Kestral YC Application

Spring 2025Active

Kestral went through Y Combinator in the Spring 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: Spring 2025
Industry: B2B
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Brian KimFounder
Bernard XieFounder

What Kestral does

Kestral makes it clear what your customers want most, prioritizes those tasks for highest leverage, and closes the loop with those customers. We (Brian and Bernard) have been close friends since university, and most recently worked together at Asana, leading AI and Authorization efforts. There we realized AI can completely disrupt the $50B Work Management Market, but it required a fresh start. What work we even choose to manage in the first place is critical, and the most important insights from customers are silo-ed in sales/CS while R&D gives their best shot at roadmaps meant to deliver impact. Significant requests sit in a backlog, duplicate asks flood the system, months wasted on "strategic investments". We want to bridge this gap. This message is resonating with heads of sales, heads of product, CEOs, as well as individuals, all trying to make sure the most important things get done, with less wasted effort and more revenue/retention. Kestral works by automatically take in customer data like sales call transcripts & feature request messages and a team of agents: 1. analyze them for actionable takeaways, deal blockers, and nice to haves 2. consolidate them and manage all the asks with citations 3. prioritize them by impact and frequency to cut through the noise so you can see the biggest opportunities clearly 4. connect them to your existing strategic roadmap so when the work gets done, we can automatically follow back up with your customers and win them over This is just step one of our mission to revolutionize how work gets done -- starting with what we choose to work on, and hope you follow us along for the ride!

Kestral's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Kestral, Spring 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Kestral

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

We automate your entire product development lifecycle.

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

We built a product that automatically ingests customer data like sales call transcripts and feature requests, then uses a team of AI agents to analyze, consolidate, and prioritize these asks by impact and frequency. We connect these priorities directly to your strategic roadmap and automate follow-ups to customers when work is completed. This helps teams focus on what matters most and close the feedback loop with customers, reducing wasted effort and improving retention.

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

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

Explain your decision regarding location.

We live in San Francisco because it's where we built our initial team and have access to AI and product talent. Staying here after YC makes sense to maintain continuity and tap into the local tech ecosystem.

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 Kestral YC application?

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