A free AI-powered tool that reviews your Y Combinator application before you submit it. Built by Lobster Capital, a VC fund 100% focused on YC companies with $40M+ deployed across 100+ YC startups.

Is YC Roaster really free?

Yes, completely free — no catch, no upsell. Lobster Capital built this to give back to the YC community and help more great companies get accepted.

How does YC Roaster work?

Paste your YC application answers or upload a PDF/Word file. You'll receive AI-powered feedback shortly after submission, scored across 7 dimensions — including traction, team, market, and scalability. Applications that show strong potential may get a YC alumni reviewer for deeper, personalized feedback.

What kind of feedback will I get?

A scored evaluation across 7 dimensions with specific strengths, risks, and suggestions tailored to your application. It's not generic advice — the feedback is based on what's actually in your application.

Who built YC Roaster and why?

YC Roaster is built by Lobster Capital, a venture firm 100% focused on investing in YC companies. With 100+ YC companies in their portfolio, this is their way of helping more founders put their best application forward. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

How is this different from asking ChatGPT to review my application?

YC Roaster is built by a team that invests exclusively in YC companies. The AI uses a purpose-built framework across 7 specific dimensions based on insights from reviewing hundreds of YC applications. Strong applications also get matched with real YC alumni reviewers — something no general-purpose AI can offer.

When should I submit my application?

As early as possible. The sooner you submit, the more time you have to get feedback, iterate, and strengthen your application before the YC deadline.

Will everyone get a Zoom call?

Everyone gets AI-powered written feedback. If you're matched with a YC alumni reviewer and they see strong potential, they may invite you for a 1-on-1 Zoom session.

All Posts

What Is YC Funding in Fall 2026? 110 F26 Companies, Decoded for Your W27 Application

Simon Willison Wants Hard Budget Caps on Everything. Is Agent Spend Control a YC W27 Wedge?

ChatGPT Now Builds and Hosts Websites. Is an AI App Builder Still a YC W27 Wedge?

Robinhood's Public Fund Just Put $15.75M Into 46 YC S26 Startups. Should Your YC W27 Plan Count on a Robinhood Check?

Gemini 4 Argon's Launch Price Will Double. Which Number Goes in Your YC W27 Application?

Nvidia Just Open-Sourced Agent Guardrails. Is Agent Security Still a YC W27 Wedge?

'When Did Google Get So Weird?' Just Topped Hacker News. Should Your YC W27 Application Still Say 'SEO'?

DeepSeek Just Revealed How It Runs 380,000 Agent Sandboxes at Once. Is Agent Infrastructure Still a YC W27 Wedge?

Frontier AI Prices Fell 40-50% in One Week. Which YC W27 Startups Just Became Viable?

'Spymarks, Not Watermarks' Just Pulled 616 Points on Hacker News as the EU's AI-Labeling Law Kicks In. Is Content Provenance a YC W27 Wedge, or a Privacy Trap?

Amazon Just Blocked Meta's Muse Agent From Shopping. If Your YC W27 Startup Sends Agents Onto Someone Else's Platform, What's Your Access Answer?

Pirate Face Just Hit #1 on Hacker News by Turning AI Models Into Torrents. If Your YC W27 Startup Runs on Open Weights, Who Actually Custodies Them?

A 2013 Post on How HN Ranking Really Works Is Trending Again. Should You Launch on Hacker News Before Applying to YC W27?

A New Tool Just Graded Whether AI Agents Can Use Your Product. Should Your YC W27 Application Treat Agents as a Customer?

Skillsync (YC W26) Just Launched Portable AI Chat Sessions as the Agent-Skills Economy Took Over the HN Front Page. Is the Agent Ecosystem Layer a YC W27 Wedge?

The Fed Just Hiked Rates as YC W27 Applications Open. Is a Bad Fundraising Market a Reason to Wait a Batch?

An AI Agent Just Broke Into a $13B AI Company's GitHub in 25 Minutes. Does Your Vibe-Coded MVP Need to Be Secure to Get Into YC W27?

Paul Graham Just Published 'Making Startups Powerful.' Here's the Test Your YC W27 Application Has to Pass

Anthropic's CEO Just Called for Slowing Frontier AI. If Models Stop Improving Every Quarter, Does Your YC W27 Pitch Still Work?

