Make School YC Application

Winter 2012Inactive

Make School went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2012 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 2012
Industry: Education
Team size: 45
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2011

Founders

Ashutosh DesaiFounder
Jeremy RossmannFounder

What Make School does

Make School is redesigning college for the 21st century. Our bachelor's degree program combines liberal arts, computer science theory, software development, and character development with an emphasis on preparing students for successful careers as software engineers, product managers, or entrepreneurs. Our alumni work at Facebook, Google, Apple, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Lyft and more. Our college is accessible to students of all backgrounds, 40% are underrepresented minority students and 50% come from low income families. Students pay tuition as a percentage of earnings once they are employed, directly aligning their incentives with ours. Make School is funded by Learn Capital, Y Combinator, Mitch Kapor, Alexis Ohanian, Tim Draper and others.

Make School's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Make School, Winter 2012 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Make School

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Redesigning college for the 21st century

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

We built a bachelor's degree program that combines liberal arts, computer science theory, software development, and character development. It prepares students from diverse backgrounds to become software engineers, product managers, or entrepreneurs, with tuition paid as a percentage of their earnings after they get jobs.

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

We are based in San Francisco, CA, and we plan to continue building the company here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where our team and core users are. It's the center of the tech industry and startup ecosystem, which is critical for placing our students in real jobs.

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 Make School YC application?

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