Заявка Zoa Research в YC

Summer 2024Active

Zoa Research прошел Y Combinator в потоке Summer 2024 как компания из сферы B2B. Ниже: чем занимается компания, кто ее основал, и ее заявка в YC, реконструированная вопрос за вопросом в реальной форме YC.

Поток YC: Summer 2024
Сфера: B2B
Размер команды: 5
Статус: Active
Запущено: 2024

Фаундеры

Greg VolynskyFounder
Sam DamashekFounder

Чем занимается Zoa Research

Historically, quantitative models are domain specific. Brilliant people spend their best years testing features, tuning hyperparameters, and iterating architectures within a narrow domain. But scale is the panacea: large models will find patterns people, and specialized models, could not. Forecasting generalizes. Zoa trains cross-domain event forecasting engines. *Automating Iteration* LLMs - embedded in multi-agent optimization loops and evaluated against fixed policies - can automate the build-test-improve modeling cycle. Think AlphaEvolve for forecasting problems. *Sample-Efficient General Models* Today’s forecasting models are narrowly crafted with deep human priors. But larger models will outperform state-of-the-art specialized models. Unlike existing event models, our models leverage data from across contexts and rely less on human intuition. And compared to LLMs, our models are built with more inductive priors and rely more heavily on inference-time compute - improving sample efficiency. *Why It Matters* In the real economy, our models could be useful for forecasting supply chain volatility, energy supply and demand, even earthquake risk. Science is, Ian Hacking writes, the taming of chance. It is the process of iteratively updating priors (something like: identify uncertainty, conceive experiment to reduce uncertainty, execute, update). If science is uncertainty-reduction, forecasting is a critical measure of progress. Better forecasting improves our ability to select interesting experiments (roughly those with greatest expected uncertainty reduction) and update priors. Our models will be used by labs and academics in data-heavy domains. Sam's ex-girlfriend introduced him to Greg back at Carnegie Mellon in 2017, and while that relationship didn't last, their friendship has. After college, Greg went to Harvard Law School, while Sam worked for three years at Jane Street on their Options desk, building & leading a satellite dev team.

Заявка Zoa Research в YC, реконструирована

Заявка Y Combinator

Zoa Research, батч Summer 2024. Реальные вопросы из анкеты, ответы из публичных данных.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Zoa Research

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Powerful quantitative forecasting models

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

We build generalizable event forecasting models that train across diverse domains rather than specializing narrowly. Our models automate the build-test-improve cycle by embedding LLMs in multi-agent optimization loops. This extends forecasting beyond traditional domain-specific models, making predictions about supply chains, energy, and risk using data integration and sample-efficient inference.

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

We live in New York, NY, and the company is based here now and would remain so after YC, at least initially.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Most of our experience and network is in New York. We don't see a pressing reason to relocate; YC is remote-friendly and we can engage with the network while continuing to build where we are.

21 еще ответ в полной заявке

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference находятся в полной версии. Создайте бесплатную учетную запись, чтобы открыть ее в YC Insights, рядом с каждым другим потоком YC.

Смотреть полную заявку

Часто задаваемые вопросы

Это реальная заявка Zoa Research в YC?

Нет. Y Combinator держит поданные заявки в приватности. Это реконструкция: реальные вопросы формы YC, ответы на которые основаны на публичных данных Zoa Research (заметки о запуске, бэкграунд фаундеров, описание продукта). Это показывает, как компания вроде Zoa Research представила бы себя YC, а не текст, который они подали.