Hacker News Just Built a Filter to Remove AI Content. Will YC Reviewers Read Your W27 Application as Slop?

Mathematicians No Longer Trust OpenAI With Unpublished Proofs. Should You Trust YC, or ChatGPT, With Your W27 Startup Idea?

Tailwind Had 110 Million Weekly Installs, Real Revenue, and No VC. It Still Sold to Shopify. Can You Pitch an Open-Source Dev Tool to YC W27?

YC Just Launched an Invite-Only Buyer Network That Puts Enterprise CTOs in Front of Batch Companies Before Demo Day. What It Means for Your W27 Application

Seven Frontier AI Models Just Ran Real Businesses for 72 Hours and Earned $0. Should Your YC W27 Application Still Say "Fully Autonomous"?

Two YC Companies Just Launched Data Center Tools in the Same Week. Is the AI Buildout's Physical Layer a YC W27 Wedge?

A Private German Rocket Just Reached Orbit as 'European Alternatives' Top Hacker News. Should You Apply to YC W27 From Europe?

18,000 OpenAI Agents Were Just Caught Colluding on a Dead German Wiki. Is 'Agent Containment' the Wedge YC Wants Next?

GPT-6 Astra Just Became the Best Computer-Use Model on Earth. Is 'An Agent That Uses Your Computer' Still a YC Winter 2027 Wedge?

RonanRX (YC S26) Just Launched a Drug Manufacturing Company on Hacker News. Would YC Fund Your Regulated Healthcare Startup?

UC Berkeley Just Froze Student Work Authorizations After ICE Threats. Can You Still Do YC as an International Student Founder?

Risklytics (YC S26) Killed Its First Idea Mid-Batch and Became an Insurance Brokerage. Would YC Fund Your Services Business?

Paul Graham Just Published 'How Universities Should Prepare Founders.' What It Means for Your YC Application If You're Still in School

Vendo (YC S26) Just Put an AI Agent Inside Your Product So Customers Build Their Own Features. Is 'User-Programmable Software' a Real YC F26 Wedge?

OneCLI (YC S26) Just Hit 300K Downloads With a Credential Firewall for AI Agents. Is 'Agent Identity' a Real YC F26 Wedge?

OneCLI (YC S26) Just Launched Into the Most Crowded Corner of AI, and Its Founders Admit They Don't Know Their Moat. How Should You Answer YC F26's 'Why Won't You Get Crushed?' Question?

Turbovec Just Put FAISS-Beating Vector Search Into a Free MIT Library. Is a Vector Database Still a YC F26 Wedge?

AI Benchmarks Are Breaking Down. Is 'Trustworthy Eval' a Real YC F26 Wedge?

Stripe Is Reportedly Buying OpenRouter for $7B+. Is the AI Gateway Wedge Still Open for YC F26?

A Solo Dev Just Used an AI Agent to Auto-Discover a 232x Faster GPU Kernel. Is 'Auto-Research' a Real YC F26 Wedge?

OpenAI Just Released 17 Million ChatGPT Logs Showing How Companies Really Use AI. What It Tells YC F26 Founders About the Real Wedges

OpenAI Just Turned Codex Into an Always-On Coding Platform Inside ChatGPT. Is the AI Coding-Agent Wedge Closed for YC F26?

Discovered Materials (YC P26) Just Raised $9M for 'AI Scientists.' Is AI for Science a Real YC Wedge, or Too Deep-Tech for You?

Meta's Muse Glimmer Just Put Always-On Local AI Agents at the Top of Hacker News. Is Ambient AI a Real YC F26 Wedge?

'Software for One' Is Trending on Hacker News. Can You Get Into YC Building Personal Software for a Tiny Audience?

Prized (YC S26) Just Launched AI Internal Tools for Non-Engineers. Is That Still an Open YC F26 Wedge?

Y Combinator Just Open-Sourced QM, the Multi-Agent Harness It Runs Itself On. Is "Agents for a Whole Company" Still an Open YC F26 Wedge?

The #1 Story on Hacker News Today Is a Border Phone-Wipe Prosecution. Should Your YC F26 Startup Be Built So You Can't Hand Over User Data?

The YC Fall 2026 Deadline Passed on July 27. If You Missed It, What Are Your Options?

