Unbabel YC Application

Winter 2014Acquired

Unbabel went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2014 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 2014
Industry: B2BOperations
Team size: 350
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2013

Founders

Vasco PedroFounder/CEO
João GraçaFounder/CTO
Bruno Prezado SilvaFounder/Lead Designer
Hugo SilvaFounder/Developer

What Unbabel does

Unbabel is an AI Centric Language Operations Platform that eliminates language barriers so that businesses can grow across markets. Our platform enables anyone to easily create flexible translation pipelines for any language or type of content in a scalable way. The pipelines combine best in class AI components, such as our Machine Translation and Quality Estimation, with different levels of human-in-the-loop capabilities, such as human translation and human annotations. The result is an easy to use, super scalable platform for Language Operations that can easily go from real time translation using adapted machine translation to high end human transcreation. Based in San Francisco, Unbabel works with hundreds of businesses such as Lego, Logitech, Microsoft, Warner Bros, Virgin Pulse, Booking.com or Under Armour, to communicate effortlessly with customers around the world, no matter what language they speak.

Unbabel's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Unbabel, Winter 2014 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Unbabel

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

AI-powered Language Operations platform

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

We build a platform that eliminates language barriers for businesses by combining machine translation, quality estimation AI, and human-in-the-loop editing. Our customers create custom translation workflows that scale from real-time chat translation to high quality human transcreation.

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

We live and have offices in San Francisco, Lisbon, London, Pittsburgh, Timișoara, and Cebu City. After YC, we'll base the company primarily in San Francisco while maintaining global engineering hubs.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We picked San Francisco to access Silicon Valley's ecosystem and customers, with engineering teams distributed globally to tap into diverse, cost-effective talent pools.

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 Unbabel YC application?

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