Hoss YC Application

Winter 2020Acquired

Hoss went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2020 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 2020
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 3
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2020

Founders

Cameron CooperFounder
Trung VuFounder
Matt HawkinsFounder

What Hoss does

Hoss is a developer experience platform that gives teams the essential tools they need to deliver a world-class customer experience. API-driven companies like Xendit, AssemblyAI, and Zentail trust Hoss to help them better acquire, understand, and support their customers. With Hoss, teams can offer superior documentation and developer content, gain deep visibility into how customers are using their API, monitoring third-party APIs, and provide robust and customizable developer dashboards. Hoss is backed by top investors like Y Combinator, Liquid2, FundersClub, and Soma Capital.

Hoss's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Hoss, Winter 2020 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Hoss

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

The developer experience platform

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

We built a developer experience platform that helps API-driven teams deliver better customer experiences. Our product offers tools for documentation, customer usage insights, third-party API monitoring, and customizable developer dashboards. It's designed to help engineering, product, and design teams understand and support their API consumers better.

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

We live in Austin, TX; the company operates remotely with the team here. After YC, we will stay based in Austin and remote.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Austin has a strong engineering and startup community, and being remote lets us recruit and work flexibly. It fits our team's location and working style and keeps overhead low.

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 Hoss YC application?

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