RankScience YC Application

Winter 2017Active

RankScience went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2017 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 2017
Industry: B2BMarketing
Team size: 16
Status: Active
Launched: 2016

Founders

Ryan BednarFounder/CEO

What RankScience does

RankScience is the #1 trusted agency to grow SEO traffic for venture-backed Silicon Valley startups to the Fortune 500.

RankScience's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

RankScience, Winter 2017 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

RankScience

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Automated SEO for Startups

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

We built RankScience to run SEO experiments automatically, helping startups test and improve their search rankings without needing large SEO teams. Our system uses AI and NLP to generate and evaluate SEO variants, deciding which changes impact rankings positively.

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

We live in San Francisco and New York and operate remotely across both cities. After YC, we plan to continue with the same distributed setup, remaining flexible and close to key startup hubs.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Both Ryan and Dillon are based in these cities, allowing us to tap into talent and customer networks in major startup markets. Remote work lets us hire and serve clients across the US effectively.

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 RankScience YC application?

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