Get YC Founders Data (+ Funding $) through an API
hey guys,
today we shipped Founder Leaderboards on ExploreYC: ~3,000 YC founders (and growing), deduped across every company they've started, ranked four ways:
💰 Most Funded · 🦄 Unicorn Founders · 🚀 Biggest Exits · 🔁 Serial Founders
some of it's who you'd expect - the Collison brothers and the Airbnb crew up top. Some of it's a rabbit hole: the same names keep resurfacing across batches. Kyle Vogt (Twitch → Cruise), Justin Kan, and Parker Conrad have each done YC more than once, and 160+ founders here are behind billion-dollar companies.
and since we're an open-data project, the whole thing is also a free API:
GET/ https://api.exploreyc.com/api/v1/founders?metric=funded 🧑💻
what do you think of this? will it be useful for you, would you like to see it extended to more founders?
Replies
This feels like something investors and researchers will bookmark immediately. Curious how often do you plan to refresh the rankings and funding numbers?
ExploreYC
@samantha_den that would be more rare than companies as taking founders data is $$
The leaderboard is cool, but I think I'd spend even more time exploring founder networks who keeps building together, who changes cofounders, and patterns across batches. Any thoughts on adding that?
ExploreYC
@sheik_born we can add that yes!
Nice launch Would be awesome if the API also exposed acquisition history and company status so people could build richer analytics on top.
ExploreYC
Love the open API approach. any plans to include founder timelines or show how their fundraising evolved across multiple startups? that would be incredibly interesting.
ExploreYC
@ella_reyes2 it is open source, you can contribute and explore how can we do that! sounds like a cool feature
Really appreciate that you made the API free instead of hiding everything behind a paywall. What's been the hardest part of deduplicating founders with name variations?
ExploreYC
@savannah_morris you welcome :D will be like that til the bill is ok
This is one of those datasets that can power dozens of side projects. have you already seen people building anything unexpected with the API?
ExploreYC
Cool project. I would honestly love filters by industry, geography, and batch so its easier to compare founders with similar backgrounds. Is that on your roadmap?
This scratches an itch I've had for a while. Have you considered exposing founder relationships too? Seeing repeat co-founder combinations across YC would be fascinating to explore.
The API is awesome, but I think founder career timelines could become the killer feature. Seeing every startup, batch, and outcome on one page would be incredibly valuable. Any plans?
Curious about the funding numbers are they pulled from a single source or merged from multiple datasets? Keeping them accurate must be a challenge.