LendEDU YC Application

Winter 2016Acquired

LendEDU went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2016 batch as a Education 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 2016
Industry: Education
Team size: 10
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2015

Founders

Matthew LenhardFounder/CTO

What LendEDU does

LendEDU was Co-Founded by Nate Matherson and Matt Lenhard in 2014. LendEDU is a personal finance comparison website. Our goal is to create transparency in a number of markets including student lending, unsecured lending, auto lending, banking, credit cards, and some misc. insurance products. LendEDU participated in Y Combinator's W16 program in Mountain View California. LendEDU has been featured and mentioned on a variety of websites including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, CNBC, Bloomberg, USA Today, MSN, Fox News, CBS News, NBC News, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Bustle, and roughly 500 other media outlets. LendEDU is a graduate of the Iowa Startup Accelerator. LendEDU received seed funding from Built By Iowa, the Iowa Startup Accelerator Fund, and others. We'd love to tell you about LendEDU! Email with any questions, comments, or criticism (really!). Pronounced "Lend E D U", our website is located at LendEDU.com!

LendEDU's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

LendEDU, Winter 2016 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

LendEDU

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Marketplace for consumer financial products

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

We built LendEDU as a marketplace and comparison site for consumer financial products. Users can transparently compare student loans, personal loans, auto loans, credit cards, banking products, and some insurance offerings. Our goal is to make opaque financial markets simpler and more transparent for consumers who are looking for better options.

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

We're based in Hoboken, NJ now and would move to Mountain View, CA for YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We want to be at YC's Mountain View program to tap into their network and experience in scaling startups. Relocating there for the program gives us access to resources and mentors we can't get locally in Hoboken.

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 LendEDU YC application?

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