Three childhood friends from the University of Waterloo have secured $500,000 from the Y Combinator (YC) for GALE, an innovative immigration software.
YC is one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious startup accelerators, with an average acceptance rate of one per cent. Every year, recipients receive $500,000 in seed funding and other resources like alumni talks and mentorship. With alumni including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Twitch, YC can help kickstart a young business.
“To us, it’s kind of a no-brainer of why wouldn’t we go?” says GALE’s co-founder Haokun Qin, a fourth-year Computational Mathematics student. “The people at YC have done things we wanted to do at the 100th level. We want to learn from them, so we can create a product that people love.”
His team was recommended by Velocity, Waterloo’s flagship incubator, to attend YC.
Qin co-created GALE alongside Computer Science students, Rahul Gudise and Rishabh Sambare, after the Collision Conference in 2024, which they attended to promote their product management software.
Read the full story from Waterloo News to learn more.