Simmer YC Application

Winter 2019Inactive

Simmer went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2019 batch as a Consumer 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: ConsumerTravel, Leisure and Tourism
Team size: 2
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2018

Founders

Richard WuFounder
Vaibhav VermaFounder

What Simmer does

Today’s delivery apps are bad experiences. First, you have to choose a delivery platform. Then, you scroll through dozens of restaurant and finally, you decide between hundreds of dishes. And even if you choose the right restaurant, you might get the wrong dishes. On Simmer, we tell you the best reviewed dishes across all delivery apps. You first choose your dish on Simmer, and the delivery companies just take care of logistics. Through this, we are able to charge affiliate revenue for every order. No one has done this before because determining a city’s best dishes requires millions of users to leave dish reviews. Our unique insight is that all the data required already exists online, in blog posts, social media, newspapers. It just needs to be aggregated, analyzed, and indexed. We have built a custom sentiment analyzer to do just that. Our vision is to be the first place people go when ordering delivery. The founders have backgrounds in engineering and data science from UChicago (their alma mater) and they have both worked at food tech companies like Lolli and Pops and Blue Apron.

Simmer's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Simmer

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

We do reviews for dishes.

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

We built an app that aggregates reviews for individual dishes across all delivery platforms. Instead of choosing a restaurant, users find the best-reviewed dishes in their city and order them through delivery services. We analyze millions of online mentions with a custom sentiment analyzer to surface these top dishes.

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

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

Explain your decision regarding location.

We are based in San Francisco because it is a hub for food tech innovation and delivery services. Being here puts us close to our markets, partners, and talent.

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 Simmer YC application?

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