Expo YC Application

Summer 2016Active

Expo went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2016 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 2016
Industry: B2BInfrastructure
Team size: 40
Status: Active
Launched: 2016

Founders

Charlie CheeverFounder
James IdeFounder

What Expo does

Expo lets developers write apps that are written in JavaScript and run natively on Android, iOS, and the web. Our cloud services that work with all Expo and React Native apps, named Expo Application Services (EAS), further speeds up teams by helping them get to the app stores as fast as possible and continue growing. We believe that mobile apps provide a better experience than websites, but making apps is much more difficult than it needs to be. With Expo, we're bringing together the best of the web, like its development speed, fast iteration cycles, easy deploys, and automatic cross-platform support, and the performance, device capabilities, and user experience of native apps.

Expo's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Expo, Summer 2016 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Expo

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Brings together web and native app development

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

We make Expo, a platform that lets developers write apps in JavaScript that run natively on Android, iOS, and the web. On top of that, our Expo Application Services (EAS) cloud tools help teams build, deploy, and update apps faster. We tackle the complexity of native mobile development by combining the speed and iteration of web development with native app capabilities.

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

We live in Palo Alto, CA, and the company is based here.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Palo Alto is home to our team and is close to the developer and startup ecosystem we engage with daily. Being here keeps us close to our users and potential 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 Expo YC application?

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