Upsolve YC Application

Winter 2019Active

Upsolve went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2019 batch as a Fintech 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: FintechConsumer Finance
Team size: 12
Status: Active
Launched: 2018

Founders

Jonathan PettsFounder

What Upsolve does

Upsolve is a tech-driven nonprofit that helps low-income Americans overcome debt and rebuild credit at scale. Upsolve was founded in Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab in 2016. Since then, Upsolve has become the nation’s most visited nonprofit financial education site. Upsolve.org educates approximately 2.9 million people a year with 2,000 articles on an array of debt and credit topics. To date, Upsolve’s free DIY bankruptcy filing tool has been used by over 14,000 families to relieve over $600,000,000 in debt. Upsolve users are disproportionately Black and Brown with an average household income of $25,000. Upsolve is now launching a suite of AI tools to help low-income Americans resolve their financial distress earlier.

Upsolve's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Upsolve

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Helping low-income Americans overcome debt.

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

We built a free online tool that lets low-income Americans file Chapter 7 bankruptcy themselves, without paying costly lawyers. Along with that, Upsolve provides extensive plain-language articles on debt and credit to help users understand their options. We're now adding AI tools to catch financial problems earlier and offer tailored help.

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

We live and are based in Boston and New York.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Boston and New York are home because that's where our users are and where the founders live. Being near the legal aid community and financial services ecosystem helps.

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 Upsolve YC application?

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