Helium YC Application

Summer 2024Active

Helium went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2024 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 2024
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 7
Status: Active
Launched: 2024

Founders

Zach WitzelFounder
Shishir JakatiFounder

What Helium does

Helium is building self-improving software - AI that continuously experiments on key moments in the user funnel to boost revenue. Our first customer, a social app with 20M MAU, uses Helium to test new in-app paywalls to get more users to subscribe. Zach previously made $100M+ in growth experiments at Uber, Shishir led the first LLM features for Alexa, and Anish worked at Meta building ML to automatically experiment on ads, increasing Instagram ads conversion by 10%.

Helium's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Helium, Summer 2024 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Helium

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Self Improving Software

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

We are building AI that continuously runs experiments on critical moments in user funnels to increase revenue. Our first use case is helping a social app with 20M MAU test and optimize in-app paywalls to convert more users into subscribers.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and the company is based here as well.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We are all in San Francisco where we can be closest to customers and talent and where we already live and work full-time on Helium.

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 Helium YC application?

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