Outschool YC Application

Winter 2016Active

Outschool went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2016 batch as a Education 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 2016
Industry: Education
Team size: 107
Status: Active
Launched: 2015

Founders

Nicholas GrandyFounder

What Outschool does

Outschool is an innovative education platform that offers a variety of engaging, small-group classes online. Unlike traditional classes, Outschool classes give kids the unique opportunity to explore their interests in-depth via interactive, live video by experienced, independent educators. When Outschool was founded in 2015, homeschoolers were the first to discover our classes, but it wasn’t long before kids in conventional schools began supplementing their education with fun and unique, interest-based classes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Outschool became vital to families who wanted to keep kids learning, social, and pursuing their passions. Today, Outschool offers more than 140,000 live online classes to more than 1,000,000 learners in 183 countries worldwide.

Outschool's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Outschool, Winter 2016 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Outschool

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

A live online platform for kids' classes

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

Outschool is a platform that hosts live, small-group online classes for kids age 3 to 18 taught by experienced independent educators. Our product connects kids with classes that let them explore their interests interactively through live video.

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

We live in San Francisco and the company is based here as well, but our team is largely remote.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco offers access to talent and the startup ecosystem. We also support remote work, reflecting where our team lives and where learners are.

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 Outschool YC application?

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