Trellus YC Application

Winter 2022Active

Trellus went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2022 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 2022
Industry: B2BSales
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2022

Founders

Ajinkya NeneFounder
Craig BonnoitFounder

What Trellus does

Trellus delivers simple coaching prompts to your salespeople in real time as they speak to prospects. Prompts are delivered in response to what is happening in a conversation. The goal of these prompts is to get more reps achieving quota and to reduce the time it takes to start attaining quota. Prompts are action-oriented steps toward empathetic listening and effective discovery. Examples include 'pause' (when talking too much), 'set next steps' (when wrapping up a call without them), and 'ask current state' (when encountering objections). Trellus is backed by Y Combinator and founded by former MIT researchers.

Trellus's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Trellus, Winter 2022 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Trellus

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Real-time sales coach for SDRs

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

We built a product that listens in on sales conversations and delivers coaching prompts to sales development reps in real time. These prompts guide reps to talk less, listen more, and take specific actions that improve their chances of hitting quota, like pausing, setting next steps, or asking about objections. Our goal is to get more reps to quota faster and make coaching scalable across teams.

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

We live and work in New York, NY, and plan to keep the company based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We live here and have built initial traction with local sales teams. New York gives us access to B2B sales organizations and a strong tech community to grow.

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 Trellus YC application?

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