MarketBrief YC Application

Summer 2011Inactive

MarketBrief went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2011 batch as a Fintech 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 2011
Industry: FintechConsumer Finance
Team size: 2
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2012

Founders

Chris AuerFounder

What MarketBrief does

MarketBrief analyzes 30,000+ trusted documents per day looking for relevant business headlines and breaking news all within fractions of a second.

MarketBrief's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

MarketBrief, Summer 2011 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

MarketBrief

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Generate stories from SEC filings.

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

We built MarketBrief to analyze over 30,000 SEC filings daily and generate business headlines and breaking news stories in seconds. Our product scans dense financial documents and extracts relevant news that investors and analysts need to see quickly, cutting through noise and delays in traditional news sources.

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

We live in New York City and San Francisco. After YC, we plan to base the company primarily in San Francisco, where we can be closer to the startup ecosystem and potential investors.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We have co-founders split between NYC and San Francisco to stay connected to both financial centers, but YC is based in the Bay Area. Moving there after YC makes sense to stay engaged with the tech community and fundraising.

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 MarketBrief YC application?

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