Acquire.com Startup Scraper

🤖 What does this scraper do?

This Actor scrapes startup listings from Acquire.com and gives you structured, analysis-ready data for:

• Deal sourcing & M&A pipelines
• Market & competitor research
• Investor / buyer intelligence
• OSINT & startup mapping
• Portfolio scouting & price / multiple benchmarking

It supports 3 powerful modes:

1. Direct URLs mode – Scrape specific startup pages.
2. Public categories mode – Scrape public listings by category.
3. Authenticated search mode – Use your logged-in session + filters to scrape the same data you see in your Acquire account.

You get rich JSON records including:

• Core listing metadata (headline, URL, status, type, category, location)
• Asking price & full price history
• Revenue, profit, ARR, TTM metrics & growth
• Customers & team info
• Advisory / verification status
• Keywords, tech stack & business model hints
• GA/metrics snapshots (sessions, channels, bounce rate, etc.) — when available
• History of listing status changes (submitted, verified, unlisted, etc.)

💡 Use cases

• VCs, funds, acquirers – Pipe Acquire listings into your CRM, screen by ARR, margin, geography, vertical, growth, etc.
• Brokers & buy-side advisors – Build watchlists, monitor price changes, and surface underrated assets.
• Indie hackers & aggregators – Discover assets in your niche (Shopify apps, SaaS, marketplaces, agencies, newsletters…).
• Analysts & OSINT – Correlate Acquire data with public signals (traffic, tech stack, social, etc.).

🧠 Scraping modes

1️⃣ URLs mode (recommended for precision)

Use when you already have listing URLs.

• Set urls with one or more https://app.acquire.com/startup/... links.
• This overrides all other filters.
• Ideal for enrichment / refreshing hand-picked deals.

2️⃣ Public categories mode

Scrape visible listings without login.

• Leave session and urls empty.

• Use categories to target or leave empty for all public listings.

  • saas, marketplace, mobile, shopify, content, ecommerce, agency, crypto, ai, digital, newsletter, other

• Perfect for easy broad market scans.

3️⃣ Authenticated search mode (power mode)

Use your authenticated session to scrape using the same filters as in Acquire's UI, including private / non-publicly listed inventory you're allowed to see when logged in.

How to get your session JSON

1. Install Firebase LocalStorage DB Exporter Chrome extension https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/firebase-localstorage-db/iacghnncmodbojifdbmfmbncckgicmbj
2. Log in to https://app.acquire.com
3. Click the extension icon
4. Click "Export to Clipboard"
5. Paste the exported JSON into the session field of the Actor input

That's it. The Actor will use your session to query Acquire's internal search endpoint with your chosen filters.

🔐 Note: Your session is used only inside your Apify run. Do not share it publicly.

🚀 Quick start

1. Choose your mode:

   • Have URLs? → Fill urls.
   • Want public data by category? → Use categories or leave empty for all.
   • Want full search power? → Add session + categories + filters.

2. Tune filters (optional):

   • Price range, ARR, TTM metrics, growth, age, customers, locations, advisory/verified flags, etc.

3. Proxy:

   • Use Apify Proxy (RESIDENTIAL recommended; prefilled).

4. Run the Actor

5. Download results from the Dataset tab (JSON, CSV, Excel, etc.) or connect via API.

📝 Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
maxItems	Integer	No	Max number of startups to scrape. 0 = unlimited.
urls	Array	No	List of specific Acquire startup URLs. If set, overrides all other settings.
categories	Array	No	Startup categories (saas, marketplace, mobile, shopify, content, ecommerce, agency, crypto, ai, etc.).
session	String	No*	Session JSON from Firebase LocalStorage exporter. Required for authenticated search mode.
sortBy	String	No	Sort: newest, oldest, lowPrice, highPrice, lowAnnualRevenue, highAnnualRevenue, etc.
minPrice / maxPrice	Integer	No	Asking price range filter. 0 = no bound.
locations	Array	No	Filter by seller location (country list). Empty = any.
customers	Array	No	Filter by number of customers (0-10, 10-50, …, 5000+).
minAge / maxAge	Number	No	Startup age in months.
minRevenueMultiple / maxRevenueMultiple	Number	No	Filter by revenue multiple.
minProfitMultiple / maxProfitMultiple	Number	No	Filter by profit multiple.
minTTMGrossRevenue / maxTTMGrossRevenue	Integer	No	Trailing 12-month gross revenue range.
minTTMNetProfit / maxTTMNetProfit	Integer	No	Trailing 12-month net profit range.
minAnnualRecurringRevenue / maxAnnualRecurringRevenue	Integer	No	ARR range filter (for recurring businesses).
minAnnualGrowthRate / maxAnnualGrowthRate	Number	No	Filter by annual growth rate %.
recastFinancials	Boolean	No	Only include listings with recast financials.
connectedMetrics	Boolean	No	Only include listings with connected metrics.
underAdvisory	Boolean	No	Only include listings under M&A advisory.
verifiedBusiness	Boolean	No	Only include verified businesses.
hideUnderOffer	Boolean	No	Exclude listings that are under offer.
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	Apify proxy settings. Prefilled with useApifyProxy: true and RESIDENTIAL group for higher reliability.

