Show HN: StartupWiki – A Free Alternative to Crunchbase

StartupWiki rolled onto the scene promising a free, community-driven alternative to Crunchbase, basically a giant public directory where people can look up startups like Anthropic, Vercel, Supabase, Canva, and more. On paper, it sounds like catnip for founders, investors, job hunters, and anyone nosy about who’s building what. But the real action was not on the site — it was in the comments, where readers immediately went full detective mode and started asking the one question that can make or break a directory like this: is any of this actually true?

That skepticism hit hard and fast. One commenter summed up the mood with brutal simplicity: if the data is powered by AI and the community, how does anyone know which parts are real and which parts are fantasy? Another zoomed in on the site’s “verified” badges, basically saying, “Verified by whom, exactly?” If there’s no proof behind the badge, the badge itself becomes the drama. And then came the receipts: one user pointed to what they said was wildly outdated information on Anthropic, turning the thread into a mini fact-checking brawl.

There was also a smaller side quest: where are the tiny companies? A commenter asked how to list their own business, while the site quietly showed “No Micro Companies Yet,” which honestly felt like a punchline. So yes, StartupWiki launched as a friendly free alternative — but the crowd’s first reaction was less “finally!” and more “show us the proof.”