Automate scraping Y Combinator startups with Apify & Google Sheets
Streamline your startup prospecting by automatically extracting company and founder data directly from Y Combinator's directory using Apify. This workflow seamlessly organizes vital insights like industry tags and LinkedIn profiles into a structured Google Sheet for easy outreach. It is the perfect tool for venture capitalists and sales teams looking to build a high-quality lead database with zero manual effort.
Run this with your team's AIWhat This Recipe Does
Staying ahead in the venture capital and startup ecosystem requires immediate access to data on the world's most promising new companies. This automation simplifies the process of tracking Y Combinator startups by bridging the gap between web data and your internal database. By integrating Apify's powerful scraping capabilities with Google Sheets, this workflow automatically extracts detailed information on YC-backed companies and organizes it into a structured, shareable format. Instead of manually searching directories and copying data point by data point, business development teams can now generate comprehensive lead lists in minutes. This tool ensures your CRM or investment pipeline is always populated with the latest information from the most recent cohorts, allowing you to focus on outreach and analysis rather than manual data entry. Whether you are looking for potential partners, investment opportunities, or competitive intelligence, this automation provides a reliable, scalable way to monitor the startup landscape.
What your team gets
Forms and dashboards, so it is not a script only one person understands
Runs on your schedule in the cloud, so it does not stop when a laptop closes
Endpoints, so the rest of your stack can trigger the same work
Google Sheets connected for the team, not per person
How It Works
- 1
Open the recipe and connect your accounts
Connect Google Sheets once, in your team cloud, and nobody has to do it again on their own machine
- 2
Tell your own agent what is different about your process
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, whichever your team already uses. It adapts the recipe to how you actually work
- 3
Run it, then leave it running
It lives in your team cloud, so it keeps going after you close the laptop and every teammate's AI can use it
Who Uses This
- Venture capital firms and angel investors who need to quickly populate deal flow pipelines with the latest Y Combinator participants.
- Sales and business development teams at B2B service providers looking to identify and contact high-growth startups for early-stage partnerships.
- Market researchers and analysts tracking industry trends and emerging technologies within the startup ecosystem for competitive benchmarking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to know how to code to use this automation?
No. This workflow is designed to handle the technical scraping and data transfer processes automatically, requiring only basic configuration of your Google Sheets and Apify account.
Can I customize which startup details are saved to my spreadsheet?
Yes. You can map specific data fields such as company name, description, founder info, and website URL to specific columns in your Google Sheet.
Is an Apify account required for this to work?
Yes, this automation uses Apify as the engine to gather data from the Y Combinator directory, so you will need an active Apify API key.
How often can I run this data extraction?
You can trigger the automation manually whenever you need a fresh batch of data, or schedule it to run at specific intervals to ensure your records are never out of date.
Coming from n8n?
This recipe uses nodes like StickyNote, ManualTrigger, GoogleSheets. On Runwork, you don't need to learn n8n's workflow syntax. Describe what you want to your own AI agent in plain English.
Based on n8n community workflow. View original
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Run this with the AI your team already uses
Your agent adapts it, your team cloud keeps it running, and everyone's AI can find it.
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