Ponyrun YC Application

Winter 2022Active

Ponyrun went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2022 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 2022
Industry: B2BOperations
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2022

Founders

LIUSHA HUANGFounder
Neil ChenFounder

What Ponyrun does

Ponyrun evaluates people for you. We help you answer questions like: Should you sell to them? Are they a good fit for your product? Should you interview them? Its easy to use. Give it a search URL or a list of people. Tell Ponyrun what you want to evaluate the person on. And Ponyrun will go through the person's information (e.g. LinkedIn), and evaluate them.

Ponyrun's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Ponyrun, Winter 2022 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Ponyrun

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Automate prospect research at scale

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

We built Ponyrun to automate evaluating prospects for sales and recruiting. Users give us a search URL or list of people and specify evaluation criteria. Ponyrun crawls their public info - LinkedIn profiles, job titles, experience - and rates how well they fit the user's goals. This replaces hours of manual research with an AI-assisted process tailored to what exactly the user cares about.

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

We are based in San Francisco, CA, though the team is fully remote. We would stay in SF post-YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

SF is a strong place for early-stage AI startups and sales tools. It also allows us to stay close to investors and users. Being remote lets us attract talent where it lives, but SF remains our base for YC and network reasons.

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 Ponyrun YC application?

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