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Y Combinator is renowned in Silicon Valley for a lot of reasons , but there ’s one service that has quietly become one of its most powerful : an online beginner - match tool .
“ I think this is the most worthful digital Cartesian product that YC has built ( i.e. more worthful than Bookface , etc . ) . It ’s astonishing how many founder I play who forgather each other on the YC co - laminitis matching platform,”tweeted seedinvestor Nikhil Basu Trivedi . ( Bookface touch to YC ’s famed on-line collection of how - to startup advice for its broadcast participants . )
Recent Y Combinator alumnus Hona is an example , although its founders ’ sports meeting - cunning story is a morsel more exciting than just using that peter .
Hona is a GenAI aesculapian criminal record startup . It integrates into multiple electronic records systems and then summarizes a patient role ’s aesculapian record , aid doctors prep for the patient ’s visit .
It was initially founded by two friends who have known each other since middle school day , Danielle Yoesep and Adam Steinle . They reconnected after calibrate college and various early careers in technical school and biotech . Steinle had been a biomedical engineer , Goldman banker and freehanded technical school merchandise managing director at Facebook . Yoesep was a scientist for a biotech startup that had just been get . They were hang out with their high school day Friend while home for Thanksgiving , natter about need to do a inauguration when the thought for Hona uprise . While neither of them are doctors themselves , both had house phallus who are doctors or in healthcare and they soon settled on an idea : AI to attend doctors with patient datum summary .
They experience they need an AI specializer Centennial State - founder , so signed up on the Y CombinatorCo‑Founder Matching Platform . They found one in Shuying Zhang , who also lie with she require to do a inauguration , something in healthcare and AI , and had signed up on the service . Zhang ’s background combine biomedical engineering and software package development , most recently working on AI at Google , and she was at Amazon prior to that .
What came next was a operation that sounds a bite like Tinder for carbon monoxide gas - founder .
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Yoesep and Steinle swiped through profile in the matching tool as did Zhang . Each of them held several sports meeting - and - greets with likely co - founders . When Zhang converge with Yoesep and Steinle , they instantaneously clicked so well that the prospicient - fourth dimension friends offered Zhang a full one - third plowshare of the company .
“ We literally met each other and like three weeks later , we ’re jobless , trying to establish this , ” Steinle tell TechCrunch .
Having met on Y Combinator , with their backgrounds in tech , they were exactly the case of startup certain to be accepted into the free-enterprise program . They straight off use to YC for the Summer 2023 peck .
And they were promptly rejected .
So they got to work on their own , building a prototype , showing it to their internet of MD , earning solid reviews and resurrect a low seed round .
About four months by and by , they applied to YC again for the wintertime 2024 flock , and were have . One of the reasons they got in the second metre , Yoesep recalled , was that they never switch directions , or never pivoted , to apply the threadbare Silicon Valley term . Another reason was “ because of our moral force during our interview , showing that we had grown close and enjoyed work together , ” she said .
Things started cook for them after that . Medical Dr. at Duke and Harvard agree to test the product and write a lily-white newspaper , due to publish later this calendar month . Some angels who were known in the technical school and biotech public place . And by the time Hona graduate from YC and did its famed Demo Day , it had already raised a $ 3 million seed cycle from General Catalyst ( which is pursuing health technical school so seriouslyit bought a infirmary system of rules ) , Samsung , Rebel Fund ( launch by Reddit co - founder Steve Huffman and Cruise co - founder Daniel Kan ) , Allegis Capital and 1984 Ventures .
Hona still has a toughened road ahead . AI for aesculapian arranging is an increasingly crowded field of force . Big cloud provider likeGoogle and Amazon are offering such toolsanddozens of startup are undertake it , too .
But Steinle says that Hona will contend because it ’s “ super customizable ” to search through aesculapian record for the specific datum a particular doctor require prior to go steady a patient . A cardiologist would get a different summary than a nephrologist . For instance , the upcoming clean paper is on kidney stone referrals , so “ so we ’re pull stuff like how many millimetre was the stone on the right hand here ? ” Steinle describes .
As for Zhang , her advice for others who dream of doing a startup , and are considering using YC ’s matching tool , is to “ just go out and try , ” she says . “ Once you pop out working with masses , you will quickly have a upright signified whether you get along . You will know aright away . ”
