Verified against ChatGPT · 2026-08-07
Tighten an accelerator application essay down to specific, checkable claims
Rewrites raw application notes into concrete, number-backed answers inside a hard character limit, flagging buzzword phrases and vague market-size claims that reviewers screen out on sight.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
You are tightening a startup accelerator application essay (YC-style short-answer format). Every claim must be checkable — a specific noun, number, or named fact — never a phrase that sounds impressive but says nothing verifiable. CONTEXT Application question: What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do. Raw notes/draft answer: We are building a revolutionary AI-powered platform that will disrupt the massive dental billing industry by using cutting-edge machine learning to transform how clinics handle insurance claims. Hard character or word limit: 250 characters Facts you're confident are accurate and can defend if asked: Auto-generates dental insurance claim forms from scheduling data; 12 paying multi-location practices; cuts claim processing time from ~40 to ~12 minutes per claim BUZZWORD SCAN Scan We are building a revolutionary AI-powered platform that will disrupt the massive dental billing industry by using cutting-edge machine learning to transform how clinics handle insurance claims. for phrases that sound impressive but carry no checkable content — "game-changing," "revolutionary," "massive market," "disrupting," "cutting-edge," "passionate about" — and either replace each one with a specific fact from Auto-generates dental insurance claim forms from scheduling data; 12 paying multi-location practices; cuts claim processing time from ~40 to ~12 minutes per claim or remove it entirely if no fact supports it. A reviewer who has read thousands of these applications screens these phrases out reflexively, not because the phrase is inherently bad, but because it's the specific pattern that signals an applicant is filling space instead of stating something real. CONCRETENESS CHECK For every remaining sentence, ask whether it contains a specific noun or number a reviewer could ask a follow-up question about. If a sentence would survive being deleted with no loss of information, delete it — every remaining word needs to be doing real work under the character limit. LIMIT DISCIPLINE Rewrite the answer to fit inside 250 characters, prioritizing the most specific and most surprising fact first — the fact most likely to make a reviewer stop skimming — rather than a chronological or narrative ordering that saves the strongest point for last. HONESTY CHECK Flag anything in the tightened draft that goes beyond what Auto-generates dental insurance claim forms from scheduling data; 12 paying multi-location practices; cuts claim processing time from ~40 to ~12 minutes per claim actually supports, even if it reads well — an application answer that oversells past what the founder can defend in a follow-up interview is worse than a shorter, more modest one that's entirely accurate. OUTPUT FORMAT Buzzword scan results (before/after), the tightened final answer fitting 250 characters exactly, and an honesty-check note.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
YC's own widely-shared public advice on application essays repeatedly flags concrete, specific answers over generic ones as the single biggest differentiator between applications that get a callback and applications that don't, and this prompt operationalizes that advice mechanically rather than leaving it as a vague style note the founder has to interpret themselves — every remaining sentence has to survive a specific, checkable test rather than just 'sounding' more concrete. Flagging buzzword phrases like 'revolutionary' and 'massive market' targets a documented, specific failure pattern reviewers see over and over in the exact same wording across thousands of applications, and they screen it out on sight not because the phrase itself is inherently disqualifying, but because it reliably signals an applicant reaching for impressive-sounding language in place of a fact they don't actually have yet — replacing it with a real number from {{confirmed_facts}} (12 paying practices, a 40-to-12-minute time cut) says something a competitor's buzzword-filled answer can't. Enforcing the hard {{character_limit}} rather than producing overflow text that gets trimmed later mirrors the actual constraint of the application itself, forcing the same prioritization decision under the same pressure a founder would face writing it directly — which fact goes first, what gets cut — instead of writing generously and hoping an edit pass catches the excess, which is exactly how vague filler survives into a final submission. The honesty check closing the process matters because a tightened, punchier answer is also an easier one to accidentally oversell past what {{confirmed_facts}} supports, and an application claim that can't survive a follow-up interview question does more damage to credibility than a shorter, less impressive-sounding answer that's fully accurate.
What you get back
Buzzword scan: "revolutionary," "disrupt," "massive," "cutting-edge" all flagged — none are supported by a specific fact in the draft. Tightened answer (fits 250 characters): "We auto-generate dental insurance claim forms directly from clinic scheduling data. 12 multi-location practices pay us today; one cut claim processing from 40 minutes to 12 minutes per claim." Honesty check: No claims beyond confirmed facts — "12 paying practices" and the 40-to-12-minute figure are both directly from {{confirmed_facts}} and defensible in a follow-up interview.
Verified against
ChatGPT GPT-5.1 · 2026-08-07
Changelog
- 2026-08-07 — Initial publish, verified against ChatGPT GPT-5.1.
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