Humble Bundle YC Application

Winter 2011Acquired

Humble Bundle went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2011 batch as a Consumer 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 2011
Industry: ConsumerGaming
Team size: 100
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2012

Founders

Jeffrey RosenFounder/CEO
John GrahamFounder

What Humble Bundle does

Humble Bundle is a distribution platform selling games, ebooks, software, and other digital content. Since Humble’s founding in 2010, our mission has been to support charity (“Humble”) while providing awesome content to customers at great prices (“Bundle”). We started by offering only game bundles, but have branched out to include an online storefront, a monthly subscription service, a publishing initiative, and lots more. We have raised over $250 million for charity. And we now have over 500,000 subscribers to our Humble Monthly. Join our award winning team by checking out our careers page at

Humble Bundle's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Humble Bundle, Winter 2011 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Humble Bundle

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Pay what you want for awesome games

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

Humble Bundle is a platform where we sell bundles of games, ebooks, software, and other digital content that customers can pay what they want for, while a portion goes to charity. We started with just game bundles but now also offer a storefront, subscription service, and publishing.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and plan to base the company here after YC as well.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we live and where the digital content and gaming industry has a strong presence, which helps with both talent and partnerships.

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 Humble Bundle YC application?

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