Wildfire YC Application

Summer 2017Acquired

Wildfire went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2017 batch as a Consumer 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 2017
Industry: ConsumerSocial
Team size: 3
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2017

Founders

Hriday KemburuFounder/CEO
Vinay A. RameshFounder

What Wildfire does

We started Wildfire during our senior year at UC Berkeley as a safety alert app for colleges. Wildfire quickly grew beyond a campus safety tool to a social news app, which empowered people to spread the word quickly to their community when something significant happened nearby. Over six years, we've sent 65 million alerts to nearly 1 million users.

Wildfire's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Wildfire, Summer 2017 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Wildfire

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Social news app

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

We built Wildfire to start as a safety alert app for college campuses. It lets people send and receive real-time alerts about incidents happening nearby. Over time, it shifted into a social news app focused on quickly spreading important information within local communities. People use it to stay informed about what's happening around them in a way that general news or social networks don't cover effectively.

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

We live in San Francisco, and we plan to base the company here after YC as well.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is where we're currently based and where our network and resources are strongest. It's also where a lot of early users and tech talent are accessible, so it made sense to continue here for YC and beyond.

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 Wildfire YC application?

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