February 22, 2026
Startup vibes or cash-grab tribe?
Show HN: I scraped 5,700 YC companies to find what niches are now getting funded
Hacker News calls out “$39 startup cheat sheet” as a cash grab with no data in sight
TLDR: A creator tried selling a $39 bundle of startup data promising insider-style insights, but Hacker News users quickly questioned missing on-page info, possible sock-puppet accounts, and AI-flavored fluff. The community’s verdict: this feels less like a secret growth map and more like a sketchy little money grab, so beware the paywall.
A new “Show HN” post promised the ultimate startup treasure map: 5,700 Y Combinator companies, 1,000 software businesses for sale, and over 1,300 fast-growing startups, all bundled into one neat, $39 download. Think of it as a shortcut for wannabe founders and investors to see what niches are hot and which companies might be cheap to buy. But the Hacker News crowd didn’t see gold — they saw red flags.
The very first commenter slammed the brakes: they went to the site and said there was no data visible at all. Another user immediately went detective mode, pointing out the poster’s suspiciously similar accounts and hinting this might be a repeat promotion under different names. The mood shifted from curiosity to “is this a scam?” in record time.
Then the jokes started flying. One commenter mocked the $39 price as paying for “vibe-coded” AI-generated analysis, basically implying it’s just machine-made fluff with a paywall. Another dismissed the whole thing as a “hungry little money grab,” capturing the thread’s overall mood: this looked less like a helpful research tool and more like someone trying to cash in on publicly available information. The pitch was data; the comments were pure drama.
Key Points
- •The report compiles three structured datasets: SaaS startups for sale, fast-growing funded startups, and Y Combinator startups from 2005 to present.
- •The SaaS-for-sale dataset includes 1,000+ companies with metrics like MRR, asking price, revenue multiples, customer counts, industries, and tech stack in JSON format.
- •The funded-startups dataset covers 1,300+ fast-growing companies with investors, funding rounds, company size, headquarters, founding year, and industry categories.
- •The YC dataset contains 5,700+ YC startups with founder profiles, bios, social links, batch information, hiring status, and founder Q&A responses.
- •The combined datasets are marketed for cross-referencing to identify undervalued acquisitions, trending industries, and investment patterns, and are sold for a one-time $39 with instant download.