Harbor YC Application

Spring 2026Active

Harbor went through Y Combinator in the Spring 2026 batch as a Healthcare 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: Spring 2026
Industry: Healthcare
Team size: 2
Status: Active
Launched: 2026

Founders

Albert CaiFounder
Nathan H. LeungFounder

What Harbor does

Harbor is building an AI-native contract research organization (CRO) for clinical trials. We started with an AI-native system of record for clinical trial data (electronic data capture system), grew the software business to seven trials and ~$187k in contracted software revenue over the next twelve months, then expanded into full-service trial execution and signed our first CRO contract worth $1.93M over three years. Clinical trials consume 45% of all new drug and device development spend. While some of that goes to software, sites, and patients, the largest line items are services: project management, monitoring, data management, site coordination, source verification, query resolution, record reconciliation, and analysis. Today, drug and device companies outsource clinical operations to legacy CROs and their massive teams, which is why the CRO market is $82B annually. Harbor delivers the regulated services companies buy from legacy CROs, but built around our AI-native system of record from day one. Our software already automates the core data workflows: study build, data capture, query generation, monitoring, signing, and database lock. Because we own the system of record, we can expand into the surrounding service workflows: site contracting and billing, subject engagement and retention, statistics, reporting, and more. We built Harbor because we lived through the problem. Albert spent four years in clinical trials and regulatory strategy at a medical device startup, taking an unproven wearable from first-in-human trials to FDA authorization. Nate brings the technical depth, having built scalable software at Google and Ramp and served as employee #1 at a previous YC startup.

Harbor's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Harbor, Spring 2026 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Harbor

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

AI-native CRO for clinical trial operations

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

We are building an AI-native contract research organization product that starts with an AI-native system of record for clinical trial data. Our product automates the core data workflows like study build, data capture, query generation, monitoring, and database lock, replacing legacy CRO software and enabling us to deliver full clinical trial execution services.

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

We live and work in San Francisco, CA, and the company will be based there after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we live and has a strong healthcare and AI startup ecosystem. Being here puts us close to early customers and partners in clinical trials.

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 Harbor YC application?

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