Lob YC Application

Summer 2013Active

Lob went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2013 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 2013
Industry: B2BMarketing
Team size: 150
Status: Active
Launched: 2013

Founders

Leore Avidar

What Lob does

Lob provides the building blocks for developers to automate the offline world. Enterprise companies use Lob’s suite of APIs to mail fully dynamic and personalized customer communications with print media. We provide insight into deliverability with piece-by-piece tracing and utilize our proprietary Print Delivery Network to streamline production across fully redundant nodes all over the country. Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Lob is venture backed by Y Combinator, Polaris Partners, Floodgate, and First Round Capital. Find out more about Lob and what we’re up to by following our blog: or visiting our website:

Lob's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Lob, Summer 2013 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Lob

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Automate direct mail with developer APIs

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

We provide APIs that let companies automate printing and mailing physical customer communications. Our platform handles dynamic personalized print media, tracking each piece's deliverability, and routes print jobs through our nationwide network to ensure fast, reliable delivery.

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

We live and work in New York City and San Francisco, and plan to base the company in San Francisco after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose San Francisco as our post-YC base to be close to enterprise customers, engineering talent, and the YC community itself, while also maintaining a presence in New York for market and sales reasons.

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 Lob YC application?

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