Example inputs

1️⃣ Scrape specific listings

{
  "maxItems": 50,
  "urls": [
    "https://app.acquire.com/startup/xxxxx/yyyyy",
    "https://app.acquire.com/startup/aaaaa/bbbbb"
  ]
}

2️⃣ Public SaaS listings

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "categories": ["saas"],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

3️⃣ Authenticated search (full power)

{
  "maxItems": 500,
  "session": { "... paste Firebase LocalStorage export here ..." },
  "categories": ["saas", "shopify"],
  "locations": ["United States", "Canada"],
  "minAnnualRecurringRevenue": 20000,
  "minAnnualGrowthRate": 5,
  "verifiedBusiness": true,
  "sortBy": "newest"
}

📊 Example output (snippet)

[
  {
    "about": "Profitable SaaS video streaming platform with $168,000 in ARR that helps small and medium-sized companies to easily create, distribute and monetize live, linear, FAST and VOD channels.\n\n✅ $260,000 in TTM revenue\n✅ $218,300 in TTM profit\n✅ $21,660 in revenue last month\n✅ $18,190 in profit last month\n✅ Competitors: Brightcove, Zype, Amagi, Dacast",
    "advisory": {
      "advisorId": "tVgFTW4dAdY1sNHFkmfTAEkSg3U2",
      "status": "active"
    },
    "askingPrice": "530000",
    "askingPriceHistory": [
      {
        "date": 1731014063981,
        "price": "590000"
      },
      {
        "date": 1733341747774,
        "dropping": false,
        "price": "590000"
      }
    ],
    "askingPriceReasoning": "The company is highly profitable and established (nearly 10 years in business), and in a growing video streaming market with turnkey growth opportunities, including engaging B2B enterprise clients and partnerships, and SEO. \n\nThis asking price is aligned with Acquire.com marketplace multiples.",
    "autoApprove": true,
    "availableMetricsIds": [],
    "businessModel": "SaaS, Flat fee + Pay-as-you-go basis.\n\nRevenues by recurring plan type are documented in the \"Customer Metrics\" spreadsheet in the supporting documents section to the right.\n\nThe company has recently optimized its video infrastructure costs, reducing them by more than threefold. These cost efficiencies are expected to yield savings of approximately $25,000-$30,000 in 2025, significantly expanding profit margins to nearly 90%. These projected improvements will begin reflecting in the company's P\u0026L statements starting March 2025.\n\nThis provides an immediate and ongoing opportunity for margin expansion and profitability enhancement for the new owner.",
    "businessModelKeywords": [
      "Business-to-business (B2B)",
      "Subscription",
      "Free trial",
      "SaaS"
    ],
    "churnRate": "5-10%",
    "churnRateTrending": "stable",
    "competitors": [
      "Brightcove",
      "Zype",
      "Amagi",
      "Dacast"
    ],
    "countryState": null,
    "createTime": "2021-12-11T00:11:13.502975Z",
    "createdDate": 1639181472950,
    "customers": "1000-5000",
    "date": 1753305423243,
    "dateFounded": {
      "month": "February",
      "year": "2015"
    },
    "files": {
      "default": 3,
      "profitAndLoss": 1
    },
    "financial": "",
    "financialKeywords": [
      "Bootstrapped"
    ],
    "financialSnapshot": {
      "date": 1749143677041,
      "entries": [
        {
          "expenses": 163778,
          "netIncome": 82262,
          "revenue": 246040,
          "sde": 172742,
          "type": "2022"
        }
      ],
      "financialSnapshotType": "recast",
      "preGenEntries": null
    },
    "growthOpportunity": "SEO with preexisting high quality domain authority can be efficiently leveraged to increase top and bottom line growth. \n\nAdditionally, adding B2B enterprise deals and partnering with major players in the industry can increase drive growth with a new buyer. \n\nFinally, there are several product additions that can increase the user base.",
    "growthOpportunityHighlights": [
      "Improve conversion rates",
      "Increase pricing",
      "Increase digital marketing",
      "Increase content marketing",
      "Expand to new markets",
      "Focus on SEO",
