Vouch YC Application

Summer 2019Active

Vouch went through Y Combinator in the Summer 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: Summer 2019
Industry: FintechInsurance
Team size: 190
Status: Active
Launched: 2019

Founders

Sam HodgesFounder/CEO

What Vouch does

Insurance... sounds slow, old-fashioned, and unexciting. Exactly. Insurance is broken, and it's failing fast-moving, innovative startups. Vouch is a new, technology-first insurance company backed with $185M in funding from world-class investors. Like Stripe for payments or Brex for credit cards, Vouch is creating the go-to business insurance for high-growth companies. We're doing this by making insurance fast, responsive, and focused on our high-growth and innovative customers. Instead of printed PDF applications and week-long waits, Vouch is building new technology to solve real problems, writing policies that actually cover relevant startup scenarios, and designing simple experiences in an otherwise frustrating industry.

Vouch's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Vouch, Summer 2019 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Vouch

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Insurance and risk management tools for startups

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

We are building a business insurance platform designed specifically for startups and high-growth companies. Our product replaces slow, outdated insurance buying processes with a technology-first approach that makes getting insured faster, clearer, and better tailored to startup risks and scenarios. This includes digital applications, policies targeted at startup needs, and responsive management tools.

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

We live in San Francisco, CA, and the company is based there.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where high-growth startups thrive. Being here puts us close to our customers and ecosystem, which is critical for understanding their needs and iterating quickly on insurance products that work for them.

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 Vouch YC application?

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