Onlook YC Application

Winter 2025Active

Onlook went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2025 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: Winter 2025
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 4
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Daniel FarrellFounder

What Onlook does

Onlook is the fastest way for anyone to build, deploy, and iterate on websites and web apps. We built an open-source, visual editor for code that merges design, development, and AI. Since launching, Onlook hit #1 on Hacker News, was the #1 trending repo on GitHub - above DeepSeek - and has earned over 8,500 GitHub stars. Founded by Daniel Farrell, a designer of 10+ years and former Head of Growth, and Kiet Ho, an ex-Amazon and ex-ServiceNow engineer, Onlook is on a mission to finally solve the gap between design and development.

Onlook's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Onlook, Winter 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Onlook

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Cursor for Designers

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

We're building an open-source, visual editor that lets designers and developers build, deploy, and iterate on websites and web apps faster by merging design, code, and AI in one tool. It replaces the back-and-forth between design and development with a shared workspace that feels like using a cursor, but for design and code together.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and would remain based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we all live and where the design and engineering communities we work with are. Staying here lets us stay close to potential users and partners while recruiting engineers and designers locally.

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 Onlook YC application?

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