Crowdfunding Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Founded July 2014, The Human Utility (formerly known as the Detroit Water Project) matches families needing help with utility bills to people who want to help through payments directly to utility companies. For over 40 million families in the United States, water and other essential utilities may be unaffordable. In order to afford utilities, families often forgo medication, food, and transportation. The Human Utility's platform divides a bill similar to a loan syndicate expanding the possible number of donors from around the world able to join together to ensure families never lose access to utility service. Donors are matched with a specific family or donate to a universal assistance fund. Later, we use utility data to design interventions addressing the root causes of why people need help with their utility bills with the goal of never having them lose service again.

Zidisha is the world's first direct peer-to-peer lending service to bridge the international wealth divide, allowing individuals worldwide to lend to and communicate with borrowers in developing countries without local intermediaries. The direct connection creates better transparency, more profit for the entrepreneurs and lenders, and greater wealth creation for the world's poorest communities. We've been featured in numerous press and media for our groundbreaking work in using internet and mobile phone technologies to connect entrepreneurs in some of the world's most isolated and impoverished places with the international peer-to-peer lending market.

We’re building technology to finance universal healthcare by crowdfunding surgeries and providing coverage for primary care.

Today's funders are so conservative they only fund the most obvious ideas. At Experiment, we fund the ideas that they won't fund; the ideas that matter. Since founding, over 47,000 citizens have pledged $9 million dollars supporting 900 scientific projects on the platform. 46% of all projects on Experiment are successfully funded. When the projects are finished, the scientists share the scientific results with their backers as lab notes and peer-reviewed publications. Scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale have chosen to use Experiment instead of writing grants. Bill Gates recognized Experiment by saying "this solution helps close the gap for potentially-promising but unfunded projects."

BackerKit is crowdfunding like you’ve never experienced—the only end-to-end platform built for today’s serious creators. BackerKit empowers creators to successfully manage and grow their crowdfunding campaigns. Since 2012, we've partnered with creators to build tools, such as the BackerKit Pledge Manager, that simplify campaign management for platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In 2022, we launched our own crowdfunding platform, offering a seamless end-to-end solution for creators and backers alike. We believe that it’s time that creators got more from crowdfunding—More fans. More funds. And waaay more fun. Keep a look out as the BackerKit team continues to innovate in the crowdfunding space: https://www.backerkit.com/for-creators

Sliced Investing is online platform that provides access to top private investments for financial advisors and accredited investors. Sliced automates all of the previously manual processes associated with making an alternative investment, facilitating electronic signing of subscription documents and streamlined reporting. Sliced's Advisor workstation allows financial advisors a one stop shop for their alternative investments and integrates seamlessly with leading custodians, reporting platforms and file storage systems.

Tilt is a technology company that makes it easy for groups and communities to collect, fundraise, or pool money securely and effectively online. In addition to helping social organizers, the company is legally certified in securing fundraisers for non-profit organizations.