Jarrett Streebin, CEO of EasyPost, shares what he learned about fundraising before getting accepted to Y Combinator. The lessons were equally valuable and can be universally applied – regardless of where an entrepreneur is in his or her startup journey, he says.

With more commerce moving online every day, the shipping industry is in need of innovation. And one of the bigger pain points developers face when trying to integrate postage and shipping into their applications involves the antiquated technology major carriers like FedEx, UPS and USPS provide – complex SOAP or XML APIs that most developers would say are a nightmare to work with. San Francisco-based EasyPost is trying to solve that problem by offering a simpler, RESTful JSON API instead. Today, the company is announcing $850,000 in seed funding to help with those efforts.