GitLab is a DevOps behemoth. A publicly-traded company essential to how modern software gets built. But it wasn't always this way. Before the IPO, before the massive valuation, GitLab was a startup with a clear idea and a killer application to the world's best accelerator.

They got into Y Combinator. And their application is a masterclass in substance over style.

This document isn't just a historical artifact. It's a blueprint. For you, the founder trying to distill your company's soul into a few text boxes, this is your guide. It shows how a company with incredible traction and deep founder expertise presented itself. No fluff. Just facts. Let's break down the application that helped shape a giant.

The YC Application

What follows is the exact application GitLab submitted. Read it carefully. Notice the brevity. Notice the confidence. This is what conviction looks like on a page.

Company

If you have a demo, what's the url? Demo can be anything that shows us how the product works. Usually that's a video or screen recording.

http://demo.gitlab.com/users/sign_in

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We’re making open source software to collaborate on code. It started as ‘run your own GitHub’ that most users deploy on their own server(s). GitLab allows you to version control code including pull/merge requests, forking and public projects. It also includes project wiki’s and an issue tracker. Over 100k organizations use it including thousands of programmers at Alibaba. We also offer GitLab CI that allows you to test your code with a distributed set of workers.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

The Netherlands, Ukraine (with employees in San Francisco), we don't know yet where will be based after YC

Founders

Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video introducing the founder(s). This video is an important part of the application. (Follow the Video Guidelines.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzvDHA5323o

Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together. Include urls if possible.

We created GitLab together (gitlab.org) and now over 100.000 organizations are using it. We also created GitLab CI and GitLab CI Runner together. This pair of programs allow organizations to distribute their code testing over a number of workers.

How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?

In 2011 Dmitriy started GitLab. We met in 2012 via email when Sytse started building GitLab.com. In 2013 we formally started a company together and went on team trips a few times since than.

Progress

How far along are you?

Over 100.000 organizations are using GitLab. Alibaba, Qualcomm, NASA, Nasdaq OMX and Interpol are paying customers. Over 600 people have contributed to it. It is the most popular open source version control software. It has more installations than anything else (including GitHub Enterprise and Atlassian Stash).

How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain.

Since 2011, over 10,000 commits, see http://contributors.gitlab.com/

Which of the following best describes your progress?

Launched

How many active users or customers do you have? If you have some particularly valuable customers, who are they? If you're building hardware, how many units have you shipped?

We estimate more than 1M

Do you have revenue?

Yes

How much revenue?

$1m annual Revenue Run Rate

What is your monthly growth rate?

About 60% in revenue each month.

If you are applying with the same idea as a previous batch, did anything change? If you applied with a different idea, why did you pivot and what did you learn from the last idea?

No

If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator, "accelerator" or "pre-accelerator" program, please tell us about it.

We have not applied to or participated any others.

Idea

Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?

Dmitriy wanted a solution he could use at his previous job. All employees except our account managers (8-2=6) are software developers. We listen closely to the community via direct customer feedback, pull/merge requests, issues, twitter, mailinglists, chatrooms and the non GitLab B.V. employees on the GitLab core team.

What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or they don't know about it)?

We offer the a better way of collaborating on digital products ( the feature branch workflow) to organizations that prefer to work on open source tools. Open source is interesting for large companies because they can inspect and modify the code. They also can and do contribute back changes that are important to them. Substitutes are closed source alternatives (GitHub Enterprise, Atlassian Stash) or less functional open source alternatives (Gitorious, Gogs). GitHub currently has a lot of mind-share but they are under- serving the on-premises (behind the firewall) market. We can see us grow into the leading solution for those installations (which is currently the majority of the market). In the long run most software will live on some (hybrid-)cloud and we think there are many ways to differentiate our offering (open source/distributed/integrated). In the short term we are emulating the Netflix strategy, shipping DVD’s (focus on the on-premise installations) when the competitors focus on the video-on-demand (SaaS) offering.

Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

GitHub Enterprise and Atlassian Stash are our primary competitors. We fear Atlassian Stash most since the GitHub Enterprise offering is weak (black box VM that doesn’t scale or cluster) and overpriced (4x more expensive than Stash or our standard subscription). We compete with Stash on usability, integration (no need to install Jira and Confluence separately), flexibility (you can inspect and adapt the source) and price.

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

An open source development process allows you to market your product for free. It also allows a good product market fit at a low cost. We believe that version control is infrastructure software and that open source is the natural model for this kind of software. But to create and grow a competitive open source offering you need to have a proprietary commercial version to generate scalable revenue, support income alone is not enough.

