Experiment YC Application

Winter 2013Active

Experiment went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2013 batch as a Healthcare 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 2013
Industry: HealthcareHealthcare Services
Team size: 1
Status: Active
Launched: 2012

Founders

Denny LuanFounder

What Experiment does

Today's funders are so conservative they only fund the most obvious ideas. At Experiment, we fund the ideas that they won't fund; the ideas that matter. Since founding, over 47,000 citizens have pledged $9 million dollars supporting 900 scientific projects on the platform. 46% of all projects on Experiment are successfully funded. When the projects are finished, the scientists share the scientific results with their backers as lab notes and peer-reviewed publications. Scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale have chosen to use Experiment instead of writing grants. Bill Gates recognized Experiment by saying "this solution helps close the gap for potentially-promising but unfunded projects."

Experiment's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Experiment, Winter 2013 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Experiment

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Crowdfunding platform for science

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

We built a marketplace where scientists pitch projects and citizens fund research they believe in. Scientists get money for experiments traditional funders avoid, and backers follow the outcomes via updates and published results.

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

We live in Honolulu and remote locations; the company is currently based anywhere the founders work.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We started in Honolulu because that's where our team was located. Being remote hasn't slowed us; scientific projects and backers come from all over, so physical location is flexible until YC, which may shift our base to Silicon Valley.

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 Experiment YC application?

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