Protobase YC Application

Winter 2020Inactive

Protobase went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2020 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 2020
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 1
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2023

Founders

Ben VogtFounder

What Protobase does

Protobase is a 10x, next-generation spreadsheet. It lets you use things like sheets, grids, and formulas, with better structures like tables, queries, filters, search, sorting, and more.

Protobase's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Protobase, Winter 2020 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Protobase

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

A next-gen spreadsheet for engineering teams

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

We built Protobase to replace traditional spreadsheets with something more powerful for engineering, product, and design teams. It combines sheets and formulas with better structures like tables, queries, filters, search, and sorting to solve workflows those teams struggle to manage in Excel or Google Sheets.

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

We live in Chicago, IL and the company is based here as well. Post-YC, we plan to continue operating from Chicago.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Chicago is home and where we've built our network. We can run and iterate on the product here without needing to relocate to a major tech hub.

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 Protobase YC application?

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