A16z Speedrun Companies Scraper

Export a16z Speedrun companies as structured records for accelerator landscape research, investment sourcing, and portfolio monitoring.

The Actor reads the public Speedrun company directory and returns company identity, cohort, industry, location, team size, profile and social links, plus nested founder names, biographies, LinkedIn URLs, and team roles. Use directory filters or supply exact public company profile URLs.

What does this Actor do?

A16z Speedrun Companies Scraper turns the public accelerator directory into integration-ready JSON, CSV, Excel, or other Apify dataset formats.

It can:

• browse the current public company directory;
• search names, summaries, descriptions, and industry labels;
• select one or more cohort codes;
• filter by exact industry, region, country, or team-size range;
• extract one or more supplied Speedrun company profile URLs;
• include public founder and team-role records inside each company result;
• cap output for predictable runs and recurring snapshots.

It does not enrich records from private databases or guess missing contact details.

Who is it for?

• Investors and scouts building an accelerator sourcing list.
• Accelerator researchers comparing cohorts, sectors, and geographies.
• Portfolio operations teams taking scheduled snapshots for downstream change detection.
• Founders and market analysts mapping companies and public founder roles.
• Data teams loading a normalized Speedrun dataset into a warehouse, spreadsheet, CRM, or notebook.

Why use it?

The directory is useful for browsing, but repeated research benefits from a stable row contract.

This Actor provides:

• one default-dataset row per matching company;
• the public source ID and canonical profile URL for deduplication;
• nested public founder/team-role data without a separate charge event;
• identical filters for discovered and explicitly supplied company URLs;
• bounded retries on temporary API failures;
• direct public JSON extraction without a browser or proxy.

What data can I extract?

Field	Meaning
companyId, slug, name	Stable public company identity
profileUrl	Canonical Speedrun company profile
cohort	Published cohort code such as SR003
industries	Published industry labels
foundedYear, teamSize	Published company year and team size, when present
country, region, state, city	Published geography
preamble, description, keySignal	Public profile narrative fields
websiteUrl	Company website
linkedinUrl, xUrl, githubUrl	Published company social links
logoUrl, coverImageUrl	Public image URLs; images are not downloaded
demoDayVideoUrl	Published Demo Day video URL, when present
founders	Nested founder names, roles, introductions, LinkedIn and profile image URLs
scrapedAt	UTC timestamp for the snapshot

Missing optional source values are returned as null; list fields are returned as arrays.

Getting started

1. Open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Leave company URLs empty to search the directory, or add exact /companies/<slug> profile URLs.
3. Add cohort, industry, geography, search, or team-size filters if needed.
4. Set Maximum companies for the size of the snapshot.
5. Click Start.
6. Open the Dataset tab and export results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

The prefilled input extracts a real public profile and is suitable for a small first run.

Input parameters

Input	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	empty	Exact public https://speedrun.a16z.com/companies/<slug> URLs
search	string	empty	Case-insensitive company/description/industry text search
cohorts	string array	empty	Exact cohort codes; matches any selected value
industries	string array	empty	Exact public industry labels; matches any selected value
regions	string array	empty	Exact Speedrun region labels
countries	string array	empty	Exact published country names
minTeamSize	integer	empty	Minimum published team size
maxTeamSize	integer	empty	Maximum published team size
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum saved companies, from 1 to 1,000

All supplied filters also apply to startUrls. Unknown profile slugs produce no row rather than unrelated directory results.

Input examples

Search for public AI-related profiles:

{
  "search": "AI",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Extract one exact company profile:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://speedrun.a16z.com/companies/2weeks" }
  ],
  "maxItems": 1
}

Take a cohort snapshot:

{
  "cohorts": ["SR006"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Output example

A current exact-profile run returns a record shaped like this:

{
  "companyId": "91edd679-b699-4a39-8695-a7a8decb9398",
  "slug": "2weeks",
  "name": "2weeks",
  "profileUrl": "https://speedrun.a16z.com/companies/2weeks",
  "cohort": "SR003",
  "industries": ["Gaming"],
  "foundedYear": 2024,
  "teamSize": 4,
  "country": "United States of America",
  "region": "America/Canada",
  "city": "New York",
  "websiteUrl": "https://2weeks.games",
  "founders": [
    {
      "name": "Brandon Dillon",
      "role": "CEO and Co-Founder",
      "linkedinUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/noughtceratops/"
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-31T21:13:15.623Z"
}

The actual record includes all schema fields and every founder published by the source.

How much does it cost to export a16z Speedrun companies?

This Actor uses pay per event:

• a one-time Start event per run;
• one Item processed event per saved company.