How do or will you make money? How much could you make?

Mostly by selling subscriptions that entitle our customers to support and our proprietary GitLab Enterprise Edition. Our most sold subscription by revenue costs $49 per user per year. Most or our revenue comes from organizations with more than 100 paying users. Every company with a substantial number of developers needs software like ours. We already declined an acquisition offer from a competitor for $10M because we want to grow this into a large company.

How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?

Currently we get users through word of mouth (amplified by twitter). During our time at YC we would like to grow our marketing, our continuous integration product GitLab CI and our SaaS (GitLab.com). GitLab.com currently has only 15k monthly active users but we see a lot of possibilities to grow and differentiate it.

Others

Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered.

Before GitLab Sytse has build recreational manned submarines from scratch, the company he started is currently the largest producer of them in the world and is called U-Boat Worx http://www.uboatworx.com/

General Advice

• Be as concise as possible. 1–2 sentences is best.

• For any answers that require more than a couple sentences, the first sentence should act as a TL;DR.

• Heavily optimize for clarity. Reviewers shouldn’t need to read a sentence twice, or look anything up to understand your answers.

• Avoid marketing-speak and jargon.

• Assume the reviewers have little-to-no domain knowledge.

• Each answer should make sense on its own. Reviewers may not read every answer, and they may not read them in order.

• Be honest. No need to exaggerate you answers, YC accepts companies of all stages and backgrounds.

• Improving your company is a better use of your time than improving your YC application. Write your application, then get back to work.

Quick Takeaways

• Traction Screams Louder Than Words: GitLab had 100,000 organizations, 1M+ active users, and a $1M annual revenue run rate. Before YC. This is the single biggest lesson. Your numbers tell a story that no eloquent sentence ever can.

• Know Your Enemy, And Yourself: They didn't just list competitors. They identified who they feared most (Atlassian) and why their main competitor (GitHub) had a weak and overpriced offering. This shows deep market knowledge.

• Clarity is Queen: "We’re making open source software to collaborate on code." It’s that simple. You don't need buzzwords to explain a strong idea. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

• Founder-Market Fit is Your Superpower: The founder built it because he needed it. The team was almost entirely developers. They were their own target audience. That's an unfair advantage.

• Have a Big Vision (And Prove It): Turning down a $10M acquisition offer is a powerful signal. It tells investors you're not in this for a quick exit. You're here to build something massive.

• Open Source is a Go-to-Market Strategy: They understood that their open-source model wasn't just a feature; it was their primary marketing engine and the key to achieving product-market fit at a low cost.

Your Next Move

Stop thinking of the YC application as a form to fill out. It's not.

Think of it as a mirror reflecting the state of your company. GitLab's application was spectacular because their business was already spectacular. They had built something people desperately wanted, and the numbers proved it. The application just reported the facts.

Your goal isn't to write a better application. Your goal is to build a better company. Go get more users. Talk to your customers. Hit a new revenue milestone. The best way to improve your YC application is to close your laptop and get back to work on your business. When you have unstoppable momentum, the application practically writes itself.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Did GitLab really have a $1M revenue run rate before applying to YC?

Yes. It's an outlier, but it shows that YC isn't just for idea-stage companies. They want to fund businesses with the potential for massive growth, and GitLab had already demonstrated that potential with real, substantial revenue.

2. My startup is pre-launch. Can I still get into YC without GitLab's traction?

Absolutely. Many companies get into YC with just a prototype or an idea. But in those cases, the strength of the founding team, the size of the market, and the power of the core insight become much more important. If you don't have traction, you must have a compelling story for why you will have it soon.

3. How important was the open-source aspect to their application?

It was central. They explained how open source was their marketing, their product development process, and their core business model. It showed they had a sophisticated understanding of how to build a company in their specific market, not just a product.

4. What's the one thing I should copy from their application?

The directness. Every answer is short, clear, and packed with data. There is zero fluff. For example, when asked about their progress, they listed big-name customers and hard numbers. Do that. Replace adjectives with metrics.

5. They seem very confident when talking about competitors. Should I be that direct?

Yes, if you can back it up. Their critique of GitHub Enterprise wasn't just an opinion; they stated why it was weak ("black box VM that doesn’t scale or cluster") and overpriced. Confident, factual analysis of your competition shows you've done your homework and know where you fit in the market.