Gridware YC Application

Winter 2021Active

Gridware went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2021 batch as a Industrials 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 2021
Industry: IndustrialsEnergy
Team size: 125
Status: Active
Launched: 2021

Founders

Tim BaratFounder
Omar BFounder
Hall ChenCo-Founder & CTO

What Gridware does

Gridware exists to enhance and protect the mother of all networks: the electrical grid. The grid touches everyone and makes our modern economy possible. But it’s also fragile. When the grid is compromised, everything grinds to a halt, and the consequences can be dire: wildfires burn, land is destroyed, property is damaged, progress stops, and lives are lost. Our team builds smart sensors that help utility companies to immediately detect, find, and fix outages and take steps to prevent new outages, and other related disasters, from happening at all. The need for power will only increase. We protect the grid of today while we build the grid of tomorrow. Gridware is privately held and backed by the best climate-tech and Silicon Valley investors. We are headquartered in San Francisco

Gridware's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Gridware, Winter 2021 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Gridware

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Protecting the grid today, preparing the grid for tomorrow

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

We build smart sensors for electrical utilities that detect and locate outages immediately. Our product helps utilities find faults faster, fix outages quicker, and prevent disasters like wildfires triggered by grid failures. We protect the existing grid while enabling modernization.

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.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco gives us access to top engineering and climate tech talent and investors focused on energy innovation. Most of the founders live here and our key partners and hiring pipelines are local.

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 Gridware YC application?

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