Open Sourcing the YC Application - Blog

Open Sourcing the YC Application<br>TL;DR<br>We applied to Y Combinator twice with Metorial. Both applications received interviews; the<br>first was rejected, and the second got us into F25. Between them, we made real progress, and<br>we learned to describe it more clearly. Below are both applications and my best attempt to<br>explain what changed.

Most successful companies exist because someone was willing to make a bet. Founders bet years of their lives, years they can never reclaim, against what often appear to be absurd odds. Pre-seed and seed investors bet on founders long before they can know whether the product will find a market, let alone return their fund.

To me, this creates something close to a moral imperative: to pay that faith forward. The faith cannot always be repaid to the person who first offered it, at least not in the same currency. It can be extended to early employees, to other founders, and to people who have not yet been given the chance to prove themselves, and who may eventually place bets of their own.

As a technical founder, the most natural ways I know to repay this trust are to open-source what I build and write down what I learn. YC encourages much the same instinct inside its community. I have reviewed other founders' applications and recommended people I genuinely believed YC should fund. Sharing this is another small attempt at doing the same.

We interviewed for S25 and were rejected. A few months later, we applied again and got into F25. I have redacted customer names; otherwise, the answers below appear as we submitted them, including the occasional typo. For completeness, I have included every written field. Where an answer was effectively unchanged, I show it once; where the difference seems meaningful, I show both.

After our first interview, we received this:

Hi Karim and Tobias,

Unfortunately, we've decided not to fund Metorial for this batch. You seem like a tight-knit team. We do like funding open-source tools, and the recent growth of your project is impressive. However, it wasn't clear to us how you'd differentiate among the many MCP projects that have come up. Having a single-line integration may be a good start, but we wish we had heard more about how this could become a business that is defensible.

That said, we are far from perfect in our decision-making and are often wrong. We encourage you to keep pushing forward and consider applying again to the next YC batch.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. We wish you the very best and hope you'll stay in touch.

A point and a slope

One way I have come to think about reapplying is as a point and a slope.

A first application gives YC a point. It shows where the company stood on a particular day: the product, the users, the founders, and whatever evidence they had accumulated. From that one point, the partners have to imagine the direction and speed of everything that might follow.

A second application gives them another point. Now they can calculate a slope. That second point contains more than another description of the company. It shows what the founders did with time, evidence, and criticism. Paul Graham's word for the quality investors seek in founders is "formidable." I do not think formidability is a tone of voice, or something that can be manufactured by writing with greater certainty. A reapplication can show it more honestly: an obstacle was identified, some months passed, and the result changed.

Of course, the metaphor cuts both ways. If little has changed, the second point makes that visible too. The useful question is not only whether to apply again, but whether there is now a slope worth showing.

The founders

How long have the founders known one another, and how did you meet?

S25

Tobias and Wen have known each other for 10 years now, starting as seatmates at a top technical high school in Austria. They worked on many projects together over those 5 years, and Tobias later joined Wen to co-lead the technical development of Valicit, a ticketing startup based in Abu Dhabi.

F25

We have known each other for 10+ years. We met in a top technical high school in Austria where we worked on many projects together. Later, we co-lead the technical development at Valicit, a ticketing startup based in Abu Dhabi.

Who writes code or does other technical work on the product?

We both write code and do technical work. Everything has been developed by us.

Are you looking for a cofounder?

No.

Company details

FieldS25F25Company nameMetorialMetorialCompany URLhttps://metorial.comhttps://metorial.comProduct URLhttps://metorial.comhttps://app.metorial.comCurrent location / location after YCAbu Dhabi, UAE / Linz, Austria / San Fransisco, USALinz, Austria / San Francisco, USA<br>Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco is the place to be for connecting with and understanding AI developers and founders. Having lived in New York and Abu Dhabi and spent time...