Katharine Corriveau

Yo, peep this story about Katharine Corriveau, straight-up one of the coolest founders I’ve come across. She’s part of YC S16, which already says a lot. That’s the real deal in startup land. But her story? It’s not just about launching a company. It’s about someone who’s been deep in research and then totally flipped the script to help nonprofits crush it.

Katharine’s background is wild, she’s done time at places like U.C. Berkeley, the Oakland Museum of California, Royal BC Museum, California Academy of Sciences, Chabot Space, and even the University of Victoria. Basically, she’s been around some of the top museums and research institutions, working on all kinds of science and cultural stuff. She’s not just a random techie, she’s got serious research cred, which gave her a front-row seat to the pain points researchers and nonprofits face when hunting for grants.

And that’s where her story gets interesting. She jumped into founding Instrumentl in 2016 with Angela Braren and Gauri Manglik. The goal? Make finding and managing grants way easier. Think about it, grant funding is a total pain in the ass, super manual, lots of wasted time, and super competitive. Katharine, coming from her research background, totally understood this struggle. So she used her smarts to build a SaaS platform that automates all that chaos. Now, Instrumentl’s got over 4,000 nonprofits as clients, including big names like the San Diego Zoo and the University of Alaska. That’s no small feat. They’re growing crazy fast, over 100% year over year, and they’re cash flow positive, basically, they crushed it.

What does this tell you about Katharine? She’s not just about science or museums; she’s about solving real problems. She saw a big hole in the nonprofit world, the grant process sucks, and she used her research skills, her tech skills, and her hustle to build a solution that actually works. That’s the kind of founder who’s in it for impact, not just for a quick buck. She’s driven by making research and funding more accessible, more fast, more intelligent. That’s why she’s so important. She’s one of those people who took her background, saw a bullshit problem, and totally flipped it into something that’s changing the game for thousands of nonprofits.

Long story short? Katharine Corriveau is a total badass who’s blending science, tech, and social good in a way that actually moves the needle. That’s the kind of founder you wanna watch, she’s got the brains, the guts, and the heart to keep crushing it.