Optimizely YC Application

Winter 2010Acquired

Optimizely went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2010 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 2010
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 1500
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2012

Founders

Pete KoomenFounder

What Optimizely does

At Optimizely, we're on a mission to help people unlock their digital potential. We do that by reinventing how marketing and product teams work to create and optimize digital experiences across all channels. With Optimizely One, our industry-first operating system for marketers, we offer teams flexibility and choice to build their stack their way with our fully SaaS, fully decoupled, and highly composable solution. We help companies around the world orchestrate their entire content lifecycle, monetize every digital experience and experiment across all customer touchpoints - all through Optimizely One, the leading digital experience platform that powers every phase of the marketing lifecycle through a single, AI-accelerated workflow. Optimizely has nearly 1500 employees across our 21 global offices and has 700+ partners. We are proud to help more than 10,000 businesses, including H&M, PayPal, Zoom, and Toyota, enrich their customer lifetime value, increase revenue and grow their brands. At Optimizely, we live each day with a simple philosophy: large enough to serve, small enough to care. Learn more at optimizely.com.

Optimizely's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Optimizely, Winter 2010 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Optimizely

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

The first all-in-one operating system for marketing

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

We're building Optimizely One, a digital experience platform that helps marketing and product teams create, deliver, and optimize digital experiences across all channels from a single interface. It combines content management, experimentation, and personalization in one SaaS platform that customers can customize and extend as needed.

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

We live and work in San Francisco, CA, and after YC we would continue to be based there.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is the center of technology and marketing innovation where our early customers and partners are. It gives us access to talent and allows us to stay close to leading companies experimenting with digital experiences.

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 Optimizely YC application?

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