Reality Defender YC Application

Winter 2022Active

Reality Defender 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: B2BSecurity
Team size: 54
Status: Active
Launched: 2022

Founders

Ben ColmanCEO & Co-Founder

What Reality Defender does

Reality Defender is the market leader in deepfake detection, protecting enterprises and governments from realtime deepfake and agentic fraud. Sign up for free access at Website: Contact: YC AMA: Awards: 2025 - Gartner: Recognized as Market Leader in Deepfake Detection 2025 - JPMorgan: Inducted into Hall of Innovation 2025 - World Economic Forum: Named Technology Pioneer 2025 - USA DIU + Japan MOD: 1st Place "Global Innovation Challenge" 2024 - RSA Conference: 1st Place “Most Innovative Startup” 2024 - SINET16 Innovator Award 2023 - SXSW 1st Place "Artificial Intelligence, Voice, & Robotics Technologies"

Reality Defender's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Reality Defender

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Enterprise Deepfake Detection

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

We build Reality Defender, a real-time deepfake detection platform protecting enterprises and governments from fraud involving manipulated audio, video, and synthetic media. Our product analyzes media inputs to identify deepfakes and agentic fraud attempts automatically, helping security teams stay ahead of evolving threats.

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

We live and work in New York, NY, and would keep the company based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We picked New York because it's our home base and a major hub for our target customers in government and enterprise security.

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 Reality Defender YC application?

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