Y Combinator Scraper — Companies, Founders, Socials & Jobs

Extract the entire Y Combinator startup directory — every company across every batch (W05 → the latest cohort) with the full profile plus the data other YC scrapers skip: founders with their LinkedIn & Twitter/X, company social links (LinkedIn, X, Facebook, GitHub, Crunchbase), the YC group partner, and open job postings with salary & equity ranges. Turn ~6,000 funded startups into a ready-to-use B2B lead list, sourcing pipeline, or startup-intelligence dataset.

No login, no cookies, no browser — it reads YC's own public Algolia directory and profile pages directly, with a built-in monitor mode that surfaces only new companies, batches, and jobs.

Why this Y Combinator scraper?

Most YC scrapers dump the directory's basic columns and stop. This actor merges YC's public Algolia index (complete, fast, filterable) with each company's profile page to ship the richest YC dataset available — including founder contacts and company socials that make every row an actual lead.

Data	Typical YC scrapers	This actor
Company name, batch, status, team size, industry, location	✅	✅
One-liner + full long description	partial	✅
Tags, sub-industry, region, stage, top-company flag	partial	✅
Company website	✅	✅
Founders (name, title, bio)	❌	✅
Founder LinkedIn & Twitter/X	❌	✅
Company LinkedIn / X / Facebook / GitHub / Crunchbase	❌	✅
YC group partner, year founded, city/country	❌	✅
Open jobs (title, role, location, salary & equity)	❌	✅ opt-in
Full directory past Algolia's 1,000-result cap	partial	✅ (batch-sliced)
Monitor mode — only new companies / jobs	❌	✅

Use cases

• B2B lead generation — every YC company is a funded, fast-moving buyer. Export them with website, founders, and founder LinkedIn/Twitter to feed your CRM or outreach.
• Sourcing & recruiting — find founders and engineers by batch, industry, or tag; pull open roles with comp ranges straight from the directory.
• VC / competitive & market intelligence — track every batch, watch which industries and tags are growing, and monitor competitors and portfolio companies.
• Sales prospecting to startups — filter by batch, region, stage, and "is hiring" to build targeted lists of companies likely to buy dev tools, infra, fintech, and services.
• Datasets & dashboards — build and maintain a clean YC startup database for analytics and research.

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify — the free plan is enough to try this actor.
2. Open the Y Combinator Scraper, set filters (batch, industry, region, status…) or paste a YC directory URL, and click Start.
3. Watch companies — with founders and socials — stream into the dataset.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS — or pull results via the Apify API.

Input

{
    "batches": ["Summer 2024", "Winter 2025"],
    "industries": ["B2B", "Fintech"],
    "isHiring": true,
    "enrichProfile": true,
    "includeJobs": true,
    "maxItems": 500,
    "onlyNewItems": false
}

• batches / industries / subindustries / regions / tags / statuses / stages — directory filters (leave empty to sweep everything).
• query — optional free-text search.
• startUrls — paste a YC directory search URL (its filters are read automatically) or specific …/companies/{slug} profile URLs.
• isHiring / topCompaniesOnly / nonprofit — quick boolean filters.
• enrichProfile (default true) — open each company's profile for founders, socials, partner, year founded, media. Turn off for a fast directory-only pull.
• includeJobs (default false) — also output each company's open jobs as separate job records.
• maxItems — cap the number of companies (0 = the full ~6,000).
• onlyNewItems (monitor mode) — emit only companies/jobs not seen in previous runs.

Output

One record per company (type: "company"), plus optional job records. Use the Companies / Jobs dataset views to switch columns.

{
    "type": "company",
    "id": "271",
    "name": "Airbnb",
    "slug": "airbnb",
    "ycUrl": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/airbnb",
    "website": "http://airbnb.com",
    "oneLiner": "Book accommodations around the world.",
    "batchName": "Winter 2009",
    "batchSeason": "Winter",
    "batchYear": 2009,
    "batchCode": "W09",
    "status": "Public",
    "stage": "Growth",
    "teamSize": 6132,
    "industry": "Consumer",
    "subindustry": "Consumer -> Travel, Leisure and Tourism",
    "tags": ["Marketplace", "Travel"],
    "regions": ["United States of America"],
    "location": "San Francisco, CA, USA",
    "topCompany": true,
    "isHiring": false,
    "yearFounded": 2008,
    "linkedinUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/airbnb",
    "twitterUrl": "https://twitter.com/airbnb",
    "githubUrl": null,
    "crunchbaseUrl": "https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airbnb",
    "ycPartner": "...",
    "founders": [
        { "name": "Brian Chesky", "title": "Founder/CEO", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/", "twitter": "https://twitter.com/bchesky" }
    ],
    "foundersCount": 3,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-14T12:00:00.000Z"
}

