Startup Funding Signal Scraper

Track recent startup funding announcements from public startup-news feeds and turn them into structured sales and market-intelligence signals.

The Actor currently reads EU-Startups and TechCrunch Venture RSS feeds, filters likely funding announcements, and returns clean JSON records with stable IDs, normalized funding amounts, source URLs, timestamps, and a run summary.

Who It Is For

• B2B sales teams looking for newly funded companies with fresh budget.
• RevOps and automation users who want scheduled funding-signal feeds for CRM enrichment.
• Startup analysts tracking funding momentum by amount, round, sector, country, and source.
• Agencies and consultants monitoring prospects after a public raise.
• Investors and ecosystem teams scanning public funding news for market movement.

What You Get

Each saved item is a funding-signal record. Important fields include:

Field	Description
signalId	Stable ID derived from source and article URL
recordHash	Hash of the stable record content for change detection
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of this Actor run
startupName	Best-effort startup name extracted from the headline
title	Original article headline
fundingAmountRaw	Amount text as found in the article
fundingAmountM	Numeric amount in millions for filtering and sorting
currency	EUR, USD, GBP, or null
roundType	Extracted funding round, if clearly stated
country	Country inferred from EU-Startups tags when reliable
sectors	Useful source tags after cleanup
investors	Best-effort investor names mentioned in the summary
articleUrl	Original source URL
source	eu-startups or techcrunch
publishedAt	Source publication timestamp
summary	Short article summary from the feed

The key-value store also contains RUN_SUMMARY with status, saved item count, raw item count, filters, warnings, errors, and the dataset-field version.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
sources	string	eu-startups	eu-startups, techcrunch, or both
maxResults	integer	5	Maximum saved funding signals, 1 to 200
daysBack	integer	30	Only keep items published in the last N days, 1 to 90
minAmountM	number	0	Minimum funding amount in millions; 0 disables the filter
roundType	string	empty	Optional exact round filter, such as Seed or Series A
maxRetries	integer	2	Retries per feed page for temporary 429, 5xx, or timeout errors
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	20	Per-request timeout
testMode	boolean	false	Tiny EU-Startups run with at most 3 records for health checks

The default input is intentionally small and stable so Apify Store health checks can finish quickly and cheaply.

Default Example

{}

European Seed Rounds

{
  "sources": "eu-startups",
  "daysBack": 14,
  "minAmountM": 1,
  "roundType": "Seed",
  "maxResults": 25
}

Broader Monitoring Run

{
  "sources": "both",
  "daysBack": 30,
  "minAmountM": 0,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "maxRetries": 2,
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 20
}

Health Check

{
  "testMode": true
}

Example Output

{
  "recordType": "funding_signal",
  "signalId": "eu-startups-4b6d0d083dc1d1f7",
  "recordHash": "0d927b11b0d9a5dd3a4e8b4b4b8c0b1e6c3e7c0f3b72dfc7e1d6d2d28751f2f2",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-03T12:00:00.000Z",
  "startupName": "ExampleAI",
  "title": "Berlin-based ExampleAI raises EUR 5 million to automate compliance",
  "fundingAmountRaw": "EUR 5 million",
  "fundingAmountM": 5,
  "currency": "EUR",
  "roundType": "Seed",
  "country": "Germany",
  "sectors": ["AI", "SaaS"],
  "investors": ["Example Ventures"],
  "articleUrl": "https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/07/example/",
  "source": "eu-startups",
  "sourceDomain": "eu-startups.com",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-03T08:30:00.000Z",
  "summary": "ExampleAI raised funding to expand its product and team."
}

Scheduling And Automation

Run the Actor daily or weekly and compare signalId and recordHash with your previous dataset. New signalId values are new announcements; changed recordHash values indicate a source record changed.

API example:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actorpilot~startup-funding-signal-scraper/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"sources":"eu-startups","daysBack":7,"minAmountM":1,"maxResults":25}'

For Make, Zapier, n8n, or CRM workflows, use the default dataset items as the table feed and read RUN_SUMMARY from the key-value store for monitoring.

Source Coverage

Source	Geography	Strength
EU-Startups	Europe	Frequent European funding announcements with useful country and sector tags
TechCrunch Venture	US and global	Larger and more visible venture announcements

The Actor uses public RSS feeds. It does not access private databases such as Crunchbase or PitchBook, and it does not bypass paywalls.

Accuracy Notes

• Funding extraction is best effort and depends on how clearly the article states the amount.
• Investor extraction uses text patterns and will not capture every investor.
• Country is reliable mainly for EU-Startups category tags.
• VC fund launches, IPO/PIPE stories, and editorial question headlines are filtered out because they are usually not startup funding signals.
• Empty valid result sets are reported as NO_RESULTS in RUN_SUMMARY; true fetch or validation failures still fail the run.

Typical Cost

The Actor parses RSS feeds and does not launch a browser. A default run usually completes in a few seconds and should cost far below one cent in Apify platform usage. Larger runs using both sources and many pages take longer but remain lightweight compared with browser-based scrapers.

Troubleshooting

• If a source is temporarily unavailable, the Actor retries 429, 5xx, and timeout errors.
• If all selected sources fail, the run fails and RUN_SUMMARY.errors explains why.
• If filters are too strict, the run can finish with NO_RESULTS; relax daysBack, minAmountM, or roundType.
• If you need historical funding databases, use this Actor as a daily monitor and store results over time.