This Week at YC: How an MIT Dropout Built a $6B Company

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He Left MIT At 22 To Solve A Problem Investors Didn’t Get. Now His Company Is Worth $6 Billion.
Sajith Wickramasekara dropped out of the Computer Science program at MIT to build something new: a software company that helps life science researchers better organize their lab work. Today, Benchling (YC S12) is the “Google Docs for R&D” and serves over 200,000 researchers across 700 companies.
 

Meet The Companies Presenting At YC's W22 Demo Day
In just over a week, we'll be kicking off our 34th Demo Day, featuring founders from 43 countries and startups in every sector, from fintech, B2B SaaS, Web3, consumer, healthcare, hard tech, and more. Meet them all ahead of Demo Day here.
 


 

🚀 The Launchpad

These are all the Y Combinator companies that launched this week:

Carbon Crusher
Oslo, Norway
We make carbon negative roads.

Onyx Card
Miami, Florida
A modern luxury black card membership with 24/7 concierge.

Payourse
Lagos, Nigeria
Tools and infrastructure for easy access to crypto in Africa.

Kula
London, United Kingdom
Shopify for law firms.

91Squarefeet
Gurugram, India
We build physical retail stores for big brands.

Cashmere
San Francisco, California
Crypto wallet for web3 startups on Solana.

Discz Music
New York, New York
Where GenZ comes to discover and share music.

SixWheel
San Mateo, California
Road freight electrification as a service.

Vessel
San Francisco, California
The universal API for CRMs.

Sendme
Ibadan, Nigeria
On-demand, clean meat for Nigerian households and food businesses.

Saay
San Francisco, California
Command center for your sales teams.

BharatX
Bengaluru, India
Enable white-labelled Buy Now Pay Later in under 2 hours.

Brainboard
Paris, France
Visually design and manage cloud infrastructures.

Origami Therapeutics
San Diego, California
Oral drugs to halt neurodegeneration.

Vendoo
Washington, D.C.
We help online sellers manage a sales business on multiple platforms.

Mysterious
San Francisco, California
Discord for Web3 communities.

Spoken
New York, New York
Better furniture shopping.

Mederva Health
San Francisco, California
US medical expertise for doctors and patients around the world.
Elementary
Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Open-source data observability for data teams.

DimOrder
Hong Kong
Operating system for restaurants in Southeast Asia.

Argo
Los Angeles, California
Your destination for short film & TV entertainment.

Skillza
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Teaching kids in the Middle East to code.

Posh
San Francisco, California
Automate EV battery packs repurposing and recycling.

Simplifyd Systems
Lagos, Nigeria
We deliver data-free internet apps for Africa.

10 Minute Squad
South Korea
GoPuff for Korea.

Proper
San Francisco, California
Modern financial data infrastructure for fintechs.

WeReno
Toronto, Canada
Fast and secure renovation payments.

Unai
San Francisco, California
A VR headset with 4x the Quest's resolution and realistic avatars.

Phoenix Hydrogen
Berkeley, California
The first commodity marketplace for hydrogen.

QUIK
Maracaibo, Venezuela
The Super App for Venezuela.

Venue.live
Toronto, Canada
Fun and interactive All Hands & AMAs for remote teams.

Mooji Meats
Baltimore, Maryland
Enabling the next generation of alternative meats.

Haddock
Barcelona, Spain
SaaS helping restaurants improve their margins through cost control.

Goodfin
Santa Monica, California
A private bank for the next generation of wealth.

Myria
Los Angeles, California
A marketplace of luxury services for ultra-high net worth individuals.

Orca
Austin, Texas
Banking for Gen Z, on steroids.


🔥 Top Posts on Hacker News



💼 Jobs at YC Startups


 

 🌎 From the YC Community



📈 The Bar

The latest raises and rounds from YC Companies.
wOS (YC W21)
$1.2M Seed • Mexico City, Mexico
Fitness App wOS Raises US$1.2 million in Its First Round of Investment

inFeedo (YC S20)
$12M Series A • New York, New York
inFeedo gets $12M to help employers find out how their workforce really feels

Validere (YC S16)
$43M Series B • Toronto, Canada
Validere Raises $43MM to Scale Its All-in-One Commodity Management Platform

Rutter (YC S19)
$27M Series A • Toronto, Canada
a16z backs Rutter’s goal of being ‘Plaid for commerce’

Fetch (YC S15)
$3.5M Round • Atlanta, Georgia
Fetch raises $3.5M for its self-service truck rental marketplace

Sturdy Finance (YC W21)
$3.9M Seed • Atlanta, Georgia
Sturdy raises $3.9M for a new kind of lending protocol
MedMe Health (YC W21)
$3.4M CAD ($2.7M USD) Seed • Toronto, Canada
Microsoft leads MedMe’s $3.4 million CAD seed round to help pharmacies expand beyond retail

acasa (YC W22)
$4.7M Seed • Bogotá, Colombia
Colombian Proptech Acasa Raises US$38M To Expand In Mexico

Ramen VR / Zenith (YC S19)
$35M Series B • El Cerrito, California
Team Behind Hit Game Zenith Raises $35 Million for VR “Super-App”

Sleek (YC S21)
$1.7M Seed • Toronto, Canada
Sleek wants to be the last shopping check-out form you ever fill out

Volta Labs (YC W19)
$20M Series A • Cambridge, Massachusetts
Volta Labs grabs $20 million to address a growing genomics bottleneck
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This Week at YC: W22 Virtual Demo Day

Monday, February 14, 2022

On March 29th and 30th YC will host our 34th Demo Day. This 2-day event will feature founders from 43 countries and startups in every sector. View this email in your browser YC W22 Virtual Demo Day On

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