Wit.ai YC Application

Winter 2014Acquired

Wit.ai 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: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 11
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2013

Founders

Alexandre LebrunFounder/CEO
Laurent LandowskiFounder
Willy BlandinFounder/CTO

What Wit.ai does

Natural Language for the Internet of Things. Wit.ai is an API that makes it easy for developers to build applications and devices that you can talk to. Any app, any device can use Wit.ai to take natural language input (speech or text message) from users and turn it into a command. Wit.ai is a Y Combinator company based in Palo Alto, and funded by Andreessen Horowitz.

Wit.ai's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

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

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Wit.ai

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Natural Language for Developers

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

We built an API that lets any developer add natural language understanding to their apps and devices. It takes speech or text input and turns it into structured commands so apps can respond to real human language.

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

We live in Palo Alto, CA, and plan to base the company there after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Palo Alto is where we live and work now. It puts us in the center of the developer community and close to key partners and investors.

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 Wit.ai YC application?

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