GitLab YC Application

Winter 2015Public

GitLab went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2015 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 2015
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 2000
Status: Public
Launched: 2014

Founders

Sid SijbrandijFounder/CEO
Dmytro ZaporozhetsFounder/CTO

What GitLab does

GitLab is the first single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle. Only GitLab enables Concurrent DevOps, unlocking organizations from the constraints of today’s toolchain. GitLab provides unmatched visibility, radical new levels of efficiency and comprehensive governance to significantly compress the time between planning a change and monitoring its effect. This makes the software lifecycle 200% faster, radically improving the speed of business. GitLab and Concurrent DevOps collapses cycle times by driving higher efficiency across all stages of the software development lifecycle. For the first time, Product, Development, QA, Security, and Operations teams can work concurrently in a single application. There’s no need to integrate and synchronize tools, or waste time waiting for handoffs. Everyone contributes to a single conversation, instead of managing multiple threads across disparate tools. And only GitLab gives teams complete visibility across the lifecycle with a single, trusted source of data to simplify troubleshooting and drive accountability. All activity is governed by consistent controls, making security and compliance first-class citizens instead of an afterthought. Built on Open Source, GitLab leverages the community contributions of thousands of developers and millions of users to continuously deliver new DevOps innovations. More than 100,000 organizations from startups to global enterprise organizations, including Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, NASDAQ, Dish Network and Comcast trust GitLab to deliver great software at new speeds.

GitLab's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

GitLab, Winter 2015 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

GitLab

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

A complete DevOps platform as one application

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

We built GitLab to be the first single application that covers the entire DevOps lifecycle - from planning and development to security and operations. Instead of stitching together multiple disconnected tools, teams can use GitLab to collaborate, track progress, enforce governance, and monitor results - all in one place. This reduces cycle times, eliminates handoffs, and makes delivering software faster and more predictable.

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

We live and base the company in San Francisco, CA, with a large remote team spread globally.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose San Francisco because it's where we find the best engineering talent and customers who deeply understand DevOps. Remote work lets us tap global talent, but HQ is in SF to stay close to the startup ecosystem and market feedback.

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 GitLab YC application?

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