Riviera YC Application

Winter 2025Active

Riviera went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2025 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 2025
Industry: B2B
Team size: 2
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Shaun LaneFounder
Daniel TyshlerFounder

What Riviera does

Riviera builds AI Employees for Hotels. Our first agent is a hotel phone receptionist that lets hotels spend less time answering phone calls and more time helping customers. Our system handles front-desk inquiries, in-room dining orders, and reservations. It answers every question instantly and in any language, 24/7. We are solving a problem that older phone systems and IVRs can't: customers hate not being able to talk to someone immediately, but most travel businesses can’t dedicate additional staff to manage phone lines. Voice AI has always seemed out of reach because the technology infrastructure in the travel industry is often fragmented, with reservation systems, loyalty programs, and in-house operations software that weren’t designed with voice AI in mind. Riviera addresses this by integrating seamlessly with existing software providers and using human-sounding voice models that are highly trained on data specific to each business type and department. Hotels spend hundreds of billions annually on staffing and risk losing potential revenue when phone lines are overwhelmed or callers hang up. By enabling them to handle unlimited calls, day or night, Riviera unlocks additional revenue and eases labor challenges.

Riviera's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Riviera, Winter 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Riviera

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

AI Employees for Hotels

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

We build AI employees for hotels. Our first product is a voice AI receptionist that handles phone calls for hotel front desks, taking reservations, answering inquiries, and processing in-room dining orders in any language, 24/7. It integrates with existing hotel software so it can speak knowledgeably about each hotel's specific operations.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and we plan to base the company here after YC as well.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco has the tech talent and startup ecosystem we need. Being here also keeps us close to travel industry partners and potential early customers.

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 Riviera YC application?

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