Learn / Lead lists
How to scrape recently funded startups for outbound
A client in the finance space booked 19 calls in 10 days off a list built exactly like this one. No enterprise data contract, no four-figure export bill. This is the written version of the training below: pull the companies out of Crunchbase, turn them into verified contacts for a few dollars, and clean the whole thing in Clay.
One thing first, because it decides whether the list earns its month of sends. Fresh funding tells you WHEN to email someone. It tells you nothing about whether they need what you sell.
Funding is a timing signal, not a quality signal
A company that just closed a round has budget it did not have last quarter, a mandate to spend it, and usually a headcount plan attached. That part is real, and it is why the trigger works. It is not proof that your problem is their problem.
"Recently funded" is a category, and a category is a bucket. You cannot write to a bucket. Every outbound team in your space can buy the same trigger, which is why announcement week is the most crowded inbox moment of that founder's year. So the funding filter goes on top of a real buyer profile, never instead of one. Industry, headcount, and title still do the qualifying. Funding only decides who gets emailed first. It belongs in the same family as hiring activity, live ad spend, and follower counts, all of which are in the intent signals breakdown.
Step 1: build the filter set in Crunchbase
Apollo and Sales Navigator do not carry funding rounds, so a normal prospecting database cannot build this list. Crunchbase can, and its free trial runs roughly 7 days, which is all the time you need. The filter set, column by column:
| Filter | What to set | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Location | United States | One country per campaign keeps the copy, the send windows, and the rules consistent. |
| Employee count | 11 to 250 | Big companies are harder to sell into and slower to answer. Run 1 to 100 for earlier stage. |
| Funding type | Seed, Series A, Series B | Money in the bank and still moving fast. A broader pass runs pre-seed through Series D. |
| Total funding raised | $2 million minimum | Separates a real round from a friends-and-family cheque, and it counts stacked rounds. |
| Last funding date | Past year | The trigger only counts while the money is new. Stretch to 2 to 3 years for volume. |
| Company status | For-profit, active | Keeps nonprofits and dead companies out of the CSV. |
| Industry | Yours, stacked | One run used advertising, sales and marketing, and AI together. Stacking is how you climb back off 25 results. |
| Visible columns | Website, LinkedIn, total funding, last funding date and type, employee count | Set these BEFORE you scrape. The actor returns what the view shows, and the domain is the field every enrichment runs on. |
The last row is the one people skip, then redo the whole run over. The scraper reads the view, not the database. And with the domain you can find anything downstream. Without it you have a list of company names, which is a list of nothing.
Step 2: scrape the view, do not pay for the export
Copy the URL of your filtered view and go to Apify, a marketplace of scrapers. Search "Crunchbase scraper" and pick by review count, since the actors with real usage are the ones that still work. Paste the view URL, paste your browser cookies (instructions are in the actor, and it is easier than it sounds), hit start. One recent run: 1,963 companies, 39 seconds, $4.80. Export as CSV and the company side is done.
The data was never the expensive part. The export button was.
Step 3: turn companies into people
You have domains. Now you need humans at them, and two routes both stay cheap.
The Apollo route. A free account is enough, because you are not exporting from Apollo, only using it to build the search. Drop the scraped domains into the company domain filter, set email status so you skip people with no address on file, then add job titles: CEO, founder, president, managing director, and the finance roles. One build came back at 4.3K prospects. Copy that search URL into the Apollo actor on Apify and you get 4,100 records for just under $5.
The Clay route. Import the Crunchbase CSV into Clay as a company table, then start a find-people table from it. Filter by seniority: owner, partner, C-suite, VP. One run returned 4,654 people. Add a work email enrichment and map the three required fields, full name, company, and domain. Prospeo is the one we reach for most, and the Apollo vs Prospeo comparison covers when each wins.
Step 4: verify, normalize, then send
Enrichment gives you addresses. Verification tells you which ones exist. Run the list through Million Verifier or whichever verifier you trust, filter for validity equals valid, and that is your working database. On a 10% slice of one build, 217 emails came back and 174 verified. The rest would have been bounces you pay for twice, once in credits and once in domain reputation.
