find-latest-fundraise

name

find-latest-fundraise

description

Find the latest fundraising round for each sourced YC company. Uses Exa and web search to surface Crunchbase data, TechCrunch funding articles, and SEC filings. Produces a structured funding history with round details. Triggers on: "find fundraise", "find funding", "find latest round", "check funding status", "step 5", "next step", "continue to find fundraise", "find investors", "find recent raises", "funding history".

Find Latest Fundraise

Pipeline: source-ycombinator → enrich-founders → scrape-website → find-latest-news → find-latest-fundraise → export-csv

You are step 5 of 5. Your job is to find the latest known fundraising round for each YC company — round type, amount, date, and lead investors.

Tools

• Exa MCP (web_search_exa) — primary: search for funding announcements
• Exa MCP (crawling_exa) — fetch Crunchbase or TechCrunch funding pages
• Exa MCP (company_research_exa) — deep company research including funding history
• WebSearch / WebFetch — fallback

Input

Read data/raw/yc_companies.json. Use company_name, website, and company_crunchbase (if available) as search keys.

Note: All YC companies have received YC seed funding (standard $500K YC deal). Record this as the baseline. The goal is to find any additional rounds beyond YC.

Step 1: Check Crunchbase directly

If the company has a company_crunchbase URL from the YC scraper, use it:

crawling_exa("[company_crunchbase]")

Extract:

• Funding rounds listed
• Round type (Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, etc.)
• Amount raised
• Date
• Lead investors
• Total funding

Step 2: Search for funding announcements

For each company (especially those without a Crunchbase URL or where Crunchbase returned nothing):

Query 1 — Funding news:

web_search_exa("[company_name] raises funding OR seed OR series A", date_range: last 24 months)

Query 2 — Crunchbase lookup:

web_search_exa("site:crunchbase.com [company_name] funding")

Query 3 — Funding via company_research_exa:

company_research_exa("[company_name]")

This often returns structured funding data including round amounts and investors.

Extract from any source:

• round_type — YC, Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, Bridge, SAFE, etc.
• amount_usd — amount raised in USD (null if undisclosed)
• announced_date — date announced (ISO format, or year-only if exact date unknown)
• lead_investors — array of investor names
• all_investors — array of all participating investors
• source_url — URL where this was found
• source_name — e.g. "TechCrunch", "Crunchbase", "SEC filing"

Step 3: Handle YC baseline

Every company should have at minimum the YC funding record:

{
  "round_type": "YC",
  "amount_usd": 500000,
  "announced_date": "[batch year]",
  "lead_investors": ["Y Combinator"],
  "all_investors": ["Y Combinator"],
  "source_url": "[yc_profile_url]",
  "source_name": "Y Combinator"
}

Derive announced_date from the batch: W25 → 2025-01, S24 → 2024-07, etc.

Step 4: Classify fundraising status

Based on all rounds found, set fundraising_status:

Condition	Status
Only YC funding, no subsequent rounds	yc_only
Seed or Pre-Seed raised post-YC	seed_funded
Series A raised	series_a
Series B or beyond	growth_stage
Bridge round or extension noted	bridge
Fundraising currently active (noted in recent news)	actively_raising
Unknown / no data found	unknown

Also flag:

• total_raised_usd — sum of all known rounds (null if mostly undisclosed)
• last_round_date — date of most recent round (for sorting by recency)
• has_post_yc_funding: true/false

Step 5: Assess investment opportunity signals

For each company, derive:

• likely_raising_soon: true/false — based on:
  • Last round was > 18 months ago AND company is early stage
  • Recent hiring news or expansion signals
  • YC-only and > 12 months post-graduation
• notes — 1–2 sentence summary of funding status for VC context

Output

Write an array to data/normalized/company_fundraises.json conforming to schemas/company_fundraise.schema.json.

One record per company, including company_id and company_name as join keys.

Also write a final combined output to data/normalized/sourced_companies.json that merges all pipeline data (from yc_companies.json, enriched_founders.json, website_content.json, company_news.json, and company_fundraises.json) into one comprehensive record per company.

Review checkpoint

After writing all output files, present a final sourcing summary:

Sourcing pipeline complete. [N] YC companies fully enriched.

Funding breakdown:
  YC only (no post-YC raise): [N]
  Seed funded: [N]
  Series A+: [N]
  Unknown / no data: [N]

Likely raising soon: [N] companies flagged

Top opportunities by recency of last raise:
| # | Company | Batch | Stage | Last Round | Amount | Likely Raising |
|---|---------|-------|-------|-----------|--------|---------------|
| 1 | ... | W25 | Seed | 2024-11 | $3M | No |
...

Data is saved to data/normalized/sourced_companies.json

You can now:
  - Export all data to CSV: "export csv"
  - Filter by fundraising status: "show only yc_only companies"
  - Re-run news for a company: "re-search news for [company]"
  - Start a new batch: "reset and source [batch]"