A job record (type: "job") carries companyName, companySlug, batchName, jobTitle, role, location, remote, minSalary/maxSalary, minEquity/maxEquity, experience and applyUrl.

What to expect (field coverage)

YC data is founder-entered, so some fields appear only when the company filled them in. Across the directory you can typically expect: company core fields (name, batch, status, team size, industry, website) ~100%; one-liner ~99%; founders ~95% (with enrichProfile); founder LinkedIn ~80% and Twitter/X ~45% (where founders listed them); company socials and jobs when published. A blank field means it wasn't published — not that scraping failed.

Automate & schedule

• Apify API — start runs, fetch datasets, manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript & Python — official SDKs.
• Schedules — run it daily/weekly with monitor mode to get every new YC company, batch, and job automatically — perfect for sourcing and sales alerts.
• Webhooks — push new companies/leads to your CRM, Slack, or sheet the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/ycombinator-scraper').call({
    batches: ['Summer 2024'],
    isHiring: true,
    enrichProfile: true,
    includeJobs: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} YC companies & jobs`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — no code required:

• Make — multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier — push new YC leads straight into your CRM.
• Slack — get alerted when a new batch or company appears.
• Google Drive / Sheets — auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte — pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub — trigger runs from commits or releases.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. Call this actor from Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server — ask your assistant to "list the Summer 2024 YC fintech companies that are hiring, with founder LinkedIns" and let it run the scraper.

More scrapers from scrapesage

Build a complete startup & B2B intelligence / lead-gen stack:

• Product Hunt Scraper — launches, makers & leads (the perfect companion to YC).
• Multi-ATS Job Scraper — jobs from Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby & Workday (the ATSs YC startups use).
• LinkedIn Jobs Scraper — filter-based job postings, no login.
• LinkedIn Ad Library Scraper — competitor B2B ads & creatives.
• Google Ads Transparency Scraper — who's advertising what on Google.
• Facebook Ad Library Scraper — competitor ad intelligence on Meta & Instagram.
• Yellow Pages Scraper — local business leads with emails.
• Singapore Company Scraper — UEN, registry & business leads.

Tips

• Full directory: leave filters empty and maxItems: 0 — the actor sweeps batch-by-batch to pull all ~6,000 companies past Algolia's 1,000-result cap.
• Founders & contacts: keep enrichProfile on — it's the difference between a company name and a contactable founder lead.
• Incremental sourcing: turn on onlyNewItems + an Apify Schedule to capture each new YC company/batch/job as it lands.
• Paste-a-URL: copy any filtered URL from the YC companies page and drop it into startUrls — the filters carry over.

FAQ

How do I scrape a specific batch or industry? Use the batches / industries filters (full names as shown on YC, e.g. Summer 2024, Fintech), or paste a filtered YC directory URL into startUrls.

Does it need a login or API key? No. It reads YC's public Algolia directory and public profile pages — no key or login.

Can I get all ~6,000 companies? Yes. The actor slices the directory by batch so it retrieves the entire index, not just the first 1,000 results.

Where do founder LinkedIn/Twitter links come from? From each company's public YC profile, where founders list them. Coverage is high for LinkedIn, lower for Twitter/X — when a founder didn't list one, the field is simply absent.

How do I get alerted to new YC companies or jobs? Turn on onlyNewItems and create an Apify Schedule; each run emits only what's new. Add a webhook or Zapier zap to push them onward.

Can I export to Google Sheets, CSV, or Excel? Yes — one click in the dataset view, or automatically via the Google Drive integration.

Is scraping Y Combinator legal? This actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. GDPR/CCPA for personal data) and YC's terms.

Need help?

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome — this actor is actively maintained.