SharpestMinds YC Application

Winter 2018Acquired

SharpestMinds went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2018 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 2018
Industry: B2BRecruiting and Talent
Team size: 4
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2017

Founders

Edouard HarrisFounder/CEO

What SharpestMinds does

SharpestMinds is a mentorship program for data scientists based on income share agreements. Experienced engineers mentor aspiring data scientists, who then pay the engineers back a percentage of their first year's salary after they're hired. SharpestMinds mentors come from world leading AI groups at top companies including Apple, Uber, Tesla, Facebook and Amazon.

SharpestMinds's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

SharpestMinds, Winter 2018 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

SharpestMinds

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Peer-to-peer mentorship with income-share agreements

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

We built a mentorship platform where experienced data scientists from top AI companies mentor aspiring data scientists. Instead of upfront fees, mentees pay a percentage of their first-year salary after they get hired, aligning incentives and lowering barriers to learning data science.

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

We live in Toronto, Canada and the company is based remotely with the team primarily in Toronto. After YC we would continue based in Toronto and remote.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Toronto is where we live, and the team is here. The city is a growing hub for AI talent and remote work lets us access mentors from Apple, Uber, Tesla, Facebook, and Amazon worldwide.

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 SharpestMinds YC application?

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