      "Social media marketing",
      "Hire a sales team",
      "New product features"
    ],
    "hasFinancialSummary": true,
    "hideFromSearch": false,
    "highlights": [
      "Website",
      "Brand",
      "Social media accounts",
      "Marketing materials",
      "Domain",
      "Customers",
      "Codebase and IP"
    ],
    "history": [
      {
        "d": 1639530142110,
        "s": "rejected"
      },
      {
        "d": 1685639165225,
        "s": "submitted"
      },
      {
        "d": 1686306032922,
        "s": "verified"
      }
    ],
    "id": "cJKEOpoS3TGxcmz8xP5T",
    "inGBAPipeline": true,
    "insights": {
      "conversations": 125,
      "favorites": 60,
      "views": 605,
      "weeklyViews": 8
    },
    "isPremium": false,
    "keywords": [
      "video",
      "streaming",
      "broadcasting",
      "live stream"
    ],
    "listingHeadline": "Video streaming platform for SMBs to create, distribute and monetize live and VOD channels",
    "listingType": "premium",
    "location": "Spain",
    "managedByMicro": false,
    "marketplaceAppearanceDate": 1639692835900,
    "metrics": {
      "ga": {
        "lastUpdateTime": 1753961335349,
        "marketingMetrics": [
          {
            "date": 1721001600000,
            "topChannels": {
              "Direct": 1872,
              "Email": 12,
              "Organic Search": 4448,
              "Organic Social": 35,
              "Organic Video": 40,
              "Paid Search": 509,
              "Referral": 843,
              "Unassigned": 718
            }
          }
        ],
        "startupMetrics": [
          {
            "data": {
              "BounceRate": 0.3783085356303837,
              "SessionDuration": 343.3992581179327,
              "Sessions": 12770,
              "Users": 8206
            },
            "date": 1721001600000
          }
        ]
      }
    },
    "name": "projects/microacquire/databases/(default)/documents/users/eL8qNKCpmGQTQmyVktfsaUJKP473/startups/cJKEOpoS3TGxcmz8xP5T",
    "onboarding": {
      "last": {
        "sectionIndex": 0,
        "stepIndex": 0
      },
      "sectionIndex": 0,
      "stepIndex": 0,
      "updatedAt": 1727427899594
    },
    "openToOffers": false,
    "reasonToSale": "",
    "reasonToSaleKeywords": [
      "Starting a new venture",
      "Lifestyle change"
    ],
    "reasonUnlisted": null,
    "revenue": "168000",
    "review": "SaaS",
    "sellerInfo": {
      "isVerified": true
    },
    "status": "verified",
    "team": "small",
    "techStack": null,
    "techStackKeywords": [
      "AngularJS",
      "Laravel",
      "MySQL",
      "PHP",
      "Stripe",
      "AWS"
    ],
    "topPickedAt": 1745445294032,
    "totalGrowthAnnual": "0",
    "totalProfitAnnual": "218300",
    "totalProfitMonthly": "18190",
    "totalRevenueAnnual": "259948",
    "totalRevenueMonthly": "21660",
    "updateTime": "2025-11-08T10:30:21.369118Z",
    "updatedDate": 1762554691848,
    "url": "https://app.acquire.com/startup/eL8qNKCpmGQTQmyVktfsaUJKP473/cJKEOpoS3TGxcmz8xP5T",
    "userId": "eL8qNKCpmGQTQmyVktfsaUJKP473"
  },
  ...
]

Each record is designed to be:

• Machine-friendly – perfect for pipelines, enrichment & dashboards.
• Human-usable – directly readable for analysts, M&A teams, and investors.

🌍 Proxy usage

Acquire may apply rate limiting and geo-specific behaviors.

Using Apify Proxy (especially RESIDENTIAL) helps:

• Improve stability and reduce blocks
• Distribute requests safely
• Emulate realistic traffic patterns

The Actor comes preconfigured with a recommended proxy setup; you can adjust it as needed.

⚖️ Legal & ethical considerations

• Respect Acquire.com's Terms of Service and only access data you're allowed to see.
• Use your own account & session for authenticated mode; don't share credentials.
• Rate-limit responsibly to avoid harming the service.
• Comply with data protection laws (e.g. GDPR/CCPA) when storing or using scraped data.
• If unsure, consult a legal professional before using this tool in production.