Hessian YC Application

Spring 2026Active

Hessian went through Y Combinator in the Spring 2026 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: Spring 2026
Industry: B2B
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2026

Founders

Bao NguyenCo-Founder & CEO
James SmithCo-Founder
Tom WatsonFounder

What Hessian does

Hessian is the platform for automating business operations with AI agents. We forward deploy on-site to map the work, and build the agents on our platform to run it end-to-end. Unlike off-the-shelf tools that don't know your business, you get a partner that owns the software and operates it every day. Why now? Coding agents have matured to the point where, combined with our engineering judgment we've built across a decade of shipping production systems, we can scale forward-deployed engagements with minimal headcount. Furthermore, our FDE agents and tooling will accelerate how quickly we automate workflows on our platform. We're already saving our customers hundreds of hours a month. Trillions of dollars a year are spent on knowledge work, and we're building the standard for how every company deploys, operates, and governs the AI agents that do it.

Hessian's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Hessian, Spring 2026 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Hessian

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Forward-deployed AI Agents

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

We build Hessian, a platform that deploys AI agents on-site at businesses to automate their operations end-to-end. We map how they work, then run custom AI agents on our platform that own and operate real workflows every day, saving hundreds of hours monthly.

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

All three founders live in San Francisco and the company is based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we all live and where many enterprise customers and AI talent are. Staying here keeps us close to both users and engineers.

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 Hessian YC application?

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