Mattermost YC Application

Summer 2012Active

Mattermost went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2012 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 2012
Industry: B2BProductivity
Team size: 120
Status: Active
Launched: 2023

Founders

Ian TienFounder/CEO

What Mattermost does

Mattermost provides secure collaboration for technical and operational teams that work in environments with complex nation-state level security and trust requirements. We serve technology, public sector, national defense and financial services industries with customers ranging from tech giants, to the world’s largest banks, to the U.S. Department of Defense and governmental agencies around the world. Our self-hosted and cloud offerings provide team messaging, file sharing, integrations, audio and screen share, workflow automation and project management on an open source platform deployed by the world’s most secure and mission critical organizations. We co-build the future of collaboration with over 4,000 open source project contributors who’ve provided over 30,000 code improvements towards our shared product vision, which is translated into 20 languages.

Mattermost's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Mattermost, Summer 2012 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Mattermost

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Secure Collaboration for Technical Teams

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

We build Mattermost, a secure collaboration platform tailored to technical and operational teams facing complex security requirements. Our product offers self-hosted and cloud messaging, file sharing, integrations, audio and screen sharing, workflow automation, and project management on an open source platform. It serves organizations needing a secure alternative to general-purpose chat tools, including government and defense clients.

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

We live in and operate from Palo Alto, CA, with a distributed remote team. Post-YC, the company would remain based in Palo Alto while continuing a remote-friendly model.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Palo Alto gives us direct access to engineering talent and the broader tech ecosystem. Being remote-first helps us attract contributors and clients worldwide, especially given the global security focus of our product.

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 Mattermost YC application?

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