Before you submit to YC, find out what looks weak.
Get a structured YC readiness report across your founders, product, traction, market, evidence and application strength. See what is convincing, what creates doubt, and what to fix before you apply.
- ✓ Get your YC readiness, evidence and application scores.
- ✓ See your strongest signals and the gaps YC is most likely to probe.
- ✓ Leave with specific actions to strengthen your application before submitting.
Applying this cycle? Use the time before Nov 2 to fix the weak parts, not just polish the wording.
Promising, but the evidence is uneven.
The foundation is credible, but several claims still need stronger user or traction evidence.
You show early user interest, but there is not yet enough evidence of repeat usage or retention. Expect YC to probe whether users actually come back.
The questions look simple. The signals underneath them aren't.
Your application is revealing more than the answers themselves. These are six signals a reviewer is trying to understand about the company and the founders behind it.
Choose how much help you want before you submit.
From an expert pressure test to a full collaborative build. Pick the level that matches how far your application has already progressed.
YC Application
Pressure Test
For founders with a complete or nearly complete application who want an expert outside review before submitting.
Your draft is mostly complete, but you need to know what feels weak, unclear, unsupported, or inconsistent.
- Review of all important application answers
- Missing evidence and weak-signal analysis
- Clarity and consistency review
- Contradiction identification
- Prioritized recommendations
- One follow-up review after founder revisions
YC-Ready
Application Sprint
For founders who already have a draft and want FounderHQ to actively improve the application with them.
You have the raw information, but need stronger positioning, answers, evidence, and application-wide consistency.
- Complete strategic application review
- Answer improvement and rewriting support
- Founder and startup positioning
- Problem and solution clarification
- Traction and evidence presentation
- Market and competitive positioning
- Business model refinement
- Application-wide consistency
- Two collaborative revision rounds
- Final submission quality review
Build Our
YC Application
For founders who have not started, have incomplete answers, or need deeper strategic help developing the full application.
You need help turning your startup knowledge, founder story, progress, and ambition into one complete application.
- Founder discovery session
- Complete application strategy
- Development of the core startup narrative
- Founder story development
- Problem, product, market, and business model clarification
- Evidence and traction organization
- Collaborative drafting of the full application
- Collaborative revision rounds
- Final submission readiness review
We don't just edit answers. We pressure-test the whole application.
Every answer has to work on its own, but the application also has to hold together as one clear, credible startup story. We review both.
We do not review each answer in isolation. We examine whether the complete application presents one clear, credible, and convincing startup story.
Questions founders ask.
Don't apply blind.
Know exactly which of the five areas will hold your application back before a partner reads it. Two ways to close the gap.
FounderHQ is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Y Combinator.