PipelineDB YC Application

Winter 2014Acquired

PipelineDB went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2014 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 2014
Industry: B2BInfrastructure
Team size: 2
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2013

Founders

Derek NelsonFounder

What PipelineDB does

PipelineDB is an open-source PostgreSQL extension that enables realtime reporting use cases by continuously aggregating large streams of time series data down into summary data. It shines the most at larger scales, where storing lots of raw time-series data and aggregating it over and over again becomes inefficient. The amount of value that PipelineDB adds is directly proportional to the amount of continuous aggregation that an analytics use case can benefit from. PipelineDB should be used for analytics use cases that only require summary data, like realtime reporting dashboards. PipelineDB is not a good fit for exploratory analytics on siloed datasets.

PipelineDB's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

PipelineDB, Winter 2014 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

PipelineDB

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Open-source time-series data analytics for PostgreSQL

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

We built an open-source extension for PostgreSQL that continuously aggregates time-series data as it streams in. Instead of repeatedly scanning huge raw data sets for real-time analytics, our system maintains summary views, making realtime reporting faster and more efficient. It's designed for large-scale time-series use cases, especially realtime dashboards.

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

We live in Los Angeles, CA, and plan to keep PipelineDB based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We built this product where we live and work; staying in LA lets us move fast without relocating or losing focus on the problem and our early users.

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 PipelineDB YC application?

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