Startups List Scraper

Scrape Startups List — a public, community-maintained directory of thousands of early-stage startups across 75+ cities worldwide (Austin, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Singapore, Tokyo, and more), plus two curated topic lists (Transportation, Writing Apps). Browse by city and, optionally, filter by industry category. HTTP-only, no login, no API key, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Browse startups by city — pick from 75+ cities across North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Oceania
• Filter by industry category — 40+ curated categories (SaaS, FinTech, AI, Big Data, Health Care, E-Commerce, etc.), plus a free-text override for any of the platform's 700+ raw category slugs
• Full startup profile per record — name, tagline, description, website, logo, social links, and every industry tag
• Sponsored listings flagged — isPromoted marks paid placements so you can filter them out
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields that were actually extracted

Output per startup

• id — Startups List internal ID
• name — startup name
• tagline — short one-line pitch (bolded lead-in on the site)
• description — longer description
• website — the startup's own website URL
• categories[] — industry tags (e.g. SaaS, Big Data, Risk Management)
• imageUrl — logo/thumbnail CDN URL
• twitterUrl, facebookUrl, linkedinUrl, crunchbaseUrl, angelListUrl — social/profile links, when present
• city, citySlug — the browsed city, human-readable and slug form
• sourceUrl — the Startups List listing page the record was scraped from
• recordType: "startup", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
citySlug	select	– (required, no default)	City (or topic list) to browse — required
category	select	"" (all)	Curated common category filter
customCategorySlug	string	–	Raw category slug override, for categories outside the curated list
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on emitted records (1–10000)

Example: startups in Berlin

{
  "citySlug": "berlin",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: SaaS startups in Austin

{
  "citySlug": "austin",
  "category": "SaaS",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: a category outside the curated list, in London

{
  "citySlug": "london",
  "customCategorySlug": "virtual_reality",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Use cases

• Market research — map the startup landscape of a specific city or industry
• Lead generation — build outreach lists of early-stage startups by category
• Investor sourcing — scan multiple cities for startups in a target vertical
• Competitive intelligence — track which startups are active in a given space
• Academic / journalism research — analyze startup ecosystem density by geography

FAQ

What's Startups List? A long-running, community-curated directory of local startup ecosystems, organized by city (startups-list.com), similar in spirit to F6S's company directory but with a simpler, fully public browsing surface that requires no account.

Do I need an API key or login? No — every listing page is publicly browsable HTML.

Why is category a curated dropdown instead of the full list? The site exposes 700+ raw category slugs, most highly specific and only present on a handful of city pages. The dropdown covers the ~40 most common, broadly-applicable categories; use customCategorySlug to target any other slug directly.

What if a category doesn't exist for the chosen city? The actor returns 0 records and sets a clear status message — this is expected behavior, not an error, since category availability varies by city.

How many startups are in each city? It varies widely — from a few dozen in smaller markets to 8,000+ in hubs like NYC and London. Use maxItems to cap large cities.

Are all startups still active? The directory includes both recently-added and long-standing entries; some older listings may reference companies that have since shut down or been acquired. All data reflects what is currently published on startups-list.com.

What are the two "topic list" entries in citySlug? transport and writers are curated cross-city lists (Transportation startups, Writing-app startups) served through the same URL pattern as city pages.

Does the output ever include sponsored/ad placements? No. Some city pages inject a small number of sponsored/paid-promotion cards alongside the real directory entries; the actor detects and excludes these unconditionally so every record you get back is a genuine entry from the curated startup directory.