Mixpanel YC Application

Summer 2009Active

Mixpanel went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2009 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 2009
Industry: B2BAnalytics
Team size: 410
Status: Active
Launched: 2012

Founders

Suhail DoshiFounder/CEO
Tim TrefrenFounder

What Mixpanel does

Mixpanel is analytics for builders that need answers from their data at their fingertips. When everyone in the organization can see - and learn from - the impact of their work, they are poised to make better decisions. Companies like OpenAI, Netflix, Pinterest, sweetgreen, CNN, samsara, Uber, and Yelp use Mixpanel to understand their customers, measure progress, and endeavor to make better decisions.

Mixpanel's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Mixpanel, Summer 2009 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Mixpanel

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Event analytics for builders that need answers

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

We build Mixpanel, a product analytics platform that helps engineers and product teams track how users engage with their apps via event data. Unlike traditional analytics, we focus on actionable insights so teams can make decisions based on user behavior in real time.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and the company would stay based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where the customers and tech ecosystem are. It lets us hire the right people and stay close to early users who care about detailed analytics.

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 Mixpanel YC application?

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