OwnLocal YC Application

Winter 2010Active

OwnLocal 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: B2BMarketing
Team size: 45
Status: Active
Launched: 2012

Founders

Jason Novek

What OwnLocal does

OwnLocal works with more than 3,300+ local media companies to transform their legacy customers base into sophisticated local digital advertisers. Our technology has been designed to work seamlessly with your current sales processes and makes it simple for any newspaper, radio station, or broadcast television station to help your local customers win online.

OwnLocal's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

OwnLocal

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Automate marketing for local SMBs

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

We build software that local media companies use to automate digital marketing for their small business advertisers. Our platform plugs into newspapers, radio, and TV stations' sales processes to turn their traditional local advertisers into digital advertisers, making it easy for local businesses to win online.

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

We live in Austin, TX, and the company is based here now. Post-YC, we plan to stay in Austin but may expand our team to other locations as we grow.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Austin has a strong tech talent pool and a growing startup ecosystem. It's also home to many media companies we work with or can reach easily. We want to remain close to our early customers and keep our costs manageable.

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 OwnLocal YC application?

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