Haystack YC Application

Winter 2021Active

Haystack went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2021 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 2021
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 6
Status: Active
Launched: 2021

Founders

Julian ColinaFounder
Kan YilmazFounder

What Haystack does

We are bringing the competitive advantage data-driven engineering teams like Google have - to everyone else. Our analytics platform plugs directly into developer tools like Github to provide insights on delivery speeds, bottlenecks, and risks that impact team velocity & developer happiness. We're trusted by some of the world’s most innovative teams: Microsoft, The Economist, and Indiegogo and backed by Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Funders Club, and strategic angels (Founder @Optimizely, SVP Sales @Amplitude). Haystack is a culture of tinkering, learning, testing and iterating. We ship quickly and help our customers do the same. We're led by founded by two technical founders who have experienced this problem first-hand after scaling their startups from 0 to 100m+ users.

Haystack's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Haystack

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Delivery Analytics for Software Teams

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

We built Haystack to plug directly into developer tools like GitHub and surface metrics on how code delivery flows through teams. Our product shows where bottlenecks and risks slow velocity and impact developer happiness. It gives data-driven engineering teams insights companies like Google take for granted but most others lack.

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

We live and are based in San Francisco and have a remote team. We plan to keep the company headquartered in San Francisco after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is a hub for engineering talent and customers we want to reach. Being here lets us stay close to early users and industry trends while managing a remote and flexible team.

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 Haystack YC application?

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