Nested founders and team roles are included in the company item and do not create a separate charge event. Volume tiers automatically reduce the per-company price.

Apify tier	Price per saved company
FREE	$0.0067068
BRONZE	$0.005832
SILVER	$0.004549
GOLD	$0.0034992
PLATINUM	$0.0023328
DIAMOND	$0.001633

The start event is $0.005. At the BRONZE item price, 1 saved company costs about $0.010832, 10 cost about $0.06332, and 100 cost about $0.5882. Filters that return no companies incur only the start event. Platform compute may also count against your Apify plan according to Apify's billing rules.

Monitoring accelerator cohorts

For recurring portfolio monitoring:

1. save a Task with a cohort filter and a stable maxItems;
2. schedule it daily, weekly, or monthly;
3. export each dataset to cloud storage or a warehouse;
4. compare by companyId to identify new, removed, or changed public records.

The Actor creates snapshots. It does not itself send alerts or calculate historical diffs.

Integration patterns

• Send the dataset to Google Sheets with an Apify integration.
• Trigger a webhook when a run finishes and ingest rows into a CRM.
• Join cohort, industries, and geography in a BI dashboard.
• Store companyId and scrapedAt in a warehouse for longitudinal comparisons.
• Use founder role and linkedinUrl fields in a public-profile research workflow.

Avoid treating missing public values as evidence that a company has no such attribute.

Run with the Apify API

cURL

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~a16z-speedrun-companies-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cohorts":["SR006"],"maxItems":50}'

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/a16z-speedrun-companies-scraper').call({
  search: 'AI',
  maxItems: 10,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(token='YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/a16z-speedrun-companies-scraper').call(
    run_input={'startUrls': [{'url': 'https://speedrun.a16z.com/companies/2weeks'}], 'maxItems': 1}
)
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

Keep tokens in environment variables or a secret manager, not in source code.

Use with Apify MCP

Add the Actor to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http apify \
  "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/a16z-speedrun-companies-scraper"

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code

Use this equivalent configuration in Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/a16z-speedrun-companies-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• “Run the a16z Speedrun scraper for SR006 and summarize industries by company count.”
• “Extract the 2weeks Speedrun profile and list each published founder role.”
• “Find up to 20 Speedrun profiles related to AI and save the dataset URL.”

Limits and reliability

• Coverage is limited to records currently exposed by the public Speedrun directory.
• The source can add, remove, or rename fields and filter labels.
• A company may omit team size, geography, social links, biographies, or other optional values.
• Search is a substring match over current public text; it is not semantic search.
• The Actor retries temporary network, rate-limit, and server failures three times with bounded backoff.
• Stable 4xx responses, invalid input, malformed JSON, and unexpected API shapes fail the run instead of returning a misleading empty success.
• No proxy or browser is used in the current implementation.

Responsible use and legality

The Actor collects public company and professional-profile information from the public Speedrun directory. You are responsible for complying with the source's terms, applicable privacy and database laws, and the rules of systems receiving exported data.

Do not use results for harassment, unlawful discrimination, spam, or decisions that require independent verification. Respect deletion requests and retain personal data only as long as necessary for a legitimate purpose.

Troubleshooting

Why did my run return zero companies?

Check exact cohort, industry, region, and country spelling. Filters are combined, so every filter group must match. Also confirm that supplied profile URLs use speedrun.a16z.com/companies/<slug>.

Why is a field null?

The source did not publish that optional value for the company. The Actor does not infer missing information.

Why did the run fail after retries?

Inspect the run log for the HTTP status or response-shape error. A temporary upstream issue can be retried later. Persistent errors may indicate a source API change.

Can I export every company?

Yes. Leave filters and profile URLs empty and set maxItems above the current directory size. The directory changes over time, so the result count is not guaranteed.

FAQ

Is this an official a16z API?

No. This is an independent Actor that structures records exposed by the public Speedrun website and its public data surface.

Does it scrape the full a16z portfolio?

No. It is intentionally scoped to the public a16z Speedrun company directory.

Are founders charged separately?

No. Published founder and team-role objects are nested in the company record and included in the company item charge.

Does it monitor changes automatically?

The Actor produces a timestamped snapshot. Save it as an Apify Task and schedule runs; compare snapshots in your own workflow.

Can I provide arbitrary websites?

No. startUrls accepts only public a16z Speedrun company profile URLs. Invalid hosts or paths fail input validation.

Related Automation Lab Actors

• Company Leadership Scraper — collect source-attributed public leadership records from supplied company websites.
• Company Career Page Jobs Scraper — turn public company career pages into normalized hiring-intelligence records.

Use those Actors only when you need their separate website-level workflows; this Actor remains focused on Speedrun's public accelerator directory.