Wave YC Application

Winter 2012Active

Wave went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2012 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 2012
Industry: FintechPayments
Team size: 1600
Status: Active
Launched: 2021

Founders

Drew DurbinFounder/CEO

What Wave does

Building extremely affordable financial infrastructure for Africa.

Wave's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Wave, Winter 2012 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Wave

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Mobile money app for Africa

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

We are building a mobile money app tailored for Africa that makes sending and receiving money affordable and accessible. Our product replaces expensive traditional financial infrastructure with a solution Africans use daily to move money between people and businesses.

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

We are based in Dakar, Senegal, with a distributed team working remotely as well.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose Dakar because it puts us close to our primary users, local financial networks, and the market we serve. Being local means we understand the unique challenges Africans face sending money and building financial tools that fit their needs.

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 Wave YC application?

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