Protocol Labs YC Application

Summer 2014Active

Protocol Labs went through Y Combinator in the Summer 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: Summer 2014
Industry: B2BInfrastructure
Team size: 130
Status: Active
Launched: 2014

Founders

Juan BenetFounder/CEO, Engineer

What Protocol Labs does

Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and many more. We aim to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology. Some of our projects. IPFS makes the web work peer-to-peer. IPFS is a protocol for storing, addressing, and transferring data, designed to replace HTTP in many contexts. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify and link to information. IPFS is one of the leading protocols of Web3, crypto, and the decentralized web movements. IPFS serves millions of end users and tens of thousands of developers. It powers the websites and applications of small startups, large enterprises, and even blockchains. Filecoin is a decentralized storage network, designed to store humanity's most important information. Filecoin is a cryptocurrency incentivized decentralized market, where storage providers earn filecoin tokens for renting out storage space. (Think airbnb for cloud storage). Filecoin is one of the leading projects in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space.

Protocol Labs's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Protocol Labs, Summer 2014 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Protocol Labs

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Protocol Labs makes internet protocols: IPFS, Filecoin, and more.

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

We build open-source protocols for decentralized data storage and distribution. IPFS replaces HTTP by enabling peer-to-peer content addressing and data sharing, powering websites and apps. Filecoin adds a cryptocurrency-backed decentralized storage market where users rent out disk space, creating an incentivized system to store data securely and redundantly.

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

We live in Palo Alto, CA, and have distributed remote contributors globally. The company will be based in Palo Alto after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Palo Alto is a tech hub with access to talent and investors. Our team is also remote, so we leverage flexible locations for contributors while keeping HQ in Palo Alto.

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 Protocol Labs YC application?

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