Karate Labs YC Application

Winter 2022Active

Karate Labs went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2022 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 2022
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 2
Status: Active
Launched: 2022

Founders

Kapil BakshiFounder
Peter ThomasFounder

What Karate Labs does

Karate is an open-source unified test automation platform combining API testing, API performance testing, API mocks & UI testing. 1.5 million monthly downloads, used by 500+ companies including 76 of the Fortune 500, are a testimony of Karate removing friction from the developer experience (DX). We did this by making it exceptionally simple to write tests (low code), simulating end-user workflows accurately, re-using API tests as performance tests, parallel execution, and collaboration via Git. Staying true to Karate’s “LOCAL-FIRST” approach (user data remains within the customer's firewall, ensuring security and addressing any concerns), we launched the official Karate plugins (IntelliJ and VS Code) for frictionless onboarding, simplified installations, configuration, and maintenance. Our plugins include all Karate open-source features, including exploring of APIs, and premium features (testing for Async APIs, API documentation, API data importer and more).

Karate Labs's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Karate Labs, Winter 2022 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Karate Labs

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Open-source API & UI test automation

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

We make Karate, a unified open-source test automation platform that covers API testing, performance testing, mocks, and UI testing. It simplifies writing tests with low code, enables reusing API tests for performance, supports parallel execution, and integrates deeply with developer workflows through plugins for IntelliJ and VS Code.

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

We live in Wilmington, DE, USA, and work remotely. After YC, the company would remain remote, based where we live now.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose to stay remote and based here because our work is fully distributed, and our users are global. This lets us focus on product without needing to relocate or build a physical office.

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 Karate Labs YC application?

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