Y Combinator Companies & Founders Scraper

Export structured Y Combinator company and founder data for lead generation, recruiting, startup research, and market mapping. Search the public YC directory, filter companies, or provide exact company profile URLs.

What you can export

Each company record includes its YC profile URL, website, description, batch, status, stage, team size, hiring status, industries, regions, tags, launch timestamp, and logo. Optional founder enrichment adds public founder names, roles, biographies, and labelled LinkedIn and X profiles.

Who is it for?

This Actor is designed for sales and recruiting teams, startup investors, market researchers, founders, and data teams that need repeatable YC company and founder datasets instead of manual directory browsing.

Use cases

• Build targeted startup and founder lead lists by batch or industry.
• Find actively hiring YC companies for recruiting research.
• Map startup markets, stages, regions, and company status.
• Enrich CRM or spreadsheet workflows with canonical company URLs.
• Monitor a repeatable segment of the YC ecosystem.

Input recipes

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "batches": ["Summer 2024"],
  "includeFounders": true,
  "maxItems": 10
}

To fetch known profiles directly:

{
  "companyUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/aisdr" }],
  "includeFounders": true,
  "maxItems": 1
}

Input settings

Filters within the same setting are alternatives; different filter settings are combined. If companyUrls is supplied, those exact profiles take precedence over directory search.

Output example

{
  "id": 29110,
  "name": "AiSDR",
  "slug": "aisdr",
  "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/aisdr",
  "website": "https://aisdr.com/",
  "oneLiner": "AI sales prospecting. Replace your SDR with AiSDR",
  "batch": "Summer 2023",
  "status": "Active",
  "stage": "Early",
  "teamSize": 5,
  "isHiring": false,
  "industries": ["B2B", "Sales"],
  "regions": ["United States of America", "Remote"],
  "founders": [{
    "name": "Yuriy Zaremba",
    "title": "Founder/CEO",
    "linkedinUrl": "https://linkedin.com/in/yuriy-zaremba",
    "twitterUrl": "https://twitter.com/YuriyZaremba"
  }],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-07T06:09:19.162Z"
}

API usage

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~y-combinator-directory-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"developer tools","maxItems":20,"includeFounders":true}'

Use the returned run's dataset URL to download JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or other supported formats.

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/y-combinator-directory-scraper').call({
  query: 'developer tools', maxItems: 20, includeFounders: true,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os
client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('fetch_cat/y-combinator-directory-scraper').call(
    run_input={'query': 'developer tools', 'maxItems': 20, 'includeFounders': True}
)
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items

MCP and AI agents

Connect this Actor through Apify MCP at:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/y-combinator-directory-scraper

Add it to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/y-combinator-directory-scraper"

For desktop clients, Cursor, or VS Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/y-combinator-directory-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Find 20 active YC artificial intelligence companies and include their founders."
• "Export YC developer-tool companies from Summer 2024 for CRM import."

Agents can run repeatable startup searches, retrieve structured company records, and pass them to CRM, enrichment, or analysis steps.

Tips

• Start with 10 companies to verify your filters cheaply.
• Use exact YC batch and industry labels for predictable filtering.
• Disable includeFounders when only company metadata is needed.
• Use companyUrls for deterministic refreshes of a known lead list.
• Increase maxItems only after confirming the search is suitably targeted.

Limits

Results reflect information publicly available from Y Combinator at run time. Optional fields may be empty when YC does not publish them. The Actor does not infer private contact details. Source changes or transient profile failures may leave founder enrichment empty while preserving company records.

Integrations

Export results to Google Sheets, Airtable, Make, Zapier, n8n, webhooks, cloud storage, or your own application through the Apify API and dataset clients.

Support

For questions or unexpected results, open an issue from this Actor's Apify page and include a run URL plus a short description of the expected result.