Kitemaker YC Application

Winter 2021Acquired

Kitemaker went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2021 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 2021
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 5
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2021

Founders

Sigurd SeteklevFounder
Kevin SimonsFounder

What Kitemaker does

Kitemaker is a faster and more collaborative alternative to Jira optimized for remote teams. It's helping teams spend less time and effort on collaboration by providing a place for discussing and documenting initiatives, it collects activities and discussions across tools, and it's fast and simple to use. Unlike tools like Jira and Notion, our primary focus is helping software development teams spend less time coordinating across tools and roles so they have more time figuring out and building the things their users want.

Kitemaker's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Kitemaker, Winter 2021 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Kitemaker

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

A faster and collaborative alternative to Jira

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

We built Kitemaker as a tool to help remote software teams spend less time coordinating across tools and roles. It combines discussion, documentation, and activity from multiple tools into one fast and simple workspace focused on software development. Unlike Jira, it's built specifically for remote teams to collaborate more efficiently without the usual overhead.

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

We live in Oslo, Norway and the company is based there, but our team works remotely. After YC, we would remain remote and flexible, likely keeping Oslo as a base since that's where we currently operate.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Being based in Oslo with a remote team lets us tap into local talent and maintain focus while staying connected with users globally. Remote work is core to our product, so we live it ourselves, which helps us build something genuinely useful for distributed software 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 Kitemaker YC application?

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