Litmus YC Application

Summer 2026Active

New York City

Litmus went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2026 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: Summer 2026
Industry: B2B
Location: New York City
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2026

Founders

Shaivi RauFounder/CEO
Elena ZhaoFounder/CTO

What Litmus does

Litmus is building the most accurate framework for evaluating and benchmarking human capability, starting with software. AI will compound small differences in human capability into increasingly large differences in what people can accomplish, while making existing static benchmarks obsolete. Software is already there: AI can hill-climb any output-based evaluation, while the ability to direct it is becoming the defining advantage. Litmus applies the same approach we already use for model evals to humans - creating world-like environments, and inspecting trajectory instead of just output. Every knowledge industry will soon face the same problem. We build Litmus to tell you what humans are capable of. We're already helping build frontier technical teams at Mercor, Composio, Neo Scholars, and more.

Litmus's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Litmus, Summer 2026 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Litmus

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Evals for humans

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

We built Litmus to evaluate and benchmark human capability, starting with software engineers. AI is quickly making traditional benchmarks outdated - models can optimize for static outputs, but directing them is the real skill. Litmus creates world-like environments for candidates, then inspects their trajectory and decisions instead of grading just the output. Our platform already helps companies like Mercor, Composio, and Neo Scholars build technical teams by showing what engineers are actually capable of.

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

We live in New York City, NY. The company will stay based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

NYC is where our team lives, and it's a strong hub for both talent and our recruiting customers. Our early customers are in North America.

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 Litmus YC application?

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