hillclimb YC Application

Fall 2025Active

hillclimb went through Y Combinator in the Fall 2025 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: Fall 2025
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 4
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Jun ParkFounder

What hillclimb does

We work with frontier AI labs to help train their agents to become AI research scientists

hillclimb's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

hillclimb, Fall 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

hillclimb

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Training Data for Recursive Self-Improvement

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

We build training data specifically designed to help AI agents improve themselves recursively. Our product helps frontier AI labs train their agents to become AI research scientists by providing targeted reinforcement learning data tailored to self-improving AI. This is a unique type of dataset built around complex agent behaviors, not just static examples.

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.

San Francisco puts us close to key AI labs and talent, which is critical given the specialized nature of our work with frontier AI research teams.

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 hillclimb YC application?

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