SaaS Metrics
Gemini Executive Synthesis
StartupWiki, a free startup database.
Technical Positioning
A free, open, and uncluttered alternative to Crunchbase and similar subscription-based startup databases, designed for easy discovery and research of early-stage companies, akin to Wikipedia.
SaaS Insight & Market Implications
StartupWiki directly challenges established, often paywalled, startup databases like Crunchbase by offering a free, open, and uncluttered alternative. The "Wikipedia-like" positioning targets a clear user pain point: friction from accounts, subscriptions, and excessive metrics when researching early-stage companies. This democratizes access to startup intelligence, potentially attracting a broad user base including founders, investors, and analysts who require quick, unhindered information access. The planned public API further enhances its utility, enabling programmatic data access for market analysis or integration into other platforms. While early, its value proposition is strong: removing financial and access barriers to critical market data, fostering a more transparent and accessible startup ecosystem.
Proprietary Technical Taxonomy
Raw Developer Origin & Technical Request
Hacker News
Jun 21, 2026
Show HN: StartupWiki – A Free Alternative to Crunchbase
I've been building StartupWiki, a free startup database designed to make it easier to discover and research companies.The original motivation was frustration with how difficult it can be to find information on early-stage startups. Most databases need accounts, or subscriptions, ro just feel too cluttered. I wanted a website that felt like Wikipedia, no accounts, no subscriptions, no weird metrics, just go in, the info is on the page.The project is still very early, but currently includes:Startup profiles
Search and filtering
Company categorization
Public API (in progress)I'm especially interested in feedback on:What information you look for when researching startups
Features missing from existing startup databases
API use casesI'd love to hear feedback.
Developer Debate & Comments
Can you add founder university affiliation? That's the only thing I begrudgingly pay crunchbase for and its wildly inaccurate.
Looks super cool and love the idea!I saw Clerk and noticed that it says that they have verified 250 months runway. Maybe true but sounds crazy high.Maybe if there's a specific article a verification is attributed to, you could add it being cited?Anyways thanks for making this.
Would you consider allowing people to login with OpenRouter?https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/overview/auth/oauthWould be a good way to have others absorb some of your inference limits and fill in missing data that they need. A call to action on a blank search would be a great flow.
I just approved a whole bunch of micro businesses! I do not get payed for this, and these aren't ads, instead I do it so people can find under the radar early companies.
It's a good idea. Why not ask startups to upload a startup.txt (as opposed to robots.txt) to their web root and collect from that? Pre-filled text forms can be downloaded. Also, as with CB, collect data on individuals through a similar opt-in. Enable users to ping your site when it's ready to collect.You could have a "traction" stat and ask for a JS snippet be installed on homepages or a set of pages. Old school and unreliable. Registered users is also a good way to assess traction. Not sure how that information could be readily obtained.In my previous comment I mentioned attaching a crypto address to domains - you could do that too. That'd be interesting. One feature you could add long-term is crowdfunding. Either for new features, code releases, media, documents - whatever.Crowdfunding activity on startups and individuals would be a great way to measure traction.
a random complain on my part would be the log in with google. hate that. looks great, otherwise. i don't even have a problem creating an account, honestly. but i try to not use the google for anything unless i have to.
How about expose an API so that users can put the name of a startup and it goes through your AI agent pipeline to acquire an estimate? That way, you don’t need to know every startup under the sun and focus on optimizing your pipeline instead.
0 for 10 on some startups (large and small, YC and not) that came to mind.It's easy to scrape YC startups from https://www.ycombinator.com/companies. Scrape that and a dozen other investors' portfolio pages and you'll have a useful fraction of startups.
I expected the VERIFIED badges to link to some sort of provenance information. That seems like a must, otherwise (given the "assume everything's incorrect" disclaimers) I'm not sure why one would take that badge seriously.
It sounds like none of the data will be reliable? Ai and community seems like very little will be true and I will have no idea which part will be true.
Frequently Asked Questions
Market intelligence mapped to StartupWiki, a free startup database..
How is StartupWiki, a free startup database. positioned in the market?
Based on our AI analysis of the original developer request, its primary technical positioning is: A free, open, and uncluttered alternative to Crunchbase and similar subscription-based startup databases, designed for easy discovery and research of early-stage companies, akin to Wikipedia.
What is the general sentiment around StartupWiki, a free startup database.?
Yes, we have tracked 57 direct responses and active debates regarding this specific topic originating from Hacker News.
What architecture is tied to StartupWiki, a free startup database.?
Our proprietary extraction maps StartupWiki, a free startup database. to adjacent architectural concepts including startup database, early-stage startups, Startup profiles, Search and filtering.
Engagement Signals
Cross-Market Term Frequency
Quantifies the cross-market adoption of foundational terms like startup database and early-stage startups by tracking occurrence frequency across active SaaS architectures and enterprise developer debates.