Tonight I am unveiling a new site tracking the startup ecosystem. It’s a directory and analytics tool I’ve personally wanted for a long time, and I know others will enjoy. Introducing Startup Search.

Startup Search tracks Web startups, their products, key employees, investment firms, and investment partners. Startup Search also tracks the success of each product since it was first introduced to the world, using publicly available metrics pulled into a single page. It’s a research tool, a discovery engine, and a fact-filled directory of our little Web startup world. I’ll walk through a few features.

Directory data

Startup Search is a data-driven website tracking facts and figures about the entire web industry. You might be familiar with a particular web product, but who is the parent company? Where do the founders live and work every day? Have they taken funding, and if so, from what firms or investors?

In today’s web directory data about startups and their employees was locked behind a paywall. A service such as VentureOne might call your company on behalf of a paying venture capitalist and ask questions about the company to help build a profile. Startups would never see this data, only provide information to someone they may never meet on behalf of a venture capitalist they may never meet. I want to change the flow of information, placing more power in the hands of anyone who would like to blog about, take a job with, or invest in some of the companies Startup Search covers.

Startup Search also covers some data you might never find inside of an existing directory. Who are the 12 angel investors in Dogster who collectively contributed $1 million? Who is the team behind Blinksale? Who is Felicis Ventures?

There may be some entirely new data areas covered as the directory expands. Good feedback will reveal just how much has changed.

Statistics

Each product is tied to a set of statistics I call buzz and traffic. Buzz measures the level of conversation around a product such as links from the web and from blogs, or mentions of the product’s name in blog posts or web searches. Traffic accumulates daily Alexa data together with monthly data from Quantcast and Compete into one single page.

I enjoyed deconstructing the Alexa data and putting it all back together again. All data is licensed using the appropriate APIs for each provider. I hope to increase my data coverage and site features over the next few days at Google Developer Day and Where Camp.

More to come

I wanted to release the product and iterate out in the open based on the tons of feedback available. I plan to introduce more features for startups who would like to claim their profile on the site. I’d also like to introduce more tools to help people track the business aspect of their startup such as tracking new statistics activity or perhaps researching interesting partners.

There is a lot more to be constructed from all the underlying data available at Startup Search. I could sort every possible venture capital investor based on their political affiliations and donations, or compute a possible burn rate based on a company’s business headquarters.

Summary

I hope you enjoy Startup Search and the tools contained within. The companies and features available now are just a beginning, with many iterations and expansions to come.

Startup Search is powered by Python, Django, and YUI. Bryan Veloso of Revyver designed the site using his new love for grid design. The site is currently sponsored by venture capital firm True Ventures for the month of June, and I hope to continue supporting some site costs through run-of-site sponsorships for the near future. There are many eggs and APIs coming together behind-the-scenes, and I’ll likely discover a few more likely sources of inspiration over the next few days.

Enjoy. startupsearch.org