Donkey (YC S26) — The AI-native trading company: factory prices, delivered, one number
Donkey is the modern trading company. We buy straight from Chinese factories and sell delivered to US importers: one USD price to their dock, duty paid, our own inspectors on the factory floor before the factory gets paid.
Sell to companies like these? Paste your website and see 10 with a filed reason to buy this month. Free.
Opens in a new tab. No signup.
What it does The AI-native trading company: factory prices, delivered, one number (source)
Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “In March 2026, Target announced a planned incremental $1 billion operating investment” Source: Target Corporation (press release)
Donkey is the modern trading company. We buy straight from Chinese factories and sell delivered to US importers: one USD price to their dock, duty paid, our own inspectors on the factory floor before the factory gets paid.
Most importers buy through trading companies that mark up every container 15 to 30 percent and never reveal the factory. US customs records are public. Almost nobody reads them, so we arrive already knowing their supply lane. They send one photo of a part they reorder. We name the factory that actually makes it and beat their landed cost in 72 hours, or they keep their supplier.
We take title, run the inspection, move the money, and offer credit-insured net-45 terms to qualified buyers. The old trading giants ran this coordination with tens of thousands of people. Our machine runs it with a handful, and every settled order compounds the pricing and reliability data the next one runs on.
Team in SF and China, English and Mandarin. Know a US importer buying from China? Send them our way: one photo of a part, and we will name their factory. donkey.trade
What the site is built with
Next.jsframeworkVercelhosting
Read from the page's own HTML and response headers on 10 September 2026, at https://donkey.trade/. Each badge matched a string the site serves about itself — hover one to see which. Nothing here is a traffic, ranking or revenue figure: those cannot be read off a page and are not claimed.
Checked away from the directory entry. Neither line below comes from the company's Y Combinator page.
The smart container: factory prices, delivered, one number. Upload your buying list and see every landed price instantly, tariffs and delivery included.
The title and description the site itself served, answering 200. Not a cached copy and not the company's directory entry — what was live when we asked.
Counted only where a thread links to this company's own site, announces it by name on that forum, or names it beside its own Y Combinator batch. A thread whose title merely carries the words is not counted — a name is not an identifier. More may exist than the one page of results read here. Hacker News is not us, and nothing above is our opinion of the company.
Benjamin Martindale
Founder/CEO
Prev founded Prelude OS: 31 paying Chinese factory customers cold-acquired in 39 days on the ground in Guangzhou; cash-flow positive. Advised heavy-equipment giants Sany and Sinoboom on overseas expansion. Featured on Mango TV, China's largest media station: factory-floor interview segments and a named 13-minute personal profile. Ran a Toronto marketing company: $4M closed for construction clients in 6 months. Fluent Mandarin. Finance at Rotman Commerce, UofT; dropped a credit short.
Minghao Tan
Founder/CTO
Co-founder & CTO. Donkey buys factory-direct in China and sells delivered to US importers. Customs records are public. We read them, flag the trading company markup, and quote the same parts straight from the factory that makes them. QC on the floor before the factory gets paid.
I build the data side: parsing raw customs filings, separating real factories from shells and forwarders, and the software the whole trade runs on.
donkey.trade
Founders, titles and bios as the company published them. Photographs are our own copies of the ones on that record, so they do not break when the original link expires.
One of 143 companies held here in B2B › Supply Chain and Logistics.
No investor is drawn from a Form D — the form states how many invested and never who. The one investor on this graph is named because a batch has exactly one.
Want the whole picture on Donkey?
Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “In March 2026, Target announced a planned incremental $1 billion operating investment” Source: Target Corporation (press release)
A Full Report on Donkey: verified, sourced, every claim cited, ready in a few minutes. See pricing.
What the Full Report on Donkey covers
The Short Answer
Which Company This Is
What They Do, And How The Money Works
Who Runs It, And How To Reach Them
The Money: Funding, Valuation, Runway
Who Pays Them, And Who They Are Up Against
Warning Bells
Sources
8 cited sources found
Plus the sections for what you are deciding, which you pick after ordering.
You get an alert in MentionFox the next time this company shows up.
Is this you?
If you're behind Donkey: acceptance into a YC batch is one of the few weeks a young company gets looked up by people who matter — investors, other founders, press. FoxPlug turns the commits, deploys, and releases you're already making into that story automatically, so anyone who looks finds something current. GetFoxChat puts a guide on your own site so the people YC's own page just sent you don't read one line and leave.