YC Fall 2026 Applications Just Closed. What Should You Do Before Interview Invites Go Out?

YC Fall 2026 Closes Tonight. Once You Submit, When Will You Hear Back From YC?

The YC Fall 2026 Deadline Is Tomorrow (July 27). What Should You Do in the Last 24 Hours?

Washington May Restrict Chinese Open-Weight AI, and YC Just Joined the Fight to Stop It. What It Means for Your YC F26 Application

'Why Software Factories Fail' Is Trending on Hacker News. Should Your YC F26 Startup Pitch Fully Autonomous AI Coding?

Screenpipe (YC S26) Just Launched Always-On Screen Recording for AI Agents. Is "Memory for Agents" Still an Open YC F26 Wedge?

YC Fall 2026 Closes July 27. Can You Still Put Together an Application in 5 Days?

Two AI Agents Directed Full Music Videos for Under $75, Unsupervised. What's Left for a YC F26 AI Video Startup to Sell?

A Five-Month-Old Essay on AI Supervision Fatigue Just Hit the Hacker News Front Page. Is "Human in the Loop" Still a Safe Answer on Your YC F26 Application?

YC Fall 2026 Applications Close July 27. Should You Submit Now, or Use Every Last Day to Polish?

Kimi K3 Is the Strongest Open AI Model Ever Released, and It's Chinese. Can You Build Your YC F26 Startup on It?

A New Essay on Martin Fowler's Site Says DSLs, Not Prompts, Make AI Agents Reliable. Is a Domain-Specific Language Your YC F26 Startup's Real Moat?

Someone Just Tricked Claude Into Silently Leaking a User's Private Data. Is AI Agent Security a Real YC F26 Wedge?

A Distributed LLM That Pools Your Idle GPUs Just Hit the Hacker News Front Page. Is Decentralized AI Inference a Real YC F26 Wedge?

Terence Tao Only Let AI Write the Code That Couldn't Hurt Him. Which Parts of Your YC F26 Product Did You Actually Read?

Nvidia Is Quietly Buying CoreWeave's Unsold GPUs. What If Tokens Don't Get Cheaper for Your YC F26 AI Startup?

YC's Requests for Startups Lists 16 Ideas and Not One Is Consumer. Should You Apply to YC F26 With a Consumer App?

Context.dev Just Got Into YC S26 as a Solo Founder. Can You Get Into YC F26 Without a Co-Founder?

A Satirical 'Revenue Larping' Site Is Trending on Hacker News. How Should You Report Revenue on Your YC F26 Application?

Silicon Valley Stopped Saying 'Learn to Code.' Do You Need to Code to Get Into YC F26?

Open Models Just Hit Opus Quality at a Fifth of the Price. In the Coming AI Margin Collapse, What Should Your YC F26 Startup Charge For?

Tiny AI Models Now Run Offline in the Browser and on $50 Phones. Is Edge AI a Real YC F26 Wedge?

Founders Are Cutting Their Claude Bills 60% by Turning Code Into Images. Do YC F26 AI Startups Actually Need a Cost Moat?

Apple Just Shipped an Official Safari MCP Server. If Your YC F26 Startup Gives AI Agents a Browser, Did Apple Just Sherlock You?

The #1 Hacker News Post Today Is a Fable About a Startup That Chased the Whole Market and Died. How Big Should Your YC F26 Market Be?

Claude Sonnet 5 Just Shipped Mid-Application Season. Does a New Frontier Model Make Your YC F26 AI Startup Obsolete?

Claude Code Is Secretly Fingerprinting Requests Sent Through Resellers. Is It Safe to Build Your YC F26 Startup on a Cheaper Claude Proxy?

HackerRank's Open-Source ATS Scored One Resume 74, 88, and 90. Does Y Combinator Use AI to Screen Your F26 Application?

The KIDS Act Is About to Make Age Verification Mandatory. Should You Build a YC F26 Startup Around It?

Corgi (YC) Got Accused of 'Vibe Coding' a Clone of Papermark's Open-Source Code. Can You Fork an Open-Source Competitor for YC F26?

Apple Just Raised MacBook Prices Over the 2026 Memory Crisis. Should YC F26 Founders Still Build Hardware or On-Device AI?