Public Directories Like YC and Podcast Feeds Offer Fresh B2B Leads for Free

Two publicly available directories — Y Combinator's startup listing and podcast RSS feeds — can serve as reliable, low-cost B2B lead sources without requiring purchased lists. The YC directory provides details such as batch, industry, team size, and hiring status for every funded company, while individual startup websites often carry contact emails that can be scraped in a follow-up step. Podcast RSS feeds similarly publish an owner email field alongside episode counts and publish dates, allowing outreach teams to identify active shows in a niche and avoid contacting hosts of defunct podcasts. Both sources share a common advantage: curation and freshness signals are already built in, reducing the manual effort typically associated with lead generation. Automated scrapers for both sources have been published on Apify under the Scrapemint account, priced per result with initial rows available free of charge.