Proptech startup Landeed raised $2.5 million in Pre-Seed led by Clutterbot CEO Justin Hamilton, CRED’s Kunal Shah, Chris Maurice of Yellow Card and Christian Kaczmarczyk of Third Prime VC where angel investors Manmohan Chandolu, and nine other Y Combinator alum, among others, also participated. The mobile app from Landeed enables property owners, agents, developers, and legal counsel to look up real estate records before constructing, lending on, or purchasing a property. According to the firm, Landeed has already been used to buy, sell, and develop real estate by over 100K property owners and agents. To help businesses with various stakeholders, the startup is now introducing a desktop property diligence and transaction platform in addition to its mobile application. Later on, the business also intends to provide title insurance. The real estate market, which is predicted to grow from $200 billion in 2021 to $1 trillion by 2030, is being disrupted by Indian proptech businesses. By 2025, it is anticipated that India's real estate market will contribute 13% of the nation's GDP.

Proptech startup Landeed raised $2.5 million in Pre-Seed led by Justin Hamilton and others

Same-day grocery delivery startup Farmstead is halting operations in all markets except the Bay Area.

Farmstead, backed by Circle K and Y Combinator, has ceased grocery deliveries in Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, Miami and the greater Chicago area, in addition to cutting 22% of its operational staff, according to Insider.

“It's unclear what will happen next with the economy,” CEO Pradeep Elankumaran told the news site. “We are a startup and are prudent in moments of economic…

Farmstead scales back ambitions, closes operations in Miami

Y Combinator is best known for running one of the nation's best known startup accelerator programs. But its financial bets into companies it deems worthy go much deeper.

How Y Combinator is more than just a startup booster

Only about 1.5 to 2% of over 20,000 startup applicants a year are accepted. YC's head of admissions, Stephanie Simon, shares her advice for founders applying in a downturn. For early-stage founders looking to grow their startups in an accelerator, few names spark as much excitement as Y Combinator. The startup accelerator is well known for its exclusivity, accepting only between 1.5 and 2% of the over 10,000 applications for each summer and winter cohort. Several of Silicon Valley's marquee companies are Y Combinator graduates, including Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. However, Y Combinator is not immune to the market conditions and economic downturn: The accelerator ended up slashing its summer cohort size by 40%, with only about 250 companies accepted compared with winter's 414, The Information reported . When asked about The Information's latest story, a spokesperson for Y Combinator confirmed the reduction in batch size, citing economic conditions and the return to partially-in person programming for those startups willing to relocate to Mountain View as the main contributing factors, rather than criticism over class size . Stephanie Simon, the head of Y Combinator's admissions team, wants founders to know she's still sifting through all those applications. She joined the team in 2016 and became its leader in November 2020. She has read through thousands of applications during her tenure and is offering her best tips to budding startup founders looking to gain acceptance to the accelerator's exclusive program. A spokesperson for the accelerator confirmed that the deadline for Y Combinator's next winter cohort was September 12 . While the admissions team will still review all applications submitted late until the cohort starts, Simon emphasized that with the uncertain market conditions it's more important than ever to apply early. "It's surprising how many don't or how many apply the day of the deadline, and it's really stressful for them," she said. "As a founder, your cortisol levels are already so high, and you don't need to get them any higher." The process to apply to Y Combinator is pretty straightforward, Simon said. Once a founding team submits an application, the admissions team and even a few executives will review it. If the committee decides they want to interview the founders, they schedule a 10-minute video interview, then make a decision about a founder's application shortly thereafter. "I would say 99% of the time, you're getting a 10-minute interview and we're giving you an answer within a day," Simon said. Simon added that no startup — no matter how trendy — would automatically get selected over others. There are times when people on the admissions team are really excited about certain types of companies, like crypto in recent years or "chatbots" in 2016. But what's more important is the strength of the team. "The lens is, 'What are the smart impressive teams working on?'" Simon said. Having a technical founder on the team is key
One way for startups to stand out is to have a cofounder and one team member who come from a technical background, Simon said. "Basically, we're looking for founding teams where they can build the product, or at least the beginning versions of the product on the team itself," she said. By having a technical founder, a startup will be able to solve problems more quickly and creatively because of their knowledge of the tech, Simon said. A technical founder will also make hiring engineers easier — which can be one of the hardest things that startups have to do, she said — since they usually have networks that they can hire from. The startup should be solving a real problem, especially now
The other key quality most successful YC pitches have is a sense that the problem the startup is trying to solve feels real. "When it's a problem that the founders themselves have felt or someone they know closely has felt, it just feels more grounded in reality and feels way more likely to succeed," Simon said. Simon can tell from a pitch whether honesty and authenticity are tied to the problem, she said. This part of a pitch is more important than ever in less frothy market conditions, according to Simon. "It may be that a couple years ago, you saw your friends raising tons of money with ideas that seemed maybe not as tethered to a concrete problem. I think that's going to change," Simon said. One of the best ways to confirm that you're solving a real problem is "talking to your users," Simon said, and taking in their feedback before you apply. Plus, if your service comes at a cost to users, it's good to test that before applying to Y Combinator to confirm you're fulfilling a significant need. "It's a good test for whether you're building something people want and tends to create more honest conversations with users," Simon said. "They'll tell you that the product is great until you ask them to pay. " 
Domain expertise is also important in some cases, she said. For startups in certain sectors, like insurance and biotechnology, being an expert will matter a lot more to the admissions team when it's reviewing the application. Only one quality would completely disqualify a company
The biggest turnoff for YC admissions managers is "inauthenticity," Simon said, especially in a downturn. In every application batch, they see some startup ideas that seem inauthentic. "It feels it's pretty obvious when the idea feels made up and they haven't experienced it personally or don't know anyone who has experienced the problem that they're trying to solve," she said. But Simon said there's only one criterion that would completely disqualify a startup: "I think the only absolute no for us is if when we imagine that company being successful, it was net negative for the world." Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications

Y Combinator's head of admissions is reviewing over 10,000 startups for its next cohort, even in the middle of the downturn. Her...

Farmstead scales back ambitions, closes operations outside Bay Area

 HR tech startups are helping companies manage critical pain points in HR processes such as recruitment, automation, career development, compensation, and benefits management, through a mix of software and services.

HR Tech

Series B

Corporate Minority

Refcome is a cloud-based reference hiring system that enables employees to refer friends and others to positions within their company, aiming to improve referral adoption and employee engagement.

Name	Title	Status
Takumi Shimizu	Chief Executive Officer	Current
Kyohei Nakamori	Chief Technology Officer	Current
Kotaro Okajima	Executive Vice President	Current

Name	Takumi Shimizu	Kyohei Nakamori	Kotaro Okajima
Work History
Title	Chief Executive Officer	Chief Technology Officer	Executive Vice President
Status	Current	Current	Current

Wells Fargo Success Story

3M Success Story

Platform Overview

Refcome

Executives

Refcome Management Team

3 Team Members

Discover the right solution for your team