Searchlight YC Application

Profile updated October 19, 2026Winter 2019Acquired

San Francisco, CA, USA

Searchlight went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2019 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 2019
Industry: B2BRecruiting and Talent
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Team size: 20
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2018

Founders

Anna WangFounder
Kerry WangFounder (acquired)

Searchlight's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Searchlight, Winter 2019 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Searchlight

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Talent AI improving quality of hire

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

We built an AI-powered SaaS platform that helps companies improve their quality of hire by using machine learning to score and recommend job candidates more effectively. Our product analyzes historical hiring data and candidate fit signals to surface the best matches, making recruiting decisions more data-driven and less reliant on gut feel.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and plan to keep the company based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco has the right talent pool and customer base for recruiting technology. We want to be where the market and top recruiters are concentrated.

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 Searchlight YC application?

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