Y Combinator Companies Directory Scraper

Scrape all 5900+ Y Combinator portfolio companies across every batch from 2005 onward. Returns name, batch, status, founders (with LinkedIn/Twitter), website, descriptions, industry, subindustry, tags, team size, location, launch year, hiring status.

Uses a daily-refreshed open data mirror of YC's official directory (no auth, no key) plus optional per-company page scrape for founders + launches.

Features

• Get every YC company in one call (~6000 records, ~3 MB)
• Rich filtering: batch, industry, subindustry, status, team size range, country/location, tags, free-text
• Optional: enrich each company with founders (name, role, LinkedIn, Twitter, bio) and launch posts
• All YC batches: from S05 to W26
• Stable schema across the run — handles YC's occasional field renames

Input

{
  "filters": {
    "batch": "W26",
    "industry": "B2B",
    "status": "Active",
    "minTeamSize": 5,
    "location": "United States",
    "tags": ["AI"],
    "isHiring": true
  },
  "searchQuery": "agent",
  "maxResults": 100,
  "fetchCompanyPageDetails": false
}

Field	Type	Default	Notes
filters	object	{}	Combined AND. Empty = all companies
searchQuery	string	""	Substring match on name + one_liner + long_description
maxResults	int	100	Cap returned (full directory ~6000)
fetchCompanyPageDetails	bool	false	+1 HTTP req per company for founders & launches

Filter fields

Key	Match	Example
batch	exact	"W26", "S25", "W24", etc.
status	exact	"Active", "Acquired", "Inactive"
industry	substring	"B2B", "Consumer", "Fintech", "Healthcare"
subindustry	substring	"Marketing", "Devtools"
location	substring	"San Francisco", "London"
country	substring	"United States", "India"
minTeamSize / maxTeamSize	range	5, 100
tags	all-required	["AI", "Productivity"]
isHiring	exact	true

Output

{
  "id": 12345,
  "name": "Acme AI",
  "slug": "acme-ai",
  "formerNames": [],
  "batch": "W26",
  "status": "Active",
  "oneLiner": "AI agents for customer support",
  "longDescription": "Acme AI builds autonomous agents that...",
  "website": "https://acme.ai",
  "ycUrl": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/acme-ai",
  "logoUrl": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/...",
  "allLocations": "San Francisco, United States",
  "country": "United States",
  "industry": "B2B",
  "subindustry": "B2B -> Sales",
  "tags": ["AI", "Generative AI", "Customer Support"],
  "tagsHighlighted": ["AI"],
  "teamSize": 8,
  "launchedAt": "2026-02-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "stage": "Seed",
  "isHiring": true,
  "regions": ["America / Canada", "Remote"],
  "founders": [
    { "name": "Jane Doe", "title": "CEO", "bio": "...", "avatarUrl": "...", "linkedinUrl": "https://linkedin.com/in/janedoe", "twitterUrl": null }
  ],
  "launches": [
    { "id": 99, "slug": "acme-ai", "title": "Acme AI: AI agents for support teams", "tagline": "...", "postedAt": "2026-02-20T...", "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/acme-ai" }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-18T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• VC sourcing: find recent batches in specific industries (e.g. all W26 fintech with team>5)
• Sales prospecting: export YC startups in your target market with founder LinkedIn URLs
• Recruiting: filter isHiring=true to find startups currently building teams
• Competitive intel: track competitors in your YC batch + sub-industry
• Trend research: count companies per industry/batch over time
• Investor pipeline: identify Series A candidates by team size + batch age
• Founder outreach: filter by tag (e.g. "ML Infra") and bulk-email founders

Notes

• Open data source: primary source is yc-oss.github.io/api/companies/all.json — community-maintained mirror updated daily from YC's official internal API. Reliable for last 24h freshness.
• For fresher data (intra-day, breaking batch announcements), the actor scrapes individual YC company pages when fetchCompanyPageDetails=true.
• No bot detection: YC's data is intentionally public for founder/funder visibility.
• Founder enrichment is opt-in because it adds one HTTP request per company — for the full ~6000 directory that's significant. Filter first, enrich after.
• Batch codes: W{YY} = Winter, S{YY} = Summer, F{YY} = Fall (newer), IK12 = old Imagine K12 cohort.
• Status values: Active (still operating), Acquired, Inactive (defunct).

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Changelog

• 2026-05-20 — Maintenance pass: reviewed the input schema and default values for a smooth one-click start, and rebuilt the Actor on the latest base image.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-20.