactive

Edlyft went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2020 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 2020
Industry: B2BProductivity
Team size: 5
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2020

Founders

Erika HairstonFounder
Arnelle AnsongFounder

What Edlyft does

Edlyft, backed by Kleiner Perkins, Kapor Capital, and YC, builds software that blue-chip enterprises like Google and Dropbox use to train college computer science students on essential skills required for the workforce, so they can be productive day one. It takes new grad engineers 6-12 months to ramp up and add value to their company. Instead of relying on experienced engineers and wasting salary costs, Tinder and LinkedIn use Edlyft to train college CS students before they’re hired on skills to succeed in their role. Co-founders, Erika and Arnelle, are CS grads from Yale and Stanford, who have been featured by Forbes, TechCrunch and Business Insider for Edlyft. They're former engineers at Facebook and Google, and an ex-LinkedIn product manager and Bain consultant.

Edlyft's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Edlyft, Winter 2020 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Edlyft

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Train college CS students on job skills

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

We build software that lets enterprises like Google and Dropbox train college computer science students on essential job skills before they're hired. It cuts onboarding time from 6-12 months to zero by preparing students with relevant, role-specific skills early.

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

We live in San Francisco and our company is based there, with a distributed team working remotely as well.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is the tech hub where our users and potential enterprise customers are located. Being here helps us build relationships and iterate quickly with our early partners.

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 Edlyft YC application?

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