GitHub Startup & Emerging Company Finder

Discover emerging technology companies through real public GitHub development activity.

This Actor does not claim that an organization is legally a startup. GitHub does not reliably expose incorporation, funding, revenue, employee count, founder, or company-age data. Results use deterministic classifications such as likely_startup, emerging_company, established_company, open_source_project, individual_or_personal, research_or_education, and unknown, each with confidence and inspectable reasons.

Architecture

• src/github/discovery.ts builds partitioned GitHub repository search queries and resolves repository owners to organizations.
• src/github/resolver.ts fetches organization profiles, public repositories, recent commits, releases, topics, languages, and activity windows.
• src/enrichment/website.ts fetches only the published homepage and extracts lightweight public company/product evidence.
• src/analysis/scoring.ts calculates emergingCompanyScore and commercialRelevanceScore.
• src/analysis/classification.ts applies deterministic classification rules.
• src/analysis/dedupe.ts deduplicates by GitHub organization and canonical website domain.
• src/main.ts orchestrates discovery, analysis, filtering, dataset output, and run summary.

Input Example

{
  "keywords": ["AI", "developer tools"],
  "technologies": ["Python", "TypeScript"],
  "createdAfter": "2024-01-01",
  "minimumRecentActivity": 10,
  "maximumOrganizations": 20,
  "includeWebsiteEnrichment": true
}

Use githubToken, GITHUB_TOKEN, or APIFY_GITHUB_TOKEN for authenticated GitHub API limits. In Apify, store tokens as secrets.

Output

Each Dataset item represents one unique GitHub organization or confidently linked company/domain.

{
  "companyName": "Example Cloud",
  "classification": "emerging_company",
  "classificationConfidence": 70,
  "classificationReasons": [
    "GitHub activity is recent enough to suggest an emerging technology organization",
    "Public website contains product signals"
  ],
  "githubOrganization": "example-cloud",
  "githubUrl": "https://github.com/example-cloud",
  "githubOrganizationCreatedAt": "2024-02-10T12:00:00Z",
  "website": "https://example.com/",
  "location": "New York, NY",
  "description": "Developer workflow platform",
  "productDetected": true,
  "productName": "Example Cloud",
  "productDescription": "A developer platform for deployment workflows.",
  "publicRepositories": 7,
  "activeRepositories": 4,
  "repositoriesCreated30d": 1,
  "repositoriesCreated90d": 3,
  "repositoriesUpdated30d": 4,
  "repositoriesUpdated90d": 5,
  "activeContributors30d": 3,
  "activeContributors90d": 6,
  "releases30d": 1,
  "releases90d": 2,
  "topLanguages": [{ "language": "TypeScript", "repositories": 4 }],
  "activityTrend": "accelerating",
  "emergingCompanyScore": 78,
  "commercialRelevanceScore": 82,
  "contactPage": "https://example.com/contact",
  "careersPage": "https://example.com/careers",
  "pricingPage": "https://example.com/pricing",
  "publicEmail": "hello@example.com",
  "explicitFoundedYear": null,
  "explicitFundingInformation": null,
  "fundingSource": null,
  "discoveredAt": "2026-09-11T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Discovery Notes

GitHub search can cap repository search results at 1,000 results per query. The Actor partitions discovery by repository creation date and language, logs partitions that still exceed the cap, and records limitations in the OUTPUT key-value record.

Dates in input apply to repository discovery when technically meaningful. They are not used as proof of company age or incorporation date.

Known Limitations

• GitHub activity is an engineering signal, not legal or financial proof.
• Recent contributor counts are sampled from recent commits across capped active repositories.
• Website enrichment is intentionally shallow and may miss facts hidden behind JavaScript, PDFs, or blocked pages.
• Funding information is returned only when explicitly stated on the organization website text that was fetched.
• Similar organization names are not merged unless they share a canonical website domain.

Local Commands

npm install
npm run build
npm run lint
npm test
npm start

For a small local run, write storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json or use the Apify CLI:

$apify run --input='{"keywords":["developer tools"],"languages":["TypeScript"],"maximumOrganizations":10}'