Y Combinator Companies Scraper

---

🎯 What this scrapes

Y Combinator publishes every funded company at ycombinator.com/companies. The directory is backed by a public Algolia search index. This Actor wraps that index — search by free text, batch (e.g. W24), industry, or status — and writes one row per company with the YC-curated metadata.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ Browser fingerprint rotation — curl-cffi impersonates real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so the target sees a browser, not Python.
• 🌐 Residential proxy rotation via Apify Proxy — fresh session and exit IP on every block.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 5xx — up to 5 attempts per page, Retry-After honoured.
• 🧱 Rate-limit-aware pacing — when the target pushes back, we slow down instead of getting banned.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable IDs, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you only pay for results that hit your dataset. No data, no charge.

💡 Use cases

• Lead gen — pull every W24 Developer Tools company, enrich with website / contact info downstream.
• Investor prospecting — surface YC companies in a given vertical for outreach.
• Hiring — track active YC companies in your city.
• Competitive intel — daily diff to spot newly-added companies in a batch.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
searchQuery	string	no	''	Free-text search across company name + one-liner. Leave empty to use filters only.
batch	string	no	'—'	YC batch slug (e.g. W24, S23). Leave empty for all batches.
industry	string	no	'—'	Industry tag exactly as YC uses it (e.g. Developer Tools, B2B, Fintech).
status	string	no	'any'	YC publishes a status field. Leave on any to include all.
maxResults	integer	no	50	Max companies to return.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{'useApifyProxy': False}	Algolia is friendly to direct calls. Proxy optional.

Example input

{
  "batch": "W24",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
slug	string	YC slug — used in the directory URL.
name	string	Company name.
one_liner	['string', 'null']	YC-curated one-liner pitch.
long_description	['string', 'null']	Longer YC description if Algolia exposes it.
batch	['string', 'null']	YC batch (e.g. W24, S23).
status	['string', 'null']	YC status — Active, Acquired, etc.
industries	array	Industry tags.
tags	array	Additional tags from the index.
regions	array	Region tags (e.g. United States, San Francisco).
location	['string', 'null']	Headquarters string.
team_size	['integer', 'null']	YC-reported team size.
website	['string', 'null']	Company website.
small_logo_url	['string', 'null']	Logo URL (small).
yc_url	string	YC directory profile URL.
yc_team_link	['string', 'null']	YC founders page link (often the YC site itself).
scraped_at	string	When this row was recorded.

Example output

{
  "slug": "example-startup",
  "name": "Example",
  "one_liner": "AI-powered example builder.",
  "batch": "W24",
  "status": "Active",
  "industries": [
    "B2B",
    "Developer Tools"
  ],
  "team_size": 4,
  "website": "https://example.com",
  "yc_url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/example-startup"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.005	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.003	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $3.00. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

Algolia search ranks results — the order is YC's. Founder bios, full team rosters, and revenue figures are not in the directory and not in scope.

❓ FAQ

Does this need login?

No — YC's directory uses a public Algolia search index. We hit the same endpoint the website uses.

Are founder names included?

Not in the directory index — they're on the individual profile page. Use a follow-up Actor if needed.

Why are some fields null?

YC doesn't fill every field for every company. We surface null, never fabricate.

Can I filter by city?

Use regions post-filter. Index search by city isn't reliable.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

---