Then ten minutes of housekeeping: normalize the company name, normalize the domain, and table-lookup back against the original Crunchbase CSV to pull the funding fields onto the enriched rows. Now the round size sits next to the person you are emailing, which is the whole point. The rest of the build is in the Clay workflow breakdown.
Skip bulk phone enrichment. Buying mobiles for the whole list is money spent on people who will never reply. Enrich on the interested reply instead: a webhook fires on a positive response, pulls the mobile, and someone calls within 5 minutes.
The script that pairs with this list
Short, casual, two lines. The subject line is where people over-engineer, and the version that keeps working reads like it came from inside the company: a two-word prefix and the first name, nothing explaining itself. The body goes straight into relevance, straight into the offer, then stops:
{{first_name}}, read that you raised {{funding_amount}} and increased your employee headcount by {{headcount_growth}}. If we could help you sustain and accelerate that growth by connecting you with prospects looking for {{their_service}}, would you be open to a quick conversation?
No greeting, no apology for the interruption, no paragraph about yourself. Every merge tag came out of the scrape you already ran, which is the reason this list is worth building. Email two does one of three jobs: elaborate, pre-handle the objection you know is coming, or strip the message down to the offer alone. Pick one. All three at once is a newsletter.
What this list will not do for you
Trigger lists are small by construction. United States, 11 to 250 employees, three industries, one funding window, and you can be looking at a couple of thousand companies. That is a campaign, not a channel. Below roughly 100,000 reachable buyers there is not enough volume to find the offer that works, so run a funding list as one sequence inside a bigger program and refresh it monthly as new rounds close.
The other honest caveat: announcement week is a knife fight. If your list is thin anyway, the 2 to 3 year window is quieter, and the money is mostly spent by then, which is when the pressure to show growth is highest. Test that before month two.
tl;dr: Crunchbase for the trigger, Apify for the scrape, Apollo or Clay for the people, a verifier before a single send, and a two-line email built from funding data you already paid five dollars for.
FAQ
Where do you find recently funded startups?
Crunchbase. Apollo and Sales Navigator do not carry funding rounds, so a firmographic database cannot answer the question at all. Crunchbase can, and its free trial runs around 7 days, which is enough time to build the filtered view and scrape it. Filter on funding type, total raised, and last funding date.
How much does it cost to scrape recently funded startups?
Single-digit dollars. One Crunchbase run pulled 1,963 funded companies in 39 seconds for $4.80. Turning those companies into people through an Apify actor returned 4,100 contact records with names, emails, and LinkedIn URLs for just under $5. The only other line item is email verification, which runs cents per record.
How recent should the funding be?
The past year is the tight window and the one to default to, because the trigger only means something while the money is new. If that leaves you a few hundred companies, stretch to the last 2 to 3 years. The list gets colder as a trigger and warmer as a fit, so test both windows.
Do you need a paid Crunchbase account to do this?
No. The free trial runs about 7 days, and building the filtered view plus running one scrape takes an afternoon. What you do need is every column you want showing in the view before you hit start in Apify, because the scraper only returns what is visible. The domain is the one you cannot skip.
What do you write to a company that just raised?
Two lines and no greeting. Name the round, name the growth it paid for, make one offer tied to sustaining that growth, then ask a single question. Keep the subject line short and internal-looking. The funding data you already scraped is the personalization, so nothing here needs an AI research agent.
Does recent funding mean a company will buy?
No, and treating it that way is how these lists disappoint people. Funding says a company has new budget and a mandate to spend it, which is timing. Whether they have the problem you solve is answered by your industry, headcount, and title filters. Put the trigger on top of a buyer profile, never instead of one.
If you would rather have the whole system built for you (lists, offer, copy, infrastructure, and someone on the replies while they are warm), that is what we do: 3,000+ sales calls booked for clients in the past year. Every training, grouped by topic, sits on the trainings hub, and the full video for this one is on YouTube.
PS - the cheapest part of this build is the data. The expensive part is deciding who deserves to be on the list, and no scraper has ever done that for anybody.
