SecondPen.aiTemplates · Finance, investing & fundraising
Y Combinator application template
Origin: YC's application questions; widely used as a founder-clarity exercise.
Sections
- One-line description
- What you're making
- Progress
- Why this idea
- Competitors & insight
- How you make money
- Founders
How a tough reader scores it
When you score a draft against this format, the Critic evaluates this YC application. The weights add up to 100; the fixes for the weakest criteria arrive as cards in the editor.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| One-liner is instantly understandable | 15 |
| Description is plain and specific | 15 |
| Progress shows real traction or velocity with numbers | 20 |
| Founder–market fit is convincing | 15 |
| Unique insight over competitors is non-obvious | 20 |
| Revenue model is plausible with a sense of scale | 10 |
| No buzzwords | 5 |
How it works in SecondPen.ai
Open the template and the editor writes the blank once, with a line of guidance under each heading that you delete as you fill it in. Write your abstract and the editor names the format it reads like. Ask for a document with a slash command and it offers to start from the matching format. When the draft is ready, the Critic scores it against the criteria above, the way this format's toughest reader would, and the three highest-leverage fixes become Editor cards.
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