Socialmoth YC Application

Winter 2007Inactive

Socialmoth went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2007 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 2007
Industry: ConsumerSocial
Team size: 2
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2012

Founders

Paul McKellarFounder/Owner

What Socialmoth does

Socialmoth is a community to post your thoughts anonymously. You can view postings (mostly gossip and secrets) from the whole community as well as get updates for when someone in your group of friends makes a post. The vast majority of their members appear to be women, with over 600 posts being made per day. These guys will also be taking a new spin on their idea, launching Disenchat.com, a place to post anonymously about your workplace. The system will verify your organization by email address (like Facebook) and let you start riffing. Outsiders will be able to see the existence of the forum and volume of posting, but not the specific comments.

Socialmoth's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Socialmoth, Winter 2007 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Socialmoth

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Anonymous community for posting thoughts

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

We built Socialmoth, a platform where people post their thoughts anonymously. Most posts are gossip or secrets, and users can see posts from the whole community or get updates when friends post. We are also launching Disenchat.com, which lets people post anonymously about their workplace, verified by email domain. Outsiders see the forum exists and how active it is but not the posts themselves.

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

We are based in San Francisco, CA, and the company would stay here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is the right place because that's where the team lives and where most of our early users are.

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 Socialmoth